Minisforum EliteMini UM780 XTX review: The mini PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS and a Radeon 780M has been given OCuLink and USB-4 connections

[Redaktion]

Minisforum's EliteMini UM780 XTX is a very specialized mini PC which features great performance and connectivity options. Visually, the device may be a little more divisive but all-in-all, everything fits together well. In this review, we have analyzed and summarized what the mini PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS can do.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Minisforum-EliteMini-UM780-XTX-review-The-mini-PC-with-an-AMD-Ryzen-7-7840HS-and-a-Radeon-780M-has-been-given-OCuLink-and-USB-4-connections.775606.0.html

[WCoatsSVP]

"The Minisforum EliteMini UM780 XTX is equipped with two USB 4 ports, so we'll also take the opportunity to have a look at its 3D performance in combination with the Razer Core X and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. In general, the combination works well in everyday use and it worked well in our tests. However, the iGPU couldn't make use of its full performance due to the USB 4 port only offering a 40 GBps connection. Nevertheless, its 3D performance could be noticeably increased, as can be seen from the benchmarks."

And this part of the paragraph:

"the iGPU couldn't make use of its full performance due to the USB 4 port only offering a 40 GBps connection."

Was that supposed to be the eGPU(Nvidia 3060Ti dGPU is some external enclosure) and not iGPU? And Not "GBps" as that's Gigabytes while lower case b is bits so that's 40Gbs?

And someone also needs to be doing latency testing USB 4 vursus OCuLink as OCulink is just PCIe signalling passed directly over an external cable vursus USB4/TB3 that's having to tunnel the PCIe Protocol Packets inside of USB3/TB3 protocol packets to pass over that USB4/Type-C cable. And looking at that adapter that Mini's forum is providing and the M.2 there is PCIe 4.0 x4 lanes so that's 64Gbs. But there are M.2 to OCulink adapters being plugged into M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 lane connections but I'll bet that even with that reduced bandwidth the OCuLink latency is still going to be lower there and back because there's no tunneling protocol encapsulation and de-encapsulation steps required for OCuLink as that's just the PCIe signaling passing directly out and back via the OCuLink cable.   

So even if you have to hire some honest to Deity White-Coat with a protocol analyzer to do some Ping testing for latency USB4/TB3 Versus OCuLink(PCIe) that's really needing to be done to have some source of online confirmation of signal latency round trips there USB4/TB3 vursus OCuLink(PCIe)! And gaming draw calls, CPU to GPU,  is very latency sensitive and affects FPS/Performance even if both competing connections have the same total bandwidth allotment even if the 4 PCIe lanes to the M.2 slot are PCIe 3.0 instead of PCIe 4.0 that offers higher bandwidth.     

[A]

There's a screenshot of Cinebench 2024 test in review, but results are not present in comparison table.
Also there's no Geekbench 6.2 results.
So it's like "anything except the most recent versions of benchmark suites".

Totally not cherry-picking benchmarks in a way one can't directly put CPU up against M3 of course.

[Max Power]

"The Minisforum EliteMini UM780 XTX is equipped with two USB 4 ports, so we'll also take the opportunity to have a look at its 3D performance in combination with the Razer Core X and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. In general, the combination works well in everyday use and it worked well in our tests. However, the iGPU couldn't make use of its full performance due to the USB 4 port only offering a 40 GBps connection. Nevertheless, its 3D performance could be noticeably increased, as can be seen from the benchmarks."

And this part of the paragraph:

"the iGPU couldn't make use of its full performance due to the USB 4 port only offering a 40 GBps connection."

Was that supposed to be the eGPU(Nvidia 3060Ti dGPU is some external enclosure) and not iGPU? And Not "GBps" as that's Gigabytes while lower case b is bits so that's 40Gbs?

And someone also needs to be doing latency testing USB 4 vursus OCuLink as OCulink is just PCIe signalling passed directly over an external cable vursus USB4/TB3 that's having to tunnel the PCIe Protocol Packets inside of USB3/TB3 protocol packets to pass over that USB4/Type-C cable. And looking at that adapter that Mini's forum is providing and the M.2 there is PCIe 4.0 x4 lanes so that's 64Gbs. But there are M.2 to OCulink adapters being plugged into M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 lane connections but I'll bet that even with that reduced bandwidth the OCuLink latency is still going to be lower there and back because there's no tunneling protocol encapsulation and de-encapsulation steps required for OCuLink as that's just the PCIe signaling passing directly out and back via the OCuLink cable. 

So even if you have to hire some honest to Deity White-Coat with a protocol analyzer to do some Ping testing for latency USB4/TB3 Versus OCuLink(PCIe) that's really needing to be done to have some source of online confirmation of signal latency round trips there USB4/TB3 vursus OCuLink(PCIe)! And gaming draw calls, CPU to GPU,  is very latency sensitive and affects FPS/Performance even if both competing connections have the same total bandwidth allotment even if the 4 PCIe lanes to the M.2 slot are PCIe 3.0 instead of PCIe 4.0 that offers higher bandwidth.     

There are some YouTube videos where people have run comparisons of USB4 vs. OcuLink. The OCuLink offers better performance in real life.

The next milestone will be Thunderbolt 5 which is supposed to provide a significant performance increase over the current version.

[Martin82]

Another ridiculous device with no 3.5mm jack

[Neenyah]

Another ridiculous device with no 3.5mm jack

https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_processed_/c/4/csm_UM780XTX_11_d11ae5ae42.jpg