Thunderbolt 5. The chopping fringe of I/O. All of it — screens, a Thunderbolt 5 dock, and even a Thunderbolt 5 SSD — was perched on my desk. I used to be happy, in the best way solely tech nerds will be after they have a bit of substances few others do.
A number of days later, I used to be very happy to take it aside and return to a slower and extra practical Thunderbolt surroundings. As a result of I’m merely undecided that the Thunderbolt 5 ecosystem is prepared for prime time.
This isn’t an indictment of Thunderbolt 5, per se. Fairly, it’s all in regards to the complications that may accompany not one, however a mess of gadgets, all of which may work together with one another in surprising methods. Layer on software program, drivers, firmware updates, and the like, and it’s powerful to level an accusing finger at anybody part. That is what testing cutting-edge {hardware} can imply: fighting expertise that ought to simply work, however doesn’t.
Additional studying: Greatest Thunderbolt docks 2024: Lengthen your laptop computer’s capabilities
Thunderbolt 5: The following era of I/O
Thunderbolt 5 was introduced a few yr in the past, as the subsequent step within the evolution of the Thunderbolt I/O commonplace. Thunderbolt wasn’t essentially designed for energy customers, however one of the best Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 docks permits customers to position a pair of 4K shows on their desk working at 60 Hz. I discover this extraordinarily helpful for productiveness, as I can prepare a number of home windows’ value of electronic mail, chat, calendar, Net browsers, and extra on two or extra shows.
Each Thunderbolt 3 and 4 present 40Gbps of throughput. Thunderbolt 5 will increase that to 80Gbps, and in sure conditions as much as 120Gbps, too. This additional bandwidth performs proper into the gaming and productiveness house, as the additional bandwidth helps as much as three 4K shows at 144Hz, two 8K shows at 60Hz, or a single 1080p show at 540Hz. (Intel hasn’t nailed down the specifics of those final two resolutions). Intel can also be touting the truth that Thunderbolt 5 ought to be capable to energy exterior GPUs, a functionality that was handed over in Thunderbolt 4.
The issue is that Thunderbolt 5 {hardware} is briefly provide, interval. Though among the earliest Thunderbolt 5 docks have been proven off this previous January, it’s now October, and about the one dock I’ve seen introduced is Kensington’s SD5000T5 EQ, which I went hands-on with a short while in the past. There aren’t too many Thunderbolt 5 cables, both.
However a hands-on shouldn’t be a take a look at and I used to be keen to acquire {hardware} that I might use to place the Kensington SD5000T5 by its paces: to attach it to 3 4K144 shows by way of a laptop computer with Thunderbolt 5 connections and, as a bonus, to see if I might discover an SSD that might run at Thunderbolt 5 speeds.
I wasn’t anticipating it to be straightforward. For no matter motive, gadgets with Intel’s Thunderbolt 5 host and accent part (“Barlow Ridge,” or the Intel JHL9580 and JHL9480) have been few and much between. Docks are nonetheless scarce, as I mentioned, and solely two notebooks to my data ship with a (non-integrated) Thunderbolt 5 controller, a model of the Razer Blade and the Maingear ML-17.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Luck favored me. The Kensington SD5000T5 remained on my desk, and Maingear agreed to ship over an ML-17 for overview. A colleague additionally was within the means of reviewing a pre-release model of OWC’s Envoy Extremely Thunderbolt 5 SSD and agreed to let me take a look at it for a short while in commerce for some benchmarking outcomes. Every thing gave the impression to be coming collectively.
Thunderbolt 5 began off poorly, then acquired worse
A number of days later, I had cleared the decks of all of my present initiatives, and sat right down to play with the subsequent era of I/O energy. I up to date the ML-17 with the required Home windows updates, Microsoft Retailer updates, accessible firmware updates, and so forth. Maingear shipped the pocket book to me with the Intel Driver & Assist Assistant utility up to date as properly, so I used to be fairly certain that I had the most recent {hardware} and drivers.
The primary steps have been pretty optimistic. As most players know, gaming notebooks embody a hefty energy brick terminating in both a barrel charger or the squarish energy connector. One of many advantages of Thunderbolt 5, nonetheless, is its potential to provide a hypothetical energy draw of 240W. Simply with the ability to plug within the gaming pocket book into the Thunderbolt 5 dock and energy it up with out the necessity for the laptop computer’s ungainly exterior energy connector left me fairly happy.
Properly, type of. I later found that the dock would energy the laptop computer on simply one of many two Thunderbolt 5 ports, nonetheless, and checking it with a USB energy meter discovered that it delivered not more than 87W, even whereas gaming.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Energy supply of 240W requires express assist from the laptop computer, dock, and cable and I wasn’t too shocked that it didn’t meet my expectations. Sadly, nonetheless, the pattern continued.
Acer graciously provided three of its Nitro XV5 (XV275K) 4K shows for a take a look at mattress. All three shows run as much as 144Hz on the HDMI port and to 160Hz on the USB-C/DisplayPort, which ought to have been ok to fulfill the Thunderbolt 5’s promised to render a picture at 144Hz on three 4K shows.
Sadly, that didn’t occur. Maingear’s laptop computer produced a picture on simply two of the shows plus the laptop computer itself. (Thunderbolt 4 docks output to 2 4K shows, plus the laptop computer, so I’ve no motive to consider my interpretation of “three displays” was incorrect.). Whereas one laptop computer rendered at 4K 144Hz simply high-quality, it was an actual wrestle to get the opposite to do the identical at 1440p — it took some unplugging and re-plugging to realize it simply as soon as, slowly. I couldn’t persistently repeat this.
(Kensington’s dock provides three upstream Thunderbolt 5 ports. I used Kensington’s personal USB-C to HDMI adapter to hook up with one show, plus two uni 4K60 USB-C to DisplayPort cables — that are solely rated for 1440p165, not 4K — for the others. I hoped that three shows would mild up. They didn’t).
In actual fact, the entire setup felt fairly laggy simply navigating across the laptop computer and by way of a Net browser — not one thing you’d count on with a top-of-the-line Intel CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU inside. I’m fairly certain the Thunderbolt connection negatively contributed. Streaming a 4K, 60Hz video stuttered badly when run on the exterior show that was linked to the Thunderbolt dock — properly over 30 % of the frames have been misplaced. Enjoying again the identical video on simply the laptop computer itself wasn’t excellent, however it was a lot, significantly better.
Maingear blamed this on the Thunderbolt 5 cable. “I haven’t tested a plethora of cables yet, but the Apple TB5 Pro cable has worked consistently for us,” a Maingear consultant wrote in an electronic mail. “Where Thunderbolt 4 you were able to get away with a decent USB-C cable, Thunderbolt 5 seems to work best with certified Thunderbolt 5 cables.”
That could be true, however Kensington’s Thunderbolt 5 cable was labeled appropriately and this must be licensed. And why ought to I would like to purchase an Apple cable to get my PC docking station to work?
Mark Hachman / IDG
Storage efficiency suffered as properly
Once I linked the SSD, the efficiency of my Thunderbolt 5 take a look at setup was simply as unhealthy. I usually run PCMark’s exterior storage benchmark to check a dock. My colleague Jon Jacobi prefers working storage-specific benchmarks to check the efficiency of the SSD immediately. I desire PCMark, whose exterior storage take a look at reviews the “bandwidth” of the SSD. That’s what I’m aiming for: How a lot knowledge does the drive need to work with?
I additionally take a look at a second manner, by recording the time it takes to repeat a folder stuffed with multimedia and different recordsdata from the SSD, by the dock, onto the laptop computer. I do all that by itself and in addition whereas streaming a 4K 60Hz video by way of the Web over the Thunderbolt cable, simply to see whether or not a background file switch will have an effect on efficiency.
The expertise, fairly frankly, stunk. Whereas working the PCMark take a look at with the SSD immediately linked, I recorded a rating of 1,743 or 252.3 MB/s. However whereas linked to the dock, the SSD’s PCMark rating plunged to only 1,108 or 159.3MB/s. Was that the dock’s fault or the Thunderbolt 5 connection? One of many two, most probably.
Once I immediately linked the SSD to the laptop computer and copied my folder to the desktop, it took a median of 1 minute and 5 seconds. Whereas streaming video, the identical activity took 58 seconds longer or two minutes and three seconds. That appeared fairly excessive.
Weirdly, after I linked the SSD to the dock after which carried out the folder copy, it completed in 41 seconds — far sooner! However performing the folder copy whereas streaming the video required two minutes and 6 seconds, once more with the SSD connected to the dock. (The Web connection was provided by Ethernet, which remained linked. However letting the system use Wi-Fi didn’t appear to make any distinction).
It’s value a reminder that after I examined the Kensington dock on a “normal” Thunderbolt 4-equipped laptop computer and a slower SSD, the dock carried out “normally,” as properly.
Up to now few years, we’ve seen the occasional bizarre end result when benchmarking, reminiscent of benchmarks of cell CPUs run on battery energy that exceed the efficiency of the identical laptop computer whereas plugged in. Nonetheless, the wildly various outcomes, together with the heavy stuttering whereas taking part in video, informed me one thing’s not fairly proper. What’s it? I don’t know, which is souring me on the entire Thunderbolt 5 expertise.
Must you purchase Thunderbolt 5? Not proper now
When testing a single system, a very good overview works to isolate the variable. Desktop CPUs are examined towards the quickest GPUs doable, with widespread motherboards, reminiscence, and storage (if doable), in order that any variations in efficiency will be immediately attributed to the brand new CPU.
Mark Hachman / IDG
On this case, I’m testing a brand new dock, laptop computer, and SSD, with new cables working between them. That’s at the very least three unknowns I can’t actually nail down. So Maingear can accuse the cable of being defective, whereas I believe that Maingear’s {hardware} could also be at fault. I can’t know for sure.
What I’m a bit suspicious about is the relative lack of Thunderbolt 5 {hardware}, even late in 2024. Intel has cycled by its Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake launches, and neither consists of an built-in Thunderbolt 5 controller. Intel gave some good causes for excluding it — desktop distributors desire to “upsell” by utilizing discrete elements, for instance — however the instability that I’m seeing makes me surprise if there’s one thing extra occurring.
I’m not writing Thunderbolt 5 off in any respect. An up to date driver might probably remedy this downside or it would require a extra refined {hardware} revision to Intel’s Barlow Ridge controller itself. I don’t know.
For now, nonetheless I might not advocate shopping for into the Thunderbolt 5 ecosystem. Once you purchase (or take a look at) bleeding-edge {hardware}, typically you’re the one which finally ends up with the cuts.
