Why have a crippled JHL6240 Thunderbolt 3 port in the GL502VM?

[link626]

The skylake and kabylake GL502VM have the JHL6240 thunderbolt controller.

the 6240 is a crippled half speed version, having 20gbps or lower bandwidth. pcie 3.0 x 2 lanes.

The 6340 thunderbolt controller has the full 40gbps bandwidth. pcie 3.0 x 4 lanes.

So our GL502VM is gimped, and putting a beefy graphics card in an eGPU box would result in a big performance penalty running at pcie 3.0 x2.
A GTX1080 in the XG Station will only be a slight improvement, and a super high cost.
Anything less than a gtx1080 egpu would probably have worse performance than the built-in gtx1060 of this laptop.


Thunderbolt sounds useless on the 502VM.

[andvoy]

U2Desire wrote:
It could also be that the ROG XG Station 2 has a DSL6540 in it and that is why it is now showing in your Device Manager.

Yeah I thought that that might be it, but even with the XG Station 2 unplugged I can still see it. I'll make sure to post some screenshots later on.

[andvoy]

Here is the screen shot. You can see that all the devices are marked as hidden which means no TB device is connected, and you can see both bridges there but only one controller. So I really don't think they are one and the same.

[U2Desire]

Strange I only have 4 PCI-to-PCI Bridge's that show up and they are all PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_15C0&CC_0604. I can't think of a way you could confirm that the DEV_1578 you have is from the XG Station2 or if you in fact do also have a DSL6540 in your GL502VM. I guess you could uninstall them all and reboot and see what comes back and than plug in the XG Station what gets added. You could also look at the MB of the XG Station and see if that chip is present.

[CladMaster]

Screenshots of my G752VL with Thunderbolt 3 info.

This is here for reference only.

You will see that I have eGPU support, testing an "unofficial NVM Firmware". (Please do not ask for the firmware, I will not release it to anyone)

[Bran187]

Sorry for the old threat bump, but I made the mistake of going down the thunderbolt google search rabbit hole and it created more questions than answers. lol

Has anyone actually tested the 20gb theory?

I say theory because other than a few copy and pasted forum post and a Wikipedia article, I can't find any official documentation to back it up. And for each of those posts, I find an equal amount claiming that all TB3 is 40 and that it would be TB2 if it is only getting 20.

Also random question: What are the PCI to PCI Bridges that magically appeared in my device manager after installing the TB firmware and drivers? Those show up now, as well as the actual Thunderbolt Controller itself. Google was less than helpful on that question of mine as well.

If I had something more powerful than a 970 to test it with, I would be tempted to just drop the money and buy an eGPU dock to test. lol You know for science and whatnot.

Also admittedly, I am way outside of my ballpark right now. lol So apologies for anything stupid that I will inevitably say. Also its like 2 AM so.... yeah. XD

[M-T-Pockets]

Says 40GB/s for my GL702VM on the US page. Where does it specify that the Low Power version (JHL6240) only transmits @ 20GB/s? I'd really like to know this too. This would just add insult to injury for us owners already dealing with the High Temps.

EDIT: Wait, just noticed the asterick? wtf! "actual specification may vary according to SKU" ???

[Bran187]

M-T-Pockets wrote:


Says 40GB/s for my GL702VM on the US page. Where does it specify that the Low Power version (JHL6240) only transmits @ 20GB/s? I'd really like to know this too. This would just add insult to injury for us owners already dealing with the High Temps.

EDIT: Wait, just noticed the asterick? wtf! "actual specification may vary according to SKU" ???

Yeah I really want to figure this out.

My model wasn't advertised to have thunderbolt (so just having it is an added bonus for me). But now that I know it's there I want to figure out exactly what I am dealing with.

[StarJack]

the TB3 (advertised as 40Gbps) was definitely one of the selling points for me with my new kaby lake GL702VM. ugh if this is true.

Sent from my SM-G925W8 using Tapatalk

[U2Desire]

Just going by the Thunderbolt Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Thunderbolt_3 the Low power JHL6240 controller only has a pcie 3.0 x2 link versus the DSL6340 (Single Port) or DSL6540 (Double Port) controllers which has pcie 3.0 x4 link so based on that one could assume the LP is half the speed. I sent a message inquiring at https://www.facebook.com/GetThunderbolt/ so hopefully I will get some kind of response.

[Bran187]

U2Desire wrote:
Just going by the Thunderbolt Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Thunderbolt_3 the Low power JHL6240 controller only has a pcie 3.0 x2 link versus the DSL6340 (Single Port) or DSL6540 (Double Port) controllers which has pcie 3.0 x4 link so based on that one could assume the LP is half the speed. I sent a message inquiring at https://www.facebook.com/GetThunderbolt/ so hopefully I will get some kind of response.

Right, and I can't fault you for that. Especially considering the utter lack of any helpful official documentation there is on the subject. It's that same lack of documentation (on both Intel and Asus's part) mixed with so many other posts regarding the TB3 spec that leaves me confused on the subject.

Let us know if they get back to you. I'm going to keep digging in my spare time and see if I can find anything buried away on some dark corner of the internet. lol