Thunderbolt 3, intel finally certifies an amd motherboard

There are many AMD motherboards with Thunderbolt 3, but none of them have been certified by Intel until today. Today is a historic day for AMD and ASRock, because now it can be said that it is the first to have an Intel-certified AMD Thunderbolt motherboard.

Thunderbolt 3, Intel finally certifies an AMD motherboard

The motherboard in question is the X570 Phantom Gaming ITX / TB3, which is a compact form factor Mini-ITX motherboard based on AMD's latest and enthusiastic X570 chipset.

The interesting thing about this matter is that it took three generations of AMD Ryzen for Thunderbolt to finally hit AMD boards.

Vendors typically pay royalties to Intel for each of their products that use the Thunderbolt protocol. But in an effort to drive adoption, Intel abolished this practice in 2019 and released the Thunderbolt 3 specs to the USB-IF royalty-free. However, obtaining Intel certification still requires a one-time fee, the details of which are not disclosed. It is unclear whether Thunderbolt certification will continue to be feasible after USB 4 is standardized on the market.

Thunderbolt was an Intel proprietary technology, and while it works through a USB Type-C port, it is capable of much more than carrying a USB signal. It can also handle Power Delivery, DisplayPort, and PCIe. Thunderbolt 3, therefore, can carry a bandwidth of up to 40 Gbps, which is twice that of USB 3.2 and four times faster than USB 3.1 connections. Since USB 4 uses the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, it is basically Thunderbolt 3, so USB 4 will also be able to achieve that speed once it is deployed on different devices.

Visit our guide on the best motherboards on the market

With so much information and power transferred over a single cable, it's helpful to know that the ASRock motherboard will work to Intel's standard with no problem.

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