Even more surprising is the lack of HDMI/DP out. I wonder if this is just a marketing render or an actual product.
The two USB type-c with DP Alt Mode are replacing those
Wow, ASUS finally making an APEX motherboard for AMD.
I’m surprised that most motherboard manufacturers haven’t switched to USB4 Type-C to replace HDMI and DP ports on the motherboards. Maybe it’s more costly, but the advantages of USB4 Type-C over dedicated HDMI and DP ports should be obvious. Hopefully this change will propagate to the lower-tier motherboards as well as USB4 adoption becomes mainstream.
What are the advantages? The moment I’ll need to switch to onboard graphics, I’m losing one or two high speed usb ports (these are the only 40Gbps ones, the rest are “regular” 10Gbps).
Sure, but think about it the other way. You are most likely not using onboard graphics for anything other than troubleshooting if you’re buying this board. So instead of having HDMI/DP as deadweight, you can instead have two high-speed USB ports. Unless you have some weird workaround that requires integrated graphics output, this is better than having HDMI/DP on your motherboard.
Yeah, but now you’re sort of contradicting to your previous statement:
Hopefully this change will propagate to the lower-tier motherboards
In addition to that, overwhelming majority of monitors are still DP/HDMI only, (not just the cheapest ones, but with decent resolution and refresh rate). With such boards - one would have to grab yet another DP->Type-c adapter or cable
If you’re going to quote me, please don’t take things out of context.
Yes, most monitors are still HDMI/DP only, but they also have USB Type-A (and some Type-B) on them for a while now to serve as USB hubs. I still stand by my opinion that as the industry increasingly adopts USB4 (which includes monitor manufacturers), I can see a shift to USB4 Type-C only on consumer motherboards for graphics output.
On mid-range motherboards, I would wager the vast majority are using a discrete graphics card and only switching to integrated for troubleshooting purposes. So even in most use cases, I’d say that USB4 would be a better value for them than two ports they are likely never to use. Yes, it would suck if your monitor doesn’t have USB Type-C, though I would imagine the motherboard manufactuerer would include one with the motherboard (they only cost $20, likely less for businesses to buy in bulk at real cost). Perhaps only the lowest-end motherboards where use of APUs reign supreme would dedicated HDMI/DP ports still remain, but that’s just my prediction.
Anyway, to wrap back to your original post, you can’t keep legacy ports around forever; I can’t remember the last time I saw PS/2 on a consumer motherboard. HDMI, I think, will likely be the next one to be dropped from motherboards within the next few generations, with DP sticking around because it is designed for monitors (and we’ll see if that too gets replaced by USB4/USB5 Type-C ports).
Slightly OT, but I’d like to see an HDMI 2.x IN connector on boards. There are situations (live video capture) when that would come in handy.
But it has a PS/2 port.