Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD7-TH - Thunderbolt 2.0 Testing

[genzai]

Hi Guys i'm wondering,

from looking at the New Mac Pro it seems that it has its thunderbolt ports utilising the Duel FirePros. This has lead me to wonder if it would be possible to get the thunderbolt ports on this motherboard to utilise a discrete graphics card as well? as this would make all the difference as to weather i get this board or not!

Not a chance. The Mac pro has all its graphics card ports internally routed to thunderbolt. There is no way to do that on this board. the best current option for doing this is kinda sloppy, but the Asrock Extreme11/AC has DP input that routes the signal to thunderbolt so you can have one port of your discrete card (or more with MST) sent over thunderbolt. I believe it uses the same chip as the gigabyte board and so is a good contender as well. Will likely need an MSR patch but otherwise hardware is OS X safe.

Hopefully some card makers (and board makers, who are also usually the same companies) will start making internal ports on their GFX cards and motherboards so this routing can be done easily and cleanly in future generations.

g\

 

[genzai]

Thanks Tony, Macman (I assume) Pjalm and anyone else trying to put this puzzle together once and for all.

Question:
Will the work in getting this functioning on the falcon ridge boards likely be retroactively applicable to the Z77 boards such as UP5 TH?

Cheers,
g\

 

[Stork]

Hi Guys i'm wondering,

from looking at the New Mac Pro it seems that it has its thunderbolt ports utilising the Duel FirePros. This has lead me to wonder if it would be possible to get the thunderbolt ports on this motherboard to utilise a discrete graphics card as well? as this would make all the difference as to weather i get this board or not!

See the AnandTech Mac Pro review article, which is very good, BTW, for how the new Mac Pro is designed.

PCIe section: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/8

Thunderbolt section: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/13













Spoiler Alert: there's a custom chip that integrates the PCIe lanes and the Thunderbolt chips.

 

[PJALM]

Hi Guys i'm wondering,

from looking at the New Mac Pro it seems that it has its thunderbolt ports utilising the Duel FirePros. This has lead me to wonder if it would be possible to get the thunderbolt ports on this motherboard to utilise a discrete graphics card as well? as this would make all the difference as to weather i get this board or not!

Not with this mobo no, you need one that has a DP IN port.

 

[nicfargo]

Thank you TonyMac! I was debating whether or not to build another Hackintosh, or bite the bullet and get a Mac Pro. I need thunderbolt for my BlackMagic Cinema Camera (for transfer speeds) and have already bought some thunderbolt drives for my Macbook Pro. I would like to be able to hook those drives up to my Hackintosh in order to back them up regularly. I looked at the GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD7 TH when it was first released and thought that would be my best option, but then heard that TB wasn't working yet...so I held off. Now I think I'm confident in going with this since TB is working for the most part, I can get Nvidia cards for CUDA (I use Adobe, not FCPX) and I can also have a killer windows machine as well. Thanks for your hard work Tonymac, and whoever else has been involved!

 

[Rkool]

See the AnandTech Mac Pro review article, which is very good, BTW, for how the new Mac Pro is designed.

PCIe section: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/8

Thunderbolt section: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/13

Thanks guys! its a shame that its not possible to utilise a graphics card through thunderbolt yet though. That review article was very interesting a really restored my faith in apples architecture abilities to read about it like that though i think i will hold off on a thunderbolt build for a while then or until this is possible at least!

 

[PJALM]

It is possible you just need a mobo with a DP IN port like the ASRock Z87 Extreme11/ac.

 

[Einsteiniac]

I remember watching a youtube clip of a GB spokesperson at some convention that said the UD7 would have the capability to pipe discreet graphics out via port 2 using some switch on the board but I can't find any mention of this in the online docs as well as a physical switch. I assume this feature was scrapped. I would love to have the same functionality ASRock has but without the cabled mess behind the box.

 

[PJALM]

its just one extra small cable, hows that such a cable mess?

 

[Einsteiniac]

its just one extra small cable, hows that such a cable mess?

Well while not technically a mess I suppose but certainly something that could be hard wired internally versus via an extra loop back cable.

Anything that saves yet another cable is a good thing by me.