The latest 14-inch variant of Razor Blade laptops which are powered by the AMD Ryzen 6000 chipset will be soon getting a new OTA update which will reportedly bring some noticeable changes under the hood. According to the latest report shared by TheVerge, Razor will be soon rolling out a BIOS update for the aforementioned laptops that will add the support of the latest USB 4 to the USB Type-C ports, therefore doubling up its transfer speeds from 20GBPS to 40GBPS.
Support for high-bandwidth and Thunderbolt-compatible external accessories such as external GPU docks is also reported to be included in the update. Razer isn’t doing anything new or unique to enhance USB speeds. Instead, it makes use of the USB 4 capabilities found in every Ryzen 6000 CPU. Any laptop manufacturer can upgrade to USB 4 via a firmware update and a chipset driver issued by AMD over the summer, assuming the laptop manufacturer included the hardware required to support USB 4 speeds.
The update further unlocks the Ryzen 6000 processors’ Microsoft Pluton security processor, which doesn’t enhance performance but adds new hardware-based security measures on top of the ones that Windows 11 already mandates. Similar to USB 4, any Ryzen 6000 CPU can support Pluton capabilities if the maker of your laptop makes them available.
With regard to feature compatibility, Thunderbolt and USB 4 are sorts of kind of compatible. A fully functional USB 4 connector offers data transfer rates of up to 40GBPS and PCIe tunnelling enabling support of external GPUs and other high-speed accessories, just like Thunderbolt 3 and 4. While some USB 4 ports only handle the minimum 20GBPS speed required by the specification, which is USB 3.2 Gen 2 speed, Razer’s ports do seem to be fully functional 40GBPS ports.
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