Friday, October 18th 2024
Gigabyte Releases Thunderbolt 5 Add-in Card with PCIe 4.0 Interface
Gigabyte has quietly added the first Thunderbolt 5 add-in card to its website under the rather unimaginative name of Thunderbolts 5. The card itself is nothing remarkable when compared to Thunderbolt 4 add-in cards, although it sports a third mini DisplayPort input for unclear reasons, as well as two USB Type-C outputs. This time around Gigabyte has added support for more power though, as the card features a pair of what appears to be 6-pin PCIe power connectors and the card supports up to 100 W USB PD charging. Courtesy of the new JHL9580, or Barlow Ridge controller, the card offers support for DP 2.1 with resolutions of up to 8K at 60 Hz, as well as data speeds of up to 80 Gbps, or 120/40 Gbps in asymmetric mode.
Intel's JHL9580 controller has a PCIe 4.0 x4 host interface, the same as ASMedia's ASM4242 USB4 host controller and it's a big step up from Intel's previous Thunderbolt 4 controllers that were stuck with PCIe 3.0. Note that the JHL9580 is also offered in a Thunderbolt 4 version known as the JHL9540 which also uses a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and offers DP 2.1 support, but slower speeds. Both of the new Barlow Ridge controllers also support USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps), something previous Thunderbolt controllers didn't. Intel has a list price for the JHL9580 of US$19, which is just over US$8 more than the JHL8540 Maple Ridge controller which launched in 2020, as such, expect Thunderbolt 5 add-in cards to come at an even higher price point than previous Thunderbolt 4 add-in cards. Gigabyte might be first out of the gate, but we expect most motherboard makers to follow suit with products of their own before the end of the year.
Sources:
Gigabyte, Intel Product Specifications, via @unikoshardware on X/Twitter
Intel's JHL9580 controller has a PCIe 4.0 x4 host interface, the same as ASMedia's ASM4242 USB4 host controller and it's a big step up from Intel's previous Thunderbolt 4 controllers that were stuck with PCIe 3.0. Note that the JHL9580 is also offered in a Thunderbolt 4 version known as the JHL9540 which also uses a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and offers DP 2.1 support, but slower speeds. Both of the new Barlow Ridge controllers also support USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps), something previous Thunderbolt controllers didn't. Intel has a list price for the JHL9580 of US$19, which is just over US$8 more than the JHL8540 Maple Ridge controller which launched in 2020, as such, expect Thunderbolt 5 add-in cards to come at an even higher price point than previous Thunderbolt 4 add-in cards. Gigabyte might be first out of the gate, but we expect most motherboard makers to follow suit with products of their own before the end of the year.
21 Comments on Gigabyte Releases Thunderbolt 5 Add-in Card with PCIe 4.0 Interface
Now I just need to wait for ASRock's version and hope it works with X870E (aside from the on-board ASM4242).
Also note the motherboard still need Thunderbolt headers for these add-in cards to work, which the X870/E boards appear to be lacking at least...
Edit: Some bad news for you, ASRock doesn't seem to have Thunderbolt headers on any of their boards with USB4 or Thunderbolt 4.
Most likely because they're relying on the built-in USB4 now. Which is fine for my current use case.
The new chips from Intel should do a lot better, but I'm curious how Intel is going to show their Thunderbolt 5 chip do 80 Gbps, when the PCIe interface is limited to ~64 Gbps...
This is from earlier this year and suggests both use the same 13 x 13 mm packaging.
www.techpowerup.com/318236/details-of-intels-barlow-ridge-thunderbolt-5-controller-leaksCheck the cables on Gigabyte's website, as they appear to have changed for older Thunderbolt cards.
Unfortunately, there's no compatibility list and no manual so far.1,500 units on a reel. I very much doubt they get that big of a discount with a newly launched product, as Intel doesn't really offer discounts on newly launched products.
None of the distributors I checked offer more than single reel pricing at the moment and the per unit pricing through distribution is US$22.64 per chip if you buy a reel or if you buy 200 units. I would guess more like US$50 total cost to the manufacturers at the moment.
As for MSRP, I'm guessing these will launch for US$150-200-ish, unfortunately. Many Thunderbolt 4 cards are listed for US$230+ still. MSI appears to be the cheapest one, as they have a sale on for $50 on their own online store for the MS-4463 v3.0.
This means that connecting AMD 7000 client GPU would drop the speed from DP54 to DP40.
Why did they do this?
Hopefully the next Lake embeds TB5. After us paying guinea pigs aka beta testers help to debug Barlow ridge.
www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/accessories/thunderboltex-5/
However, the TRX50 Aero has TB4 built onto the motherboard, but doesn't advertise it as such since they did not get Intel to certify it. My understanding is that it works with all the hardware, just won't support some of the new features they announced (two pc's with TB connection, etc.). Works fine with the Apple TB1 adapter and Sonnet pcie expansion enclosure.It's not for the card itself. It's for the Power Delivery pass through for any TB devices that may need it.
Loads of people here have complained about USB4 not supporting higher Wattages, well, this is the solution for some them at least.
The same applies for iGPU on Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake in the sections for USB-C subsystem and graphics display.
UHBR13.5 is explicitly mentioned as NOT supported in official documentation for 200S (p.147) and 200V (p. 173). It's weird, considering the fact that upcoming Battlemage GPUs have 13.5 mode listed in Linux drivers.
But yeah, UHBR13.5 does not seem supported on any product.