You’ve been able to do that with Thunderbolt 4 for a while (with Display Stream Compression) - I currently drive an 8k ultrawide (7680x2160, or two 4K side-by-side) at 120 Hz off a single Thunderbolt 4 port.
My monitor endgame, as unrealistic as it is, is '5k' 120hz 34" ultrawide. There's some 4k ones out there that might suffice, but 2880px tall is my goal.
TB4 supports DP2.0, which (in UHBR13.5 or UHBR20 mode) has enough bandwidth for 5K @ 120Hz (or 144/180 Hz with UHBR20).
The issue is more likely to be availability, and marketability.
In general the demand for high refresh rates on desktop displays is driven by gamers, far more so than resolution - it's pointless having a 5K or 6K display if your GPU can only render the game in a playable fashion at 1440P or whatever. This demographic is well known to sacrifice resolution for higher refresh rates. I guess a low detail image that animates smoothly is preferable to a high detail image that is jerky or looks like a slide show.
A large part of the buying market for high resolution displays (particularly above 4K in the 27-36" range) is going to non-gaming users, who are doing regular desktop work where 60Hz is likely to be fine. Most people aren't going to be able to type or draw or do much else productive fast enough to "defeat" 60Hz for practical uses.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Dell, ASUS, Samsung, LG and BenQ all have high-end displays shipping or announced, that explicitly mention support for macOS, and just happen to use a PPI that suits macOS' scaling "@2x" scaling mode perfectly.
Nor do I think it's a coincidence that the 5K@60Hz spec they mostly support is viable on Macs as old as the 2016 MBP15, from 8 years ago. Heck even a 2018 Mac mini with just an iGPU will do 5K@60Hz.
I'm not saying no manufacturers will support higher refresh rates, but realistically I think you're looking at a product that would be a niche within a niche. It's only recently that most of the above manufacturers have (re)entered the ~200PPI display market, it's going to take a while before there's enough potential customers for what you're talking about.
I used to subscribe to the "60Hz is enough for anyone" idea, but after using a high refresh rate monitor for a while, I have to admit it does feel a lot nicer to work with. Even small things, like window animations, feel a lot smoother by just a 50% increase in frame rate. Even Apple has upgraded their mobile displays to surpass 60Hz.
With gaming monitors now doing ludicrous things like 1440p@480fps, I don't think 5k@120fps would even be difficult for manufacturers.
Stuffing everything over a DP 2.0 connection may be difficult, though, but DP 2.1 has been with us for a while now. 5k at 195fps (159fps with HDR enabled) can already be achieved with a standard DP 2.1 port.
When it comes to displays, I think we're currently limited by GPUs rather than Displays. Nvidia's 40 series GPUs only come with DP 1.4, for instance. Until 2.1(b) gains wide support, it doesn't make any sense to build monitors that rely on it to do their job well.
Apple already ships ProMotion i.e. 120Hz on iPhone Pro and MacBook Pro displays.
And so it's odd you think they wouldn't bring it to the external displays. Especially when going back to 60Hz is definitely noticeable whilst doing desktop work i.e. lots of web page/document scrolling.
For my use case it's because I want the high resolution for my 9-5 work, but the high refresh rate for when I start playing games, I'm perfectly happy to drop the resolution down to 1080p or 1440p while gaming in order to get high framerate.
Will this be common with AMD laptops? I had very few choices in India 2 years back for driving a 5k screen, and they were all Intel and TB4. That Asus doesnt charge and send video at the same time, although my Mac does.
Currently I am looking at a Asus Zenbook Intel notebook that is connected by single USB-C cable. It charges and displays on 2 external monitors at the same time. One is QHD, other FHD. Also, gigabit network is provided through the same cable.
I am not joking: try fully updating all notebook firmware AND display/docking station firmware.
This is pretty normal setup these days, we have the same with HP boxes, previously connected to HP laptops, now Dell. Coming to work and just connecting single usb-c cable.
Also when I connect my Samsung S22 ultra to this usb-c cable, via Samsung Dex I get immediately full screen portable Android desktop, pretty usable for basic stuff as much as Android can be, but controlled with keyboard & mouse.
Thunderbolt these days is nothing more than USB 4 with a few optional features made mandatory. Many AMD laptops support everything found in Thunderbolt but don't call it Thunderbolt for legal reasons.
> 2 Thunderbolt™ 4 with USB Type-C® 40Gbps signaling rate (USB Power Delivery, DisplayPort™ 2.1, HP Sleep and Charge)[..]
"Thunderbolt" is just a name like "USB". AMD didn't have Thunderbolt support because they'd need to license the technology from Intel, but that changed when Thunderbolt 4 was donated to USB.
Nice, I'm eager to upgrade as it's really cool to have a single cable to hook up my laptop to all my peripherals and monitors, but so far resolution & refresh rate were quite limited in multi-monitor setups, I think that new standard should finally be able to drive a 4k display at 240 Hz. I don't see many Thunderbolt 5 docks yet though, always liked the Lenovo ones but it seems they don't have an upgrade yet.
Adam Savage (Myth Buster) did a video on why Apple Thunderbolt-4 is so expensive ($130), by looking at the detail in construction vs cheap alternatives.
I would really love to ditch my desktop and invest in an external GPU but the performance left on the table on most video games when you do that is huge
I'm eager to see benchmarks of eGPUs on Thunderbolt 5
I mean thunderbolt 1 spec was released in 2013. Thunderbolt 5 is the 5th revision in 11 years. Thunderbolt 4 spec was published in 2020, you cannot possibly think about all future needs/usages but couldn't we have anticipated in 2020 that 5k and 8k screen would be a thing and that people would want more bandwidth than 40gbps?
All these standard changes every 2.5 years just create a compatibility mess and confusion for the consumers who don't understand why monitor A doesn't work well with computer B with cable C.
Couldn't we have jumped from thunderbolt 1 to 3 to 5 capabilities directly? Would our life have been more miserable had we had to wait a little bit more from an upgrade from say thunderbolt 3 but if it meant that thunderbolt 4 had been released in late 2021 or 2022 with capabilities of current thunderbolt 5 already? Like trading latency for higher improvements over generation? Does that even make sense or where there limiting factors that prevented thunderbolt 5 capable equipment to be built in 2022 already?
Because getting something into production is much more than just the specification.
You can specify anything. But producing hardware that complies with that spec is much harder.
Then you've done a lot of research and development, so you have to sell it in a way that is backwards compatible, so you have to wrangle a whole group of organizations (foundries, chip designers, customers) who each have their own product lifecycles to think about. Intel might be ready, but Apple is delaying their release, etc.
> limiting factors that prevented thunderbolt 5 capable equipment to be built in 2022 already
Lots of factors e.g cost, chip availability, heat dissipation, etc. Sure I would prefer upgrading laptop ports from 10Gbps directly to 100Gbps, but not if it costs 10x more and burns up battery.
Those cables always seem to be insanely expensive
and the hardware I have bought up to v3
(I dont have anything with v4 or v5)
does not deliver on the promised / potential speed.
(the promised speed now is far arger)
This is primarly external storage.
and I paid huge premium for the ThunderBolt 3
external drives to use wy Imac (or Macbook).
A USB C drive I use under windows (that at least does
not declare itself as Thunderbolt 3, and using a
standard (to what extent that exsists) USB C cable
is far faster. (and swapping in the true Thunberbolt
cable does not not make it any faster)
Regardless of the fact that Apple’s laptops were shipping with Thunderbolt years before they were “forced” to add USB-C ports to iPhones, or that Thunderbolt and USB-C are orthogonal, Apple was involved in the creation of Thunderbolt in the first place.
The iPhone 16 is also USB 2.0 (not the Pro though). While it's kinda crummy for a phone of it's price, it's not alone. A lot of lower end Android phones/devices are still USB 2.0 with C ports.
Apple was selling laptops with Thunderbolt before it used a USB-C connector and were among the first to sell them with Thunderbolt over USB-C.
They were, as far as I know, the first company to sell 27" monitors over Thunderbolt back in 2011.
So Apple has been all in on Thunderbolt for years, they just persisted with the Lightning connector on iPhones.
Phones mostly don't really make use of Thunderbolt bandwidth like laptops. They make use of the common charging standard of the USB-C connector.
I've never been a fan of the Lightning connector but given they've been making use of Thunderbolt on laptops before most vendors considered it, saying the market has moved on without them is silly.
Apple never used Lightening for laptops. The market i'm talking about is phones.
> saying the market has moved on without them is silly
Given they've produced nearly 2 billion phones with Lightening and are still producing/selling £1000 phones with Lightening, i don't think it's silly to say the market moved on without them.
Apple also argued against EU regulation forcing USB-C adoption by the end of 2024.
> It's like comparing Thunderbolt 5 to Firewire.
I don't think it's fair to make that comparison.
Given that we're only 10 days past the end of 2024, i don't think we would have iPhones with USB-C and 'non-legacy lightening' speeds like we do today.
If I could buy a 5k (retina) 120hz 27" monitor that would be endgame for me, I believe this finally has the bandwidth for that.
You’ve been able to do that with Thunderbolt 4 for a while (with Display Stream Compression) - I currently drive an 8k ultrawide (7680x2160, or two 4K side-by-side) at 120 Hz off a single Thunderbolt 4 port.
What model?
Pretty sure he's talking about our Samsung Odyssey G9 57"
I too get 7680x2160x120Hz via TB4
> If I could buy a 5k (retina) 120hz 27" monitor that would be endgame for me, I believe this finally has the bandwidth for that.
The recently-available Asus PA27JCV is 27" 5K, but unfortunately not 120Hz:
* https://9to5mac.com/2024/12/26/asus-proart-display-5k-review...
Currently selling for US$ 800 (less expensive than the Apple Studio Display):
* https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1850479-REG/asus_pa27...
I'm considering it for a replacement for my aging 27" 5k iMac (paired with a Mac mini I guess).
LG recently teased a 32" 6K with TB5:
* https://www.macrumors.com/2025/01/07/lg-unveils-ultrafine-6k...
My monitor endgame, as unrealistic as it is, is '5k' 120hz 34" ultrawide. There's some 4k ones out there that might suffice, but 2880px tall is my goal.
TB4 supports DP2.0, which (in UHBR13.5 or UHBR20 mode) has enough bandwidth for 5K @ 120Hz (or 144/180 Hz with UHBR20).
The issue is more likely to be availability, and marketability.
In general the demand for high refresh rates on desktop displays is driven by gamers, far more so than resolution - it's pointless having a 5K or 6K display if your GPU can only render the game in a playable fashion at 1440P or whatever. This demographic is well known to sacrifice resolution for higher refresh rates. I guess a low detail image that animates smoothly is preferable to a high detail image that is jerky or looks like a slide show.
A large part of the buying market for high resolution displays (particularly above 4K in the 27-36" range) is going to non-gaming users, who are doing regular desktop work where 60Hz is likely to be fine. Most people aren't going to be able to type or draw or do much else productive fast enough to "defeat" 60Hz for practical uses.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Dell, ASUS, Samsung, LG and BenQ all have high-end displays shipping or announced, that explicitly mention support for macOS, and just happen to use a PPI that suits macOS' scaling "@2x" scaling mode perfectly.
Nor do I think it's a coincidence that the 5K@60Hz spec they mostly support is viable on Macs as old as the 2016 MBP15, from 8 years ago. Heck even a 2018 Mac mini with just an iGPU will do 5K@60Hz.
I'm not saying no manufacturers will support higher refresh rates, but realistically I think you're looking at a product that would be a niche within a niche. It's only recently that most of the above manufacturers have (re)entered the ~200PPI display market, it's going to take a while before there's enough potential customers for what you're talking about.
I used to subscribe to the "60Hz is enough for anyone" idea, but after using a high refresh rate monitor for a while, I have to admit it does feel a lot nicer to work with. Even small things, like window animations, feel a lot smoother by just a 50% increase in frame rate. Even Apple has upgraded their mobile displays to surpass 60Hz.
With gaming monitors now doing ludicrous things like 1440p@480fps, I don't think 5k@120fps would even be difficult for manufacturers.
Stuffing everything over a DP 2.0 connection may be difficult, though, but DP 2.1 has been with us for a while now. 5k at 195fps (159fps with HDR enabled) can already be achieved with a standard DP 2.1 port.
When it comes to displays, I think we're currently limited by GPUs rather than Displays. Nvidia's 40 series GPUs only come with DP 1.4, for instance. Until 2.1(b) gains wide support, it doesn't make any sense to build monitors that rely on it to do their job well.
> I don't think 5k@120fps would even be difficult for manufacturers.
I didn't say it's difficult technically, I said it's about whether they think there is a market for this product.
Apple already ships ProMotion i.e. 120Hz on iPhone Pro and MacBook Pro displays.
And so it's odd you think they wouldn't bring it to the external displays. Especially when going back to 60Hz is definitely noticeable whilst doing desktop work i.e. lots of web page/document scrolling.
For my use case it's because I want the high resolution for my 9-5 work, but the high refresh rate for when I start playing games, I'm perfectly happy to drop the resolution down to 1080p or 1440p while gaming in order to get high framerate.
Will this be common with AMD laptops? I had very few choices in India 2 years back for driving a 5k screen, and they were all Intel and TB4. That Asus doesnt charge and send video at the same time, although my Mac does.
Currently I am looking at a Asus Zenbook Intel notebook that is connected by single USB-C cable. It charges and displays on 2 external monitors at the same time. One is QHD, other FHD. Also, gigabit network is provided through the same cable. I am not joking: try fully updating all notebook firmware AND display/docking station firmware.
This is pretty normal setup these days, we have the same with HP boxes, previously connected to HP laptops, now Dell. Coming to work and just connecting single usb-c cable.
Also when I connect my Samsung S22 ultra to this usb-c cable, via Samsung Dex I get immediately full screen portable Android desktop, pretty usable for basic stuff as much as Android can be, but controlled with keyboard & mouse.
Sort of fully utilized USB-C cable.
My AMD ASUS charges, provides video and handles whole bunch of extra connectivity via Thunderbolt 4 just fine.
So yes, it's common with AMD laptops too.
Definitely not something to expect. AMD and Thunderbolt is not usually something you’ll see together.
But you should be able to charge and do 5k with USB 4
Thunderbolt these days is nothing more than USB 4 with a few optional features made mandatory. Many AMD laptops support everything found in Thunderbolt but don't call it Thunderbolt for legal reasons.
Isn't that exactly backwards? "USB4 is TB with optional features ...?"
Pretty much all new higher end AMD laptops have Thunderbolt, what are you talking about?
AMD laptops cannot use the term "Thunderbolt" as it is owned by Intel and they do not want AMD to use it.
HP doesn't care: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-omnibook-ultra-laptop-1...
> 2 Thunderbolt™ 4 with USB Type-C® 40Gbps signaling rate (USB Power Delivery, DisplayPort™ 2.1, HP Sleep and Charge)[..]
"Thunderbolt" is just a name like "USB". AMD didn't have Thunderbolt support because they'd need to license the technology from Intel, but that changed when Thunderbolt 4 was donated to USB.
good to know
It's funny how everything is optional on the usb 4 features graph.
Can you do 5 W and 1.1 Mbps and call it usb 4?
USB4 20 Gbps: Also known as USB4 Gen 2x2
USB4 40 Gbps: Referred to as USB4 Gen 3x2
USB4 80 Gbps: Known as USB4 Gen 4
USB4 Version 2.0 120Gbps
I guess if you're required to support 120Gbps on even cheap small electronics then USB 4 support doesn't make sense
Is this confusing naming scheme intentional?
I think so. They're been going at it since usb 1.1 super speed or not super speed.
And btw the list above includes only the data speed, not the charging capacity.
It's still better than deliberately incompatible schemes, meaning you can't charge your small device from laptop charger.
I think they mean "USB4 Version2" when it clearly isn't "version 2" but "version 5" or whatever.
Yes.
The big question is whether VRR monitors will work fine via TB5 connections - because right now they mostly revert to fixed frame rate.
Nice, I'm eager to upgrade as it's really cool to have a single cable to hook up my laptop to all my peripherals and monitors, but so far resolution & refresh rate were quite limited in multi-monitor setups, I think that new standard should finally be able to drive a 4k display at 240 Hz. I don't see many Thunderbolt 5 docks yet though, always liked the Lenovo ones but it seems they don't have an upgrade yet.
Adam Savage (Myth Buster) did a video on why Apple Thunderbolt-4 is so expensive ($130), by looking at the detail in construction vs cheap alternatives.
https://youtu.be/AD5aAd8Oy84?feature=shared
I would really love to ditch my desktop and invest in an external GPU but the performance left on the table on most video games when you do that is huge
I'm eager to see benchmarks of eGPUs on Thunderbolt 5
I sometimes wonder why we have to be so gradual?
I mean thunderbolt 1 spec was released in 2013. Thunderbolt 5 is the 5th revision in 11 years. Thunderbolt 4 spec was published in 2020, you cannot possibly think about all future needs/usages but couldn't we have anticipated in 2020 that 5k and 8k screen would be a thing and that people would want more bandwidth than 40gbps?
All these standard changes every 2.5 years just create a compatibility mess and confusion for the consumers who don't understand why monitor A doesn't work well with computer B with cable C.
Couldn't we have jumped from thunderbolt 1 to 3 to 5 capabilities directly? Would our life have been more miserable had we had to wait a little bit more from an upgrade from say thunderbolt 3 but if it meant that thunderbolt 4 had been released in late 2021 or 2022 with capabilities of current thunderbolt 5 already? Like trading latency for higher improvements over generation? Does that even make sense or where there limiting factors that prevented thunderbolt 5 capable equipment to be built in 2022 already?
Because getting something into production is much more than just the specification.
You can specify anything. But producing hardware that complies with that spec is much harder.
Then you've done a lot of research and development, so you have to sell it in a way that is backwards compatible, so you have to wrangle a whole group of organizations (foundries, chip designers, customers) who each have their own product lifecycles to think about. Intel might be ready, but Apple is delaying their release, etc.
> limiting factors that prevented thunderbolt 5 capable equipment to be built in 2022 already
Lots of factors e.g cost, chip availability, heat dissipation, etc. Sure I would prefer upgrading laptop ports from 10Gbps directly to 100Gbps, but not if it costs 10x more and burns up battery.
For marketing reasons, to justify value in the new gen of devices.
Those cables always seem to be insanely expensive and the hardware I have bought up to v3 (I dont have anything with v4 or v5) does not deliver on the promised / potential speed. (the promised speed now is far arger)
This is primarly external storage. and I paid huge premium for the ThunderBolt 3 external drives to use wy Imac (or Macbook).
A USB C drive I use under windows (that at least does not declare itself as Thunderbolt 3, and using a standard (to what extent that exsists) USB C cable is far faster. (and swapping in the true Thunberbolt cable does not not make it any faster)
(2024)
tl;dr TB4 to TB5:
- 40Gbps => 80Gbps, up to 120Gbps
- min 100 Watt - 140 Watt max => min 140 Watt - 240 Watt max PD charging
This is great, finally there will be 240W charging hardware. There wasn't any last time I checked.
The last two months I've seen some news about them pop up. The ADP-240KB can do 240W over USB C already, if you're looking for a charger.
People were upset about Apple being forced to switch to USB-C, but just look at how the market moved on without them.
Apple Lightening: 480 Mbit/s
Thunderbolt 5: 120,000 Mbit/s
Regardless of the fact that Apple’s laptops were shipping with Thunderbolt years before they were “forced” to add USB-C ports to iPhones, or that Thunderbolt and USB-C are orthogonal, Apple was involved in the creation of Thunderbolt in the first place.
And yet they're still producing and selling iPhone 14 Plus 512GB on apple.com for £1000 in 2025 with USB2.0 speeds from the year 2000.
The iPhone 16 is also USB 2.0 (not the Pro though). While it's kinda crummy for a phone of it's price, it's not alone. A lot of lower end Android phones/devices are still USB 2.0 with C ports.
Apple was selling laptops with Thunderbolt before it used a USB-C connector and were among the first to sell them with Thunderbolt over USB-C.
They were, as far as I know, the first company to sell 27" monitors over Thunderbolt back in 2011.
So Apple has been all in on Thunderbolt for years, they just persisted with the Lightning connector on iPhones.
Phones mostly don't really make use of Thunderbolt bandwidth like laptops. They make use of the common charging standard of the USB-C connector.
I've never been a fan of the Lightning connector but given they've been making use of Thunderbolt on laptops before most vendors considered it, saying the market has moved on without them is silly.
The market moved to catch up with Apple.
Apple never used Lightening for laptops. The market i'm talking about is phones.
> saying the market has moved on without them is silly
Given they've produced nearly 2 billion phones with Lightening and are still producing/selling £1000 phones with Lightening, i don't think it's silly to say the market moved on without them.
Which phone has Thunderbolt now?
Phones now record 8k at 120Hz, so that thunderbolt bandwidth is important, else you will wait ages to transfer that to your computer.
Oh I'm with you on that. I think it was a great improvement to get Thunderbolt over USB-C on iPhone Pros.
I just think it's a mistake to talk about the very latest Thunderbolt 5's bandwidth vs legacy Lightning as if Apple were still promoting it.
It's like comparing Thunderbolt 5 to Firewire.
> I just think it's a mistake to talk about the very latest Thunderbolt 5's bandwidth vs legacy Lightning as if Apple were still promoting it.
Apple are still promoting it
https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-14/6.7-inch-...
Apple also argued against EU regulation forcing USB-C adoption by the end of 2024.
> It's like comparing Thunderbolt 5 to Firewire.
I don't think it's fair to make that comparison.
Given that we're only 10 days past the end of 2024, i don't think we would have iPhones with USB-C and 'non-legacy lightening' speeds like we do today.
To be fair, most phones with USB-C are 2.0 only, which means they're limited to 480 Mbps.
Most phones sold, maybe, flagship phones had USB 3.x five years ago.
Wat