Nice, I'm eager to upgrade as it's really cool to have a single cable to hook up my laptop to all my peripherals and monitors, but so far resolution & refresh rate were quite limited in multi-monitor setups, I think that new standard should finally be able to drive a 4k display at 240 Hz. I don't see many Thunderbolt 5 docks yet though, always liked the Lenovo ones but it seems they don't have an upgrade yet.
Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know
41–50 of 56 posts
Re: Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know
#42Adam Savage (Myth Buster) did a video on why Apple Thunderbolt-4 is so expensive ($130), by looking at the detail in construction vs cheap alternatives.
Re: Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know
#43If I could buy a 5k (retina) 120hz 27" monitor that would be endgame for me, I believe this finally has the bandwidth for that.
TB4 supports DP2.0, which (in UHBR13.5 or UHBR20 mode) has enough bandwidth for 5K @ 120Hz (or 144/180 Hz with UHBR20). The issue is more likely to be availability, and marketability. In general the demand for high refresh rates on desktop displays is driven by gamers, far more so than resolution - it's pointless having a 5K or 6K display if your GPU can only render the game in a playable fashion at 1440P or whatever…
I used to subscribe to the "60Hz is enough for anyone" idea, but after using a high refresh rate monitor for a while, I have to admit it does feel a lot nicer to work with. Even small things, like window animations, feel a lot smoother by just a 50% increase in frame rate. Even Apple has upgraded their mobile displays to surpass 60Hz.
With gaming monitors now doing ludicrous things like 1440p@480fps, I don't think 5k@120fps would even be difficult for manufacturers.
Stuffing everything over a DP 2.0 connection may be difficult, though, but DP 2.1 has been with us for a while now. 5k at 195fps (159fps with HDR enabled) can already be achieved with a standard DP 2.1 port.
When it comes to displays, I think we're currently limited by GPUs rather than Displays. Nvidia's 40 series GPUs only come with DP 1.4, for instance. Until 2.1(b) gains wide support, it doesn't make any sense to build monitors that rely on it to do their job well.
Re: Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know
#44If I could buy a 5k (retina) 120hz 27" monitor that would be endgame for me, I believe this finally has the bandwidth for that.
TB4 supports DP2.0, which (in UHBR13.5 or UHBR20 mode) has enough bandwidth for 5K @ 120Hz (or 144/180 Hz with UHBR20). The issue is more likely to be availability, and marketability. In general the demand for high refresh rates on desktop displays is driven by gamers, far more so than resolution - it's pointless having a 5K or 6K display if your GPU can only render the game in a playable fashion at 1440P or whatever…
For my use case it's because I want the high resolution for my 9-5 work, but the high refresh rate for when I start playing games, I'm perfectly happy to drop the resolution down to 1080p or 1440p while gaming in order to get high framerate.
Re: Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple was selling laptops with Thunderbolt before it used a USB-C connector and were among the first to sell them with Thunderbolt over USB-C. They were, as far as I know, the first company to sell 27" monitors over Thunderbolt back in 2011. So Apple has been all in on Thunderbolt for years, they just persisted with the Lightning connector on iPhones. Phones mostly don't really make use of Thunderbolt bandwidth like…
Apple never used Lightening for laptops. The market i'm talking about is phones. > saying the market has moved on without them is silly Given they've produced nearly 2 billion phones with Lightening and are still producing/selling £1000 phones with Lightening, i don't think it's silly to say the market moved on without them.
Which phone has Thunderbolt now?
Re: Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty much all new higher end AMD laptops have Thunderbolt, what are you talking about?
AMD laptops cannot use the term "Thunderbolt" as it is owned by Intel and they do not want AMD to use it.
HP doesn't care: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-omnibook-ultra-laptop-1...
> 2 Thunderbolt™ 4 with USB Type-C® 40Gbps signaling rate (USB Power Delivery, DisplayPort™ 2.1, HP Sleep and Charge)[..]
"Thunderbolt" is just a name like "USB". AMD didn't have Thunderbolt support because they'd need to license the technology from Intel, but that changed when Thunderbolt 4 was donated to USB.
Re: Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know
#47I sometimes wonder why we have to be so gradual? I mean thunderbolt 1 spec was released in 2013. Thunderbolt 5 is the 5th revision in 11 years. Thunderbolt 4 spec was published in 2020, you cannot possibly think about all future needs/usages but couldn't we have anticipated in 2020 that 5k and 8k screen would be a thing and that people would want more bandwidth than 40gbps? All these standard changes every 2.5 years…
Because getting something into production is much more than just the specification.
You can specify anything. But producing hardware that complies with that spec is much harder.
Then you've done a lot of research and development, so you have to sell it in a way that is backwards compatible, so you have to wrangle a whole group of organizations (foundries, chip designers, customers) who each have their own product lifecycles to think about. Intel might be ready, but Apple is delaying their release, etc.
Re: Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know
#48tl;dr TB4 to TB5: - 40Gbps => 80Gbps, up to 120Gbps - min 100 Watt - 140 Watt max => min 140 Watt - 240 Watt max PD charging This is great, finally there will be 240W charging hardware. There wasn't any last time I checked.
The last two months I've seen some news about them pop up. The ADP-240KB can do 240W over USB C already, if you're looking for a charger.
Re: Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know
#49I would really love to ditch my desktop and invest in an external GPU but the performance left on the table on most video games when you do that is huge
I'm eager to see benchmarks of eGPUs on Thunderbolt 5
Re: Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know
#50If I could buy a 5k (retina) 120hz 27" monitor that would be endgame for me, I believe this finally has the bandwidth for that.
> If I could buy a 5k (retina) 120hz 27" monitor that would be endgame for me, I believe this finally has the bandwidth for that.
The recently-available Asus PA27JCV is 27" 5K, but unfortunately not 120Hz:
* https://9to5mac.com/2024/12/26/asus-proart-display-5k-review...
Currently selling for US$ 800 (less expensive than the Apple Studio Display):
* https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1850479-REG/asus_pa27...
I'm considering it for a replacement for my aging 27" 5k iMac (paired with a Mac mini I guess).
LG recently teased a 32" 6K with TB5:
* https://www.macrumors.com/2025/01/07/lg-unveils-ultrafine-6k...