2021 15" MSI Stealth 15M A11UEK (RTX3060) [11th,4C,H] + RTX 3080 @ 32Gbps-TB4 (Razer Core X Chroma) + Win10 20H2 [Wildfear]  

@wildfear, Thank you for sharing your experience. I never had good luck with MSI laptops + eGPU. Too bad the cooling system is no good.

Thanks for the valuable info! It's interesting to see the 22gbit hit again -- and even more interestingly, I believe the first time ever, we see a much higher return data rate. Exciting news if I don't misunderstand it: accelerating the internal display will be slightly less bandwidth starved.

Within the next six months I will get a TB4 laptop and I intend to get a TB4 hub as well and see whether the 22gbps is still on the host site (seriously doubt) or you can actually get more speed... I have two eGPUs so I can load test easily

Posted by: @chx

Thanks for the valuable info! It's interesting to see the 22gbit hit again -- and even more interestingly, I believe the first time ever, we see a much higher return data rate. Exciting news if I don't misunderstand it: accelerating the internal display will be slightly less bandwidth starved.

Within the next six months I will get a TB4 laptop and I intend to get a TB4 hub as well and see whether the 22gbps is still on the host site (seriously doubt) or you can actually get more speed... I have two eGPUs so I can load test easily

To realize the full 32Gb/s data rate option in the TB4 spec we might need an eGPU device that uses the Maple Ridge (JHL8440) client controller. I'm not sure if existing TB3 controllers will have the option. Maybe others know details here or we will just have to wait and see what products come out and test.

They keep mentioning specifically 32Gb/s "storage speeds" when they market that it's no longer constrained to 22Gb/s, so hopefully that translates to eGPU as well.

https://www.mouser.com/new/intel/intel-8000-thunderbolt-4-controllers/   <--- great overview video here from Mouser with an Intel rep..

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Intel/JHL8440-S-LN6U?qs=DPoM0jnrROV1HjSPij2w%252Bg%3D%3D

Hey.. only $12.66 each in trays of 200.

Yes, I suspect we'd need a full TB4 eGPU to get more than 22gbit/s to a single device -- but what if you could run an eGPU at 22gbit/s and an SSD on the side? That's what I hope to get out of a TB4 hub + TB3 eGPU + any SSD enclosure (even USB C can hit close 10gbit/s so maybe not waste money on a TB3 enclosure).

@odin, @chx I think Maple Ridge (host controller in Z590 motherboards and ASUS ThunderboltEX 4 Thunderbolt 4 add-in card) and Goshen Ridge (peripheral controller in Thunderbolt 4 hubs with 3 downstream Thunderbolt 4 ports) are still limited to about 24 Gbps of PCIe data (3000 MB/s) over Thunderbolt just like Titan Ridge and Alpine Ridge. 24 Gbps can be seen using AmorphousDiskMark in macOS (CrystalDiskMark in Windows). 22 Gbps is what you might get with other benchmarks.

The 32 Gbps is the connection (PCIe 3.0 x4 = 31.5 Gbps) between a discrete Thunderbolt 3/4 host controller and the CPU. These usually don't perform better than 24 Gbps when raiding two drives, one per thunderbolt port, together (I haven't seen a RAID test of Maple Ridge yet).

Integrated Thunderbolt controllers in Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, Rocket Lake, and M1 Macs can do RAID 0 up to around 40 Gbps between any two or more Thunderbolt ports (I haven't seen a RAID of Rocket Lake yet).

But what have you benchmarked? The only TB4 peripherals so far are hubs without PCIe exposed. As I mentioned above, you'd need multiple TB3 eGPUs hanging off a TB4 hub and benchmark the two at the same time to know.

I'll hold off any speculation until we see Goshen Ridge controllers in eGPU devices. It could be that it doesn't change anything, but I'd like to see one put through its paces tied to a notebook with a Tiger Lake TB4 implementation.