All of the CES laptop announcements I have seen don't seem to include it despite it now being a year since it has been available. Weirdly it seems most likely to be found on gaming laptops that already have a dGPU when it would be most useful on thin and lights... but it's nowhere to be found on announced MSI Prestige and Dell XPS laptops.
I guess they're all waiting for it to be integrated into the CPU? but that will take years still.
Yeah I was really hoping it would be integrated into Panther Lake (Series 3). Seems like a chicken and egg situation for single port high DPI displays too. Bring on 5K 120Hz Thunderbolt 5 Monitors!
It's obviously not that expensive a feature to implement discretely though so it's weird that high end, brand new laptops are not doing it. Aside from the eGPU appeal you're absolutely right about the display support improvements and of course much faster external storage.
Why? You do not need TB5 for that. Intel has had 4xUHBR20 output since 13th gen.
TB5 would only be to have that AND USB3 instead of just USB2 (Or 2xUHBR20 + USB3, which they also could do).
So specifically, docking (which is more of a business feature) and such high bandwidth displays. And even better, 5K120 fits into HBR3 easily with DSC. So for that, it was never needed to begin with. USB4 40G / TB4 is already more than enough for that. It might actually be barely enough for 2x 5K120.
You need it mainly for multi-monitor gaming setups, eGPUs and external SSDs (and other external PCIe devices) that benefit from faster than 3.8 GiB/s.
While I want builtin TB5 too, its really niche. And once built into the CPU, the iGPU also needs to be able to drive that adequately. Technically, TB5 is satisfied with only 2 DP tunnels, but Intels hubs and controllers do 3 and that is what they mostly advertise (like docking with 3x 4K240 VRR). So a builtin controller with only 2 DP tunnels would also be weird. Anything else basically requires a dGPU or bigger changes...
Edit: So there is also a conflict between those that want it for eGPU, because they want no dGPU and those that want it for docking premium multi-monitor setups powered by a notebook. And when your that serious about that, you want a dGPU to actually run the monitors and that Intel has basically only supported with external controllers anyway.
My proart p16 has one usb4 port connected to igpu, which I need to use for a 6k and 4k screen to do work; I can't get them to work together unless I get the 6k to also connect at 4k instead of 6. I have the dgpu disabled in linux because I need to have the laptop ready for use on the go with no power draw impact from the dgpu.
when testing on my tb4 dock on a tb5/usb4v2 controller, it was outputting 6k and 4k just fine, even via the tb4 dock, interestingly enough.
in any case, only getting usb2 out of it next to it, is kind of sad too, so im surely up for tb5.
update: it might actually be a limitation of displays on the 890m; if I close the lid of my laptop, it seems to work fine over the usb4 output as well.
I guess they're all waiting for it to be integrated into the CPU?
Yes, that's exactly it. The discrete parts are a hassle to deal with and of questionable benefit for a lot of the market. Only when it's "free" do you see it proliferate.
But NVL should have TB5 integrated, so only a year or so away, if that's a priority.
they dont put it on a thin and light because people would go for that with an egpu instead of their larger and more expensive models. so they put it on the big ones instead.
Hey, I found the "Acer Aspire Lite 17 AL17-51P-54RE" which supposedly has a "Thunderbolt 5" port. Is this correct? And it mentions that it doesn't have a dedicated video card.
There's very few and it's confusing.
All of the CES laptop announcements I have seen don't seem to include it despite it now being a year since it has been available. Weirdly it seems most likely to be found on gaming laptops that already have a dGPU when it would be most useful on thin and lights... but it's nowhere to be found on announced MSI Prestige and Dell XPS laptops.
I guess they're all waiting for it to be integrated into the CPU? but that will take years still.
A prominent leaker (Jaykihn) said that Nova Lake-S (desktop) will have an integrated TB5 controller. Maybe NVL-H will have it too.
Yeah I was really hoping it would be integrated into Panther Lake (Series 3). Seems like a chicken and egg situation for single port high DPI displays too. Bring on 5K 120Hz Thunderbolt 5 Monitors!
I was surprised when it wasn't.
It's obviously not that expensive a feature to implement discretely though so it's weird that high end, brand new laptops are not doing it. Aside from the eGPU appeal you're absolutely right about the display support improvements and of course much faster external storage.
Why? You do not need TB5 for that. Intel has had 4xUHBR20 output since 13th gen.
TB5 would only be to have that AND USB3 instead of just USB2 (Or 2xUHBR20 + USB3, which they also could do).
So specifically, docking (which is more of a business feature) and such high bandwidth displays. And even better, 5K120 fits into HBR3 easily with DSC. So for that, it was never needed to begin with. USB4 40G / TB4 is already more than enough for that. It might actually be barely enough for 2x 5K120.
You need it mainly for multi-monitor gaming setups, eGPUs and external SSDs (and other external PCIe devices) that benefit from faster than 3.8 GiB/s.
While I want builtin TB5 too, its really niche. And once built into the CPU, the iGPU also needs to be able to drive that adequately. Technically, TB5 is satisfied with only 2 DP tunnels, but Intels hubs and controllers do 3 and that is what they mostly advertise (like docking with 3x 4K240 VRR). So a builtin controller with only 2 DP tunnels would also be weird. Anything else basically requires a dGPU or bigger changes...
Edit: So there is also a conflict between those that want it for eGPU, because they want no dGPU and those that want it for docking premium multi-monitor setups powered by a notebook. And when your that serious about that, you want a dGPU to actually run the monitors and that Intel has basically only supported with external controllers anyway.
My proart p16 has one usb4 port connected to igpu, which I need to use for a 6k and 4k screen to do work; I can't get them to work together unless I get the 6k to also connect at 4k instead of 6. I have the dgpu disabled in linux because I need to have the laptop ready for use on the go with no power draw impact from the dgpu.
when testing on my tb4 dock on a tb5/usb4v2 controller, it was outputting 6k and 4k just fine, even via the tb4 dock, interestingly enough.
in any case, only getting usb2 out of it next to it, is kind of sad too, so im surely up for tb5.
update: it might actually be a limitation of displays on the 890m; if I close the lid of my laptop, it seems to work fine over the usb4 output as well.
Yes, that's exactly it. The discrete parts are a hassle to deal with and of questionable benefit for a lot of the market. Only when it's "free" do you see it proliferate.
But NVL should have TB5 integrated, so only a year or so away, if that's a priority.
Discrete Thunderbolt 3/4 made it into even quite cheap laptops though, it was quite a lot more widespread even before being integrated into the CPU.
they dont put it on a thin and light because people would go for that with an egpu instead of their larger and more expensive models. so they put it on the big ones instead.
If it has 16 cores, it can support thunderbolt 5. Confusing?
Intel is going to $100 by February
Yes: German site, but should be easy to work with, it's filtered to Intel CPU and Thunderbolt 5
https://preisvergleich.heise.de/?cat=nb&xf=1482_Intel%7E31_Thunderbolt+5
Me enjoying my refurbished laptop with thunderbolt 3:
So not every laptop will have the new iGPU either, based on this grapbics? If so then that’s very disappointing.
Hey, I found the "Acer Aspire Lite 17 AL17-51P-54RE" which supposedly has a "Thunderbolt 5" port. Is this correct? And it mentions that it doesn't have a dedicated video card.
https://gzhls.at/blob/ldb/7/2/4/e/95269bc93d3b197b5249e03b45087074696d.pdf
Dang is that a series 1 with thunderbolt 5???
Basically all high end gaming laptops have tb5.
Lenovo legions 9, asus ROG strix etc, etc
This is not the 3 series I'm looking for.