While it is true that with high-end hardware such as an RTX 4090 you will always get good performance, I have to disagree. I have been spending over 2 years in this thread and have personally constantly upgraded my own bandwith solution. I started of with TB3, then USB4, and then OCuLink 4i (using an RTX 3090). In all honesty, while the gains from TB3 to USB4 were noticeable, the gains from USB4 to OCulink 4i were incredible. I am talking day and night difference. Day and night.
It shows that OCuLink even outperforms Thunderbolt 5 in performance. Needless to say, it crushes some limited solution such as USB4. It is WELL worth upgrading.
Note also that these benchmarks were done with a 3090. As performance of a 4090 is far beyond a 3090, the results with higher bandwith would be even more significant for a 4090.
Yes, it is difficult to cripple a 4090 with poor connection bandwith - it will always be solid. But trust me, it could be much, much better with OCuLink.
This touches on the interesting question whether OCulink 8i is actually worth it over OCuLink 4i. Some benchmarks put 8i at a 5% performance gain to 4i. But we need to wait for real-world fps differences. It may not be worth it for many people to upgrade to 8i if they already have 4i. I personally just want maximum performance with the GPU that I have, so 8i it is for me ;).
If it really is only a 5% gain, then the noticability would be minimal, in which I would stick to my 4i I have on my 9070XT currently. It works just fine. I’d love to be able to push it more, but that gain isn’t worth the hassle for me personally. But, I will surely wait and see what folks come up with as far as testing to be the deciding factor.
I’m the guy who tested his prototype with the DEG1 and a 9070XT. It works. And I even purchased his final product (he shipped me first batch) after we learned that. Still works. Been using it for over a month now.
This thread which was already shared quite frankly also shows that people have been simply adding a cable on ebay for 15 Euros to the expansion bay module for a year now and it works fine.
I don’t mean to promote something to anyone. But in all honesty you can trust the people here as they are sharing real-world, long-term experience. OCuLink works with the Framework 16.
I personally also recommend it to literally save money. If you use OCuLink with a 4090, you won’t have to upgrade any time soon.
However, it also has disadvantages. You lose hotplug for example, and it also does not charge your system like thunderbolt can. It is a quite pure PCIE connection which simply connects a GPU to your system - that’s also why it is considered very stable.
This thread is the prime example why you shouldn’t trust people on the internet that you’ll receive anything when you give them money. I can very much understand hanging back.
Honestly brother, having been following this thread for MONTHS now after reading all the other stuff.
PayPal goods and service is your friend, I would agree with you but if these dudes haven’t been as active as they have been on development and even to a extent some over communication, I would also be on the weary side. As soon as I saw we could buy this adapter, I jumped on it. This is the first time where it has gone to other fairly active members for testing and collaboration. The previous ones were not like that. This is different compared to the other dude from last year.
I’ve also received mine that I ordered. I haven’t been able to test it yet as I’m batch 8 for the new framework but I got it. He’s using PayPal goods and services so you have 120 days purchase protection should you fear being scammed
Unfortunately this thread is an example of people not reading posts properly and misinterpreting or citing outside of context… My sentence that you refer to had nothing to do with “receiving anything when you give people money” - it referred to the merits of the OcuLink connection per se, in particular the importance of bandwidth for performance . Oh dear. The fact that I responded to a benchmark is a hint that my comment was about technical performance too. My comment was about OCuLink working well in this case.
If you want to say something about whether people generally online are trustworthy or whether you should be cautious when buying online - I more than agree. This is why I specifically mentioned that I do not want to promote anything here, and referred to just buying a cable on ebay - where no trust is needed.
I myself have indeed suffered from a bad experience here. I lost about 100 USD to a guy in this thread - no names - as he simply didn’t deliver. And I think I am not the only one. And I did my due diligence, checked his profile on the platform (very long-term, very involved, many interactions) and he had an online shop which looked like a serious attempt at a business. But before I paid I always told myself: well, I am doing this to support a DIY effort of a community, and there is going to be a risk always. So yeah, do your due diligence and definitely watch out.
Regarding some people posting here that they have made payments, but not received anything.
As there appear to be multiple people selling expansion bay stuff, it would help if people identified who the complaint was about, so that the good people don’t get blamed for bad actions of others.
my view is if you are the first person to buy some stuff from someone else on here, you are basically taking a punt, it may or may not turn up. Pay using some methods that provide some protection. E.g. credit card, or paypal etc.
if you wait and are not the first person, you probably don’t need to wait long to see other purchaser reports, good or bad, and then base your purchase on that.
keep in mind that the person selling the stuff is probably an individual who has not run a business before, and might even be a child or teenager with not a lot of business experience.
my advice to sellers would be, just try to keep people updated regarding expected delivery times, and be quick to mention problems, delays etc.
Customers are always upset by no communication, so even bad news(delays) is better than no news.
A good example of this good communications, is one seller on here mentioning that they are too busy over xmas, so cannot process any more orders for a few weeks.
All, yesterday I received a prototype of the adapter for testing by post from @Kyle_Tuck via @Gmanny as I am based in Europe. I directly did some testing and benchmarking.
I am happy to say that it works fine! It took my system a couple of seconds to recognize, but then all was well.
First of all, it is much less of a hassle. I had the ribbon cable DIY solution beforehand and barely managed to get it out again when I tried to get the expansion bay out of the notebook. So the adapter is MUCH cleaner and easier to handle. It just feels like a proper solution that was made for it, and less of a DIY workaround.
And of course I ran the benchmarks of both bandwidth and performance and I am happy to say that even the prototype runs just a bit better than the DIY cable did. Below are the bandwidth and Cyberpunk (almost maxed out) fps with my RTX 3090. Long story short, it feels like the bandwidth is slightly more stable, and it feels like Cyberpunk is running slightly better.
Ribbon cable 6.25 GB/s 40 fps
4i Adapter 6.26 GB/s 41 fps
This is of course margin of error, but I can confirm that it certainly works fine, and that it does not run worse than the DIY ribbon cable approach, even when using an early prototype that I received for testing.
PS: Just to add a bit more background: by “first prototype” I mean the version that goes out to anyone ordering it - it’s a solid version 1 and works fully. Also, regarding the benchmarks, I used the DEG1 EGPU from Minisforum with the Minisforum cable. Cyberpunk settings are 1440p, DLAA enabled, all maxed out except raytracing which is at ultra (as opposed to pathtracing). It also runs with pathtracing, but I would need to enable DLSS (highest quality) for the same fps. So this adapter allows a 3090 to pretty much max out Cyberpunk - it’s very close to the full desktop experience.
. Oh dear. The fact that I responded to a benchmark is a hint that my comment was about technical performance too. My comment was about OCuLink working well in this case.
