[SOLVED] Is it important to get a GPU that has a USB C Port on it?

[Fusion1005]

What are the purposes of having a USB C port on a GPU and is it important to get one with it?

 

[rgd1101]

it important if you have a usb-c only monitor

 

[cryoburner]

The USB-C port on some of Nvidia's RTX cards is actually primarily meant as a "VirtualLink" port, designed for running a VR headset over a single USB-C cable, rather than requiring multiple separate connections for video, data and power.

However, as of now, 18 months after the GeForce 20 series came out, there are still no VR headsets that support VirtualLink that I know of. Valve originally intended to have an optional $40 VirtualLink dongle for their Index headset, but it would have not been particularly useful for desktop computers as it still required multiple connections to the dongle, and few laptops supported the feature, where it could have served more of a purpose. Valve also claimed to encounter "technical issues" with it, so they cancelled the adapter last summer shortly after the launch of their headset. Since then, pretty much nothing has been said about VirtualLink, and it seems to have been dropped from a number of the newer RTX cards from various manufacturers.

So, no, I wouldn't say that it's a particularly important feature at this time, and there's no guarantee that it will ever be utilized for its intended purpose. At the very least, it's unlikely to become a requirement for VR headsets for years to come, as most of the graphics cards being sold today don't include it. The same goes for monitors, which won't be dropping HDMI and DisplayPort any time soon. It can technically be used for other USB-C devices, but USB-C is still not all that common, and plugging something like a thumb drive into the back of one's graphics card might not be all that convenient.