It goes further than bandwidth though, A high bandwidth does not equate to better stability and low latency performance - The useability and user experience over 100’s of hours is something that’s very hard to put into a statistic.
When there’s an added overhead on each data packet, plus the bus has non-audio traffic to deal with, i’ve always prefered FW/Thunderbolt. But i usually have my mouse, keyboard, tablet, 3 USB controllers, 5 MIDI keyboards and 2 external SSD drives running via the USB bus.
Doesn’t help that i have USB>MIDI convertors for some old gear too, they’re very noisy devices - absolutely hell bent on sending out random messages when i turn them on. …But as a result i’ve always found USB Audio interfaces quite problematic in a heavily loaded project.
Firewire, and subsequently Thunderbolt devices generally have less overhead than USB as they were designed for high data rates and have an inherently more direct pathway to the motherboard, effectively they’re external PCIe interfaces.
i.e real world comparison.:
https://www.reidys.com/blog/thunderbolt-vs-usb-audio-interfaces-whats-the-difference/#:~:text=The%20differences%20between%20a%20USB,is%20known%20as%20’latency’.
RME have some magic in their USB drivers though, they seem to get data through at a very low system level via USB. I don’t know the specifics behind what they do, but users love them! …sadly never used on myself, i was thinking of getting their USB ADAT interface (RME Digiface USB) to try them out one day, as it seems a cheap entry - plus i have ADATs to plug straight in.
Anyway… we’re drifting way from the question being asked here. I think they’re quite happy with Intel choice, and must admit despite AMD really upping the stakes in performance per price - i still think Intel is the more stable and compatible build. …generally speaking, of course.