Has anyone found any info I missed, tested it themselves or a gotten a close-enough glimpse of the board to confirm how much of Intel’s 13th gen features FW supports? Or can we get more explicit specs on what every port can do?
Because according to Intel’s specs (p14, pp136) the 13th CPUs should support USB3 20G and also DP at the new UHBR10 and UHBR20 speeds on the USB4 ports, which would all be new features compared to the 12th gen.
But these features or at least the USB3 20G requires newer Re-Timer chips (“Hayden Bridge” instead of the “Burnside Bridge” ones used on the 11th and 12th gen FWs) and therefore also for the board / device to support it. The schematic for the 13th gen is not up yet and so far I found no reviewer discussing the topic of enhanced USB4 ports for any 13th gen mobile device.
FWs specs for their USB4 ports are not detailed enough to confirm either way. “TB4” includes a lot of features that were previously not explicitly stated by FW when they were only called USB4 ports (like the 2nd tunneled DP connection that is still not mentioned in the specs for the AMD version and would bring the specs of it up to par with the features that are guaranteed by the TB4 label. Something that also no reviewer seems interested in confirming).
Now, I am unsure if either the faster USB3 speed or the new DP speeds could even be tunneled through USB4 / TB4, as the existing TB4 hubs surely have no support for outputting it. Intel’s specs are not clear enough if those features would ever supported for tunneling through USB4 on the current hardware, so it might just be that they are only supported directly on the outputs.
But I would be curious to get more info or insights, as also no other device seems to be advertised with it.
Like, did Intel announce it, but in the end it silently never materialized, similar to AMD announcing support for higher DP speeds from 6000 Ryzen iGPUs onwards that also seems to not be available on any actual device?
Was it too expensive, are some required chips not yet available or does it require future firmware updates like AMD enabling its first USB4 implementation only some time after shipping?
This topic could also be extended to the AMD board, as AMD also at least specs its 7040U chips to support DP at UHBR10 speeds. The other two things are not supported according to AMDs own specs, so at least there we have clarity.
PS. if anybody has any AMD 6000 or 7000 mobile devices with USB4 and motivation to check a few things, I have more questions concerning the topology of the USB4 ports. Would be interested in trying to find out, if any one solution is superior or lacking in any specific aspect (on paper and in the real world).