USB4 is a Glorious Mess

usb4

is an absolute game changer, we're talking 40 gigabits per second data speeds, support for 8K displays and external GPUs, a single connection cable with charging speeds of up to 240 watts and all the same USB type connectors and cables. c that you already have. to know, yes, what

usb4

actually is more like a collection of optional standards. Okay, it sounds like what you're talking about is USB 4 gen 3x2 with some of those optional features implemented, so your source sponsor will probably want you to clarify that. Pedantic Riley is very annoying, but he's right too. I mean, I shouldn't be surprised coming from the same industry consortium that gave us the name USB 3.2 gen 2x2, but five years after Intel's announcement that they would open source Thunderbolt USB 4 is finally available. strength and has turned out to be one of the most confusing standards ever implemented on a consumer PC, although the good news is that by the time we're done here you'll understand its pros and cons and how it works or doesn't work.

Along with other standards like Thunderbolt, including real-world examples, the simple explanation really is that USB4 is an open version of Thunderbolt 3 based on the specifications that Intel released in 2017. There's a lot to love about this move, for one, it frees up to suppliers. from the shackles of Intel's notoriously onerous certification process and, on the other hand, allows non-Intel CPU manufacturers, such as Apple or especially AMD, who did not co-develop the standard, to support features that used to be exclusive to Thunderbolt, such as 40 gigabit data speeds, daisy chaining. multiple devices and pcie tunneling, which is great and allows you to turn your USBC port into a PCI Express connection for devices like external gpus and other add-on cards, the problem is that when you free up the notoriously stingy computer industry from compliance programs, invites shortcuts and usb4 invites many shortcuts in no particular order.

Here are the optional spec components that can be left out of your device while still allowing the vendor to include usb4 in the spec sheet. 40 gigabit transfer speeds. USB 3.2 Thunderbolt 20 gigabit alternative. mode USBC alt mode and yes, pcie tunnel, yes, in a world where almost nothing that can be connected to a laptop needs the speed of even a state-of-the-art USB 320 port, the point of pcie tunneling is not the point usb4 and interoperability with Thunderbolt 3 devices. Microsoft surely thought so, and that's why they actually require external USB4 ports on Windows 11 devices to support pcie tunneling, which theoretically ensures compatibility with Thunderbolt 3 devices, but not There is no such guarantee if you were to buy a basic motherboard or a non-Windows device. and based on my conversations with a device manufacturer whose previous Thunderbolt 3 laptop never actually ended up being certified by Intel, there's a lot more to this interoperability than simply checking a box for pcie tunneling, which makes things even more confusing.

Microsoft doesn't seem to have mandates in place for any of the other functions, the good news is that when it works, it works very well. Here's a small group of Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, and USB 4 devices we tested on the Voyager a1600 gaming and content creation laptop provided by Corsair. For this video, I'll show you what the experience is like on a USB4 laptop after our sponsor's short

mess

age. Corsair packs the Voyager a1600 with high-performance gear like its Vengeance ddr5 memory and still managed to keep it incredibly thin. The integrated Elgato Steam deck lets you map streaming commands and keyboard shortcuts to 10 easy-to-access customizable shortcut buttons using simple drag-and-drop customization, and Corsair's IQ software lets you fully customize the performance of the device's appearance monitor. system and manage your Corsair devices so you can update and adjust settings to your needs, it comes with a comprehensive one-year warranty for peace of mind, making it the best choice for gaming or content creation on a laptop in a Super compact package, visit the link below to learn more about our first trick.

We will be trying to connect a couple of Thunderbolt 3 devices to our USB 4 laptop and the reason this is important is because these older devices would have been designed at a time when USB4 support would not have been a consideration, so if they work. it means that usb4 is transparently compatible with Thunderbolt 3, at least it's okay, this one works for these particular devices now the first one I connected using a usb4 cable and the second one we are going to try with an older Thunderbolt 3 cable, we have it there. is a Cal digit 10 gig network adapter, this backwards compatibility means any Thunderbolt 3 device and USB 4 system should work with each other now.

I would expect to encounter some edge cases, especially with very old devices, due to the Intel-specific handshakes that used to be required, but we didn't run into any of them while working on this video. Now let's test a Thunderbolt 4 device in order to give it our best shot. Here we're going to go ahead and use a validated Thunderbolt 4 cable. Check that out. easy and we don't even need that old Intel app to manage all our connected devices. I mean, I was hoping this would work. The main difference between Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 is actually also compliance compliance, so Thunderbolt 4 requires to get Intel flagship support for two 4K displays or a single 8K display computer must have 32 gigabits per second of pcie bandwidth, this is to address the issues people would have with high bandwidth devices on some Thunderbolt 3 laptops, particularly e-gpus, and must support security. improvements that protect your device from malicious connected devices plugable.com actually has a great article on the differences between Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4.

What about speed? However, in an attempt to decrypt more than 20 gigabits per second of transfers, we are using three separate systems. The SSDs and our network are shared and we copy everything to our boot drive at the same time, three more, six gigabytes per second. Yes, I can confirm that we are not limited to 20 gigabits per second, although that could be the case with USB4. Wow, those transfers are almost all of them. fact, that's really impressive, those were a mind-blowing 22 gigabyte files and the most mind-blowing thing is that apart from a few Cal digit devices that took a while to be detected, we didn't have any problems using Thunderbolt devices on this laptop and those Cal Digits were actually just downloading drivers in the background, but there's definitely more to know here.

We tested many configurations and discovered not only some differences between Thunderbolt and USB4, but also between Apple's implementation and the one we found in the Corsair Voyager see on a Mac two Cinema 5K displays, this would work, just plug them into any Thunderbolt port you want and works as expected; However, when we try to do the same with the Voyager, only one display works or if we go through a hub we can run both, but they are limited to 4K resolution unless we disconnect them from our Thunderbolt ports, connect one to Thunderbolt and the another to the normal USBC 3.2 port on the other side, both running at 5K, the reason for this is quite interesting in covering the edges of this laptop, Corsair Senior PR Specialist Justin Oakbina revealed that the 4 ports USB are connected to the CPU for display, while the 3.2 ports are connected to the GPU, so they may look the same, but because running DisplayPort alt mode, they are limited to the capabilities of any GPU that is physically connected to them , so we can run more than one 5K display by connecting to each of those GPUs separately.

This is another really interesting example of the behavior of different protocols. in different ways, even if they go through the same connectors, now the alternative mode we are talking about here uses a physical chip connected to the USB port to send a signal that differs from the standard USB tunnel is not the same: it converts the DisplayPort signal to packets which can be sent over a USB connection, allowing things like data and pcie tunneled packets to be sent along with it, so your mileage may vary depending on whether your machine uses alt mode or tunneled DisplayPort on the Poor Tanner, if only Apple could have provided a screen. with a real stand ok you're fine you're offline yeah he's got the tracksuit on and everything's fine thanks let's try some older, more obscure stuff like this akitio dual drive dock and how about this backup system on Thunderbolt archive tape?

I remember the tape. The drive actually requires special software, so it's possible that this hard drive would show up even if the tape drive didn't. Oh hey, there we go, look at that, that's awesome, okay, bye, monitor the external drive and there they are, it's crazy, I mean, it shouldn't. I'm very surprised given that USB4 is supposed to be based on the Thunderbolt specification and therefore should be the same, but you don't expect it to work that well out of the box and there were a few things that led me to believe. which maybe weren't exactly the same, for example Thunderbolt has supported multiple daisy-chained Thunderbolt devices from the beginning, but the Wikipedia page for usb4 explicitly says that daisy-chaining is not supported to clarify that you could totally connect a Thunderbolt hub to your USB4. laptop and then a USB hub on that and another on that and so on until signal timing becomes an issue, but Intel seems to think that connecting additional pcie tunnel devices downstream, that's their problem, so What happens if we try?

I guess we already have this guy here, so instead of connecting our additional drives to the laptop directly, why don't we daisy chain them? I see the hard drive here, but there are the SSDs here, but how far? We can go? Why don't we make a center? Oh yeah, I don't know if we have to get to six, but let's do it, let's do one more, at least here comes another one, there they are, it's all showing. top I want one more I want my 10 gig Ethernet says great oh I like that one, we have it running with two or three devices pretty consistently but as you can see your mileage may vary although this is unlikely to affect you in many newer cases.

Thunderbolt devices expect hubs and docs to have drivers that can communicate over Thunderbolt, such as PCIe tunneling protocols or traditional USB protocols, so in many cases it won't necessarily be obvious to you until you try to connect another Downstream device that protocols your The device you're using now instead of trying to run all five devices, let's go for a really demanding one, an external GPU, here we go, oh the fan is spinning, that's a good sign, it's our RTX 2070 external GPU, not that we need do it. upgrade the GPU in the short term since this laptop already has a Radeon 6800 anyway, but the point is that it works and the a1600 does all this in part thanks to AMD's inclusion of usb4 in their Zen 3 processors plus ryzen 7000, but in the The absence of an Intel standards compliance team is also due to the way Corsair has worked with its OEM to internally validate its implementation.

Look how easily I can break things though. This is what happened there, while Thunderbolt used the same USBC connector as USB devices for half. The Thunderbolt protocol that you've heard me refer to several times and is like the language that is actually spoken over the cable has been around for a decade, well, it's closer to PCI Express than USB, so this, along with its traditionally, it is much higher. data speeds means you have a lot less tolerance for latency and inconsistency, which means cable quality matters a lot, it's not as much as here uh oh, this anchor cable is one that I set aside specifically for this, it's great because This cable is older. than usb4 specification, it's just a high quality C2C cable and wait a second.

Oh wait. This is not functional? In fact, I tried it on a different Thunderbolt device, this network adapter and on the network adapter it totally works even though this does not have a USB Operating Mode which is wild, let's try this usb4 type c cable, one that actually it's a newer validated one, and let's see if the external GPU picks up that no, as you can see, standard USBC cables can work fine even with Thunderbolt only devices, but just with the built-in signal stabilizer like this one, it's actually guaranteed toThey will work with Thunderbolt devices and that will be true for any connection that uses that pcie-based Thunderbolt protocol, regardless of whether it's on an Intel-certified Thunderbolt device or a USB 4 device.

Why is USB 4 only rated at 40 gigabits? per second over a one meter cable, while Thunderbolt 4 has the same speed up to 2 meters? To my knowledge there are no Thunderbolt USB4 signal stabilized cable products that are not available and interestingly this is another one. Really interesting, this active Thunderbolt 3 cable from Corning did not work on any of our devices on our USB4 laptop. Wait, I can prove this real quick. There we go, yes, no dice, which means our days of Hit or Miss cable compatibility. They're not done, even if they are much better at answering the question, is USB4 compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and 4 devices?

The answer is yes, but also no, the level of compatibility will really depend on how good an implementation you get. Corsair Voyager at 1600 performed admirably, but it's a machine that implements much better than the minimum specs and one that doesn't go as far may not be as smooth and as we saw today, your mileage may vary when it comes to unofficial features like Daisy. chaining and support for special cables like these Corning optics, the big question in this sentence is why usbif allowed usb4 half-heartedly. Seems like it all comes down to phones, mobile devices could get some very valid benefits from usb4.like higher data speeds and DisplayPort tunneling for external devices with Samsung Dex or whatever, but they're unlikely to need the pcie tunnel which Thunderbolt is known for or daisy chaining and the like, it is also unlikely that you will need this transition to our sponsor which I am known for because we already told you that it is sponsored by Corsair if you enjoyed this video and are looking to learn more about Thunderbolt .

This short video shows my favorite Thunderbolt 4 dock. Actually, it's this two amazing ones. kick and a half land