londisteJust curious - what is the use case for this?
Consolidation of cables going out of the PC - DP, USB (and PCIe) signals over single USB-C cable plus monitor daisy-chaining?

stanleyipkissSo, from what I gather:

It needs PCIE power.
It needs a special USB output on the motherboard, which means new Intel only chipsets.

And there's no price.

TheLostSwedeIntel allows these things to be used with AMD CPUs now too. In the past that wasn't the case.
It's not the USB port that the special (and it's only needed for USB 2.0 backwards compatibility, as Intel didn't build it into their controller), but rather something like an SPI interface.

X71200Most modern audio interfaces are USB or leftover stock Firewire, both of which work well.

X71200Thunderbolt can go up to much higher 4k speeds than USB with external drive enclosures and such, but thanks to Apple's stupid licensing, it never really took off outside of some expensive boards and the Apple ecosystem.

DrediMost consumer grade audio interfaces yes. The studio grade ones are for the most part thunderbolt.

X71200What separates studio from consumer is subjective. There are pretty high end USB interfaces out there.

If I'm however going to record something, I'd ditch the Windows PC out of the equitation right away and just use a Rectifier recording pre or similar to a recorder. No latencies to deal with when you're doing direct from instrument.

DrediNumber of channels and latency. For example if you wish to do some live feedback stuff with processing done on a pc the usb ones will sound late.

X71200That's not related to just the USB itself but rather how Windows deals with ASIO and so on, putting a TB on an interface doesn't magically get rid of that. Number of channels, there are tons on high end interfaces like 12 in 12 out ones and some interfaces do a fairly good job at these things. You seem to not understand much about this stuff. There's an Audient USB interface which was developed with Two Notes in cooperation, it acts as a cabinet simulator and you can get good results out of it using instruments or mics directly. Not everything USB sounds late, that is nonsense.

DrediEverything usb3 or below sounds late if processing is being done on the PC side instead of on device. Usb4 can use a pcie passthrough mode like TB and thus provide low latency as well.
Putting TB on an interface forces the manufacturer to make a driver for it and in that process they usually manage to get rid of the windows ASIO problems.

X71200No, USB 3 below does not sound late as an interface all the time. For instance, there are various Tascam models with onboard DSPs. A lot of USB mixers exist as well and work fine with below USB 3.

Post Nut ClairvoyanceThis probably at least has uses as a way to connect (now available) tiger lake laptops with TB4 to a computer without TB chipset (but somehow still has TB support headers), for 10g+ networking.

I believe they do have their own header (TB_HEADER/TB_C), beyond PCIe slot.

TB3 chipsets is compatible with USB. Gigabyte even went ahead and used a TB controller to get USB3.1(what genXlane, idek) on a workstation mobo.

RealKGBI wonder if it's possible to use with X570, perhaps with a PCIe add-in card?
Apparently it was possible to use the Titan Ridge card with motherboards without Thunderbolt headers as long as the BIOS supported Thunderbolt by jumping pins 3 and 5 on the header on the card, but there's no real evidence for it that I was able to find with school filters in place.

TheLostSwedeIt depends on your board. I know for a fact that revision 1.0 boards from Gigabyte doesn't support it, but the revision 1.1 and 1.2 boards do. It requires that TB header thingie mentioned.

X71200The 4x4 does not have DSP, it relies on the computer itself and its power with the amount regarding buffer size.

It's the 208i which is the DSP model, that offloads the work from the PC to the unit itself.

TheLostSwedeThat's the SPI/unknown header, all these cards have it and it means you have to buy a card from the specific board maker who's motherboard you own.
My X570 board has such a header and would work with the equivalent card from Gigabyte.

I guess you didn't understand what I meant. The USB header on these boards is for USB 2.0. The Intel Thunderbolt/USB 4 chipset doesn't support USB 2.0. It does however support USB 3.x.


It depends on your board. I know for a fact that revision 1.0 boards from Gigabyte doesn't support it, but the revision 1.1 and 1.2 boards do. It requires that TB header thingie mentioned.

X71200You were kind of stating that though... that kind of difference is miniscule and I've been looking at $3500 boxes with all forms of fancy EQs displays on them that use USB 2.0... that little of latency difference won't really matter in most cases. Yes, Thunderbolt is the new trend but there ain't a ton wrong with 2.0 either. There have been tons of USB mixers and even the Kemper in all its glory uses 2.0. You would think they would have known better and thrown a 3.0 on there if it was that was so necessary, right? It's pulling hairs.