A prominent hardware leaker has claimed that while Thunderbolt 4 will be standard for Intel Core Ultra 200 CPUs on the Z890, the upcoming CPU generation will lack Thunderbolt 5.
As noted by Video cardzHardware leaker Golden Pig Upgrade has claimed that Intel Arrow Lake will still lack Thunderbolt 5 support for Z890 motherboards, despite unveiling it last year. If true, it’s disappointing news as Intel also missed out on 14th Gen Thunderbolt 5 at release.
As a frame of reference, both Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 have a 40 Gbps limit, meaning there isn’t a big increase in the two technologies despite their seven-year age difference. Thunderbolt 5, on the other hand, can achieve double that at 80 Gbps, which can be increased to 120 Gbps via Bandwidth Boost.
Golden Pig Upgrade also claims that Ultra Core 200 CPUs will only feature four Xe cores baked onto the chip, which is half of what is currently available through Meteor Lake for laptops. This is unlikely to be too much of an issue, as most (if not all) users will be pairing the processor with one of the top graphics cards, but it’s worth mentioning.
We can take the alleged specifications of the Arrow Lake flagship as a point of comparison. It is believed that the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K will have 24 cores and 24 threads with a maximum boost clock of up to 5.5 GHz and a TDP of 125 W. The current generation Intel Core i9-14900K, on the other hand, will feature 24 cores and 32 threads of up to 6GHz. It is certainly a different approach moving from hybrid to disaggregated architecture.
Not the best impression for Arrow Lake
If Intel Arrow Lake misses out on Thunderbolt 5, that would mean we’ll likely have to wait until Lunar Lake on laptops and Panther Lake on desktops to move forward.
The new connectivity standard would not only mean greater bandwidth for external GPUs and SSDs, but also higher resolutions and frame rates up to 540 Hz and improved multi-monitor in 4K and 8K. (via Intel).