Model physical Thunderbolt 5 (80 Gbps / 120 Gbps Boost), Thunderbolt 4 (40 Gbps), and USB4 hub configurations. Verify display stream DSC compression, NVMe PCIe lane saturation, and power delivery headroom.
Thunderbolt 5 raises bidirectional physical bandwidth from 40 Gbps to 80 Gbps using PAM-3 modulation. For extreme display workflows (like dual 8K or triple 4K 144Hz), it engages Bandwidth Boost up to 120 Gbps downstream while preserving 40 Gbps upstream.
While Thunderbolt 3 and 4 capped PCIe tunneling to 32 Gbps (PCIe Gen 3 x4, max ~3,000 MB/s real-world), Thunderbolt 5 unlocks full PCIe 4.0 x4 up to 64 Gbps, enabling external NVMe drives to sustain over 6,200 MB/s transfer rates without choking displays.
VESA DSC allows visually lossless compression up to 3:1. A raw uncompressed 6K 60Hz 10-bit stream requires ~28.5 Gbps, while DSC brings transmission down to ~12.2 Gbps, letting users daisy-chain multi-monitor studio setups on a single hub.