Intel's i7-1260P mobile CPU surprisingly beats an i9-12900HX in Thunderbolt 4 tests conducted with external RTX 4090

[Redaktion]

The Thunderbolt 4 connector shows its age as it gets tested with an external RTX 4090 GPU. This was not immediately apparent with previous GPU generations, but the RTX 4000 bandwidth capacities clearly give TB4 a hard time. Additionally, it looks like the TB4 implementation on Intel's top-tier mobile CPU is unexpectedly lacking.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-s-i7-1260P-mobile-CPU-surprisingly-beats-an-i9-12900HX-in-Thunderbolt-4-tests-conducted-with-external-RTX-4090.665628.0.html

[Ciro]

I think the heart of the issues is embedded TB controller vs one on the motherboard that explains the performance delta. Nothing to do with inherent CPU performance but how quick[latency] platform can communicate with GPU is fundamentally different(on die vs tertiary TB controller).

I run an eGPU Lenovo GTX 1050 TB3 dock. Great for offloading work content to multiple screens, not good for much else. I think the business case for eGPU is better for content creating world than for gamers, and it is a lot smoother than your standard displaylink driver docks(although not as universally compatible). I am hoping with USB4 adopting Thunderbolt external GPU's may go more maint-stream, as it is now it is still a little buggy affair. I always make sure I disable the GPU before undocking, which means I always need to enable when redocking, but this got rid of all the crashes I used to get. Hot-plugging eGPU is still really buggy.

[NikoB]

The tester absolutely correctly assumed everything about the external controller, although it seems to be built-in in the H series as well. Apparently, the performance of the laptop with foolishly connected TB4.0 controller (why, if there is a built-in one?) via the DMI 4.0 bus, and it is shared with all other devices, unlike a direct pci-e links to the processor (which apparently was used for an SSD, which is just stupid desision).

There will NOT be any 120 Gb/s on USB4(80) v2.0 - these 120 Gbps mode are available exclusively for output to the monitor via DP Alt Mode, while the pci-e bus, the expander of which is the TB5 controller, is also limited to 64 Gb/s instead of 32 Gb/s to the 40Gbps version of TB4.

And again, we have a key problem - because of the lousy quality of copper cables, the player cannot get wildly noisy game cards away from playing place at least 5-6 meters or even in the backroom or in another room where there is no one at this time. This requires an optical link. Plus, the optical link immediately removes the problem of bandwidth limitation - at least 400-500Gb/s immediately at a distance of up to 20-30m for sure connection...

[Publo]

Hi Author & others.

Razer Core X Chroma GPU is not thunderbolt 4.......... It is 3
Search google for Razer Core X Chroma GPU & you will see.

That's why the test result was low. There is no thunderbolt 4 egpu (at least from razer).....

[Bogdan Solca]

Hi Author & others.

Razer Core X Chroma GPU is not thunderbolt 4.......... It is 3
Search google for Razer Core X Chroma GPU & you will see.

That's why the test result was low. There is no thunderbolt 4 egpu (at least from razer).....

TB3 and TB4 have the same peak bandwidth of 40 gbps. In any case, the point of the test is to see how this limited bandwidth impacts the performance of an RTX 4090. The part with the poor TB4 implementation on the i9-12900HX is a bonus find.