It turns out that despite OCulink’s high bandwidth, it still outperforms high-end GPUs like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 by up to 23% when used in an external GPU case, but Thunderbolt’s limitations are more apparent. . As with the old standard, eGPU configurations suffer the most when graphics output is sent back to the laptop.
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| OCulink Features | OCulink claims to provide a superior experience compared to USB4 and Thunderbolt 3 and 4. It boasts a bidirectional 32 Gbps (64 Gbps total) PCIe connection. |
| Performance Benchmarks | Benchmarks conducted by Golden Pig Upgrade on Weibo suggest that OCulink, despite its advantages, experiences performance limitations similar to Thunderbolt 4. |
| GPU Performance Loss on OCulink | The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 reportedly loses close to 23% of GPU performance when running on OCulink, as per the findings shared by the Chinese reviewer. |
| Benchmark Summary | The review includes benchmarks for Nvidia GPUs (RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 4090) in both eGPU enclosure and an unspecified desktop setup. Results show varying degrees of performance loss when using OCulink, particularly with the RTX 4090. |
| RTX 4070 Ti Super Benchmarks | – Time Spy graphics points (Desktop): 24613 – Graphics dock (Internal Screen): 22199 – Performance loss: 9.8% |
| RTX 4090 Benchmarks | – Time Spy graphics points (Desktop): 36487 – Graphics Dock (Internal Screen): 28230 – Performance loss: 22.6% – Graphics dock (External Screen): 30429 – Performance loss: 16.6% – Time Spy Extreme graphics points (Desktop): 19930 – Graphics Dock (Internal Screen): 18902 – Performance loss: 5.2% – Graphics dock (External Screen): 19925 – Performance loss: 0% |
| Performance Variation with Display Changes | Lower-power graphics cards like RTX 4070 Ti Super experience a lesser performance hit. Replacing the laptop display with an external monitor and increasing the display resolution helps reduce the bottleneck on RTX 4090. |
| Real-world Gaming Performance Consideration | Benchmark results may not fully represent real-world gaming performance, but 3DMark provides both graphics and CPU scores, helping to isolate performance variables. Previous reviews, such as Notebookcheck’s, have shown performance cuts with Thunderbolt connections. |
| Comparison with Thunderbolt 3 | The OCulink performance loss on the Nvidia RTX 4090 is reported to be less pronounced than the Thunderbolt 3 connection on the Gigabyte Aorus RTX 4090 Gaming Box, which was found to cut performance by as much as 36%. |
OCulink claims to provide a superior experience to USB4 and Thunderbolt 3 and 4, thanks to its 32Gbps bi-directional PCIe connection (64Gbps total). Despite its advantages over Thunderbolt 4, OCulink appears to suffer from the same, albeit much less pronounced, limitations of the latest generation of Thunderbolt connections, at least in the benchmarks tested by Golden Pig Upgrade on Weibo.
The Chinese reviewer posted a brief summary of his results, which reveal that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 loses around 23% of its GPU performance when running on OCulink and displaying graphics on the laptop in question. The GPUs were tested in each eGPU enclosure and in an unspecified desktop configuration to compare base performance.
