GA-Z87X-UD7 TH available mid September

[Ezzyme]

October!

 

[ATB]

October!

Late October. First it was beginning of August, then Mid September, now it's late October... hmm

 

[RenII]

My scientific wild-ass guess for the UD7 TH push back to late October is perhaps so that Gigabyte will match ASUS' upgraded mb w/ TB 2.0, The Z87 Deluxe/Quad.....

 

[ATB]

My scientific wild-ass guess for the UD7 TH push back to late October is perhaps so that Gigabyte will match ASUS' upgraded mb w/ TB 2.0, The Z87 Deluxe/Quad.....

Might buy this one, impatient waiting for Gigabyte to release TB Mobos.

 

[genzai]

Might buy this one, impatient waiting for Gigabyte to release TB Mobos.

FYI the UD5 TH is now finally on the gigabyte site which suggests availability is imminent.
http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4593#ov

Bummer that the UD7 is delayed. I am fairly worried at the price point for the UD7 but it really does appear like the ideal hack board of this generation so looking forward to seeing it in the wild. I would be very skeptical that GB would have time to update it to TB2, but there is no harm in hoping. Pretty amazing that Asus was able to pull that off so quick (though their board is not in retail yet either).

Cheers,
g\

 

[ATB]

FYI the UD5 TH is now finally on the gigabyte site which suggests availability is imminent.
http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4593#ov

Bummer that the UD7 is delayed. I am fairly worried at the price point for the UD7 but it really does appear like the ideal hack board of this generation so looking forward to seeing it in the wild. I would be very skeptical that GB would have time to update it to TB2, but there is no harm in hoping. Pretty amazing that Asus was able to pull that off so quick (though their board is not in retail yet either).

Cheers,
g\

Ive been using TB at a college I attend. They use for storing files, and the devices they purchased have hard discs, so it really isnt that fast - thats not to say TB isnt the fastest out. But the cable itself costs $50, and the drives need to be plugged into an outlet for power. It big, clumbsy, and EXPENSIVE. The drives also cost $200.

My point... usb3 would transfer info just as fast using a hard drive, and you wouldnt have to spend $50 for a cable, also USB 3.0 1TB WD drive is only $70 and comes with a USB3 cable... so what this got me thinking is that if USB3.1 comes out any time soon Id rather have that any day over TB.

Itd be nice to have a mobo with both TB2 and either USB3 or USB3.1. If I had to choose, Id choose USB3.1 over TB any day. I have a gut feeling that TB will end up like firewire, never really catching on and being out classed by other (more popular and LESS EXPENSIVE - and "better" / faster) technology.

$50 for a cable?

 

[genzai]

Ive been using TB at a college I attend. They use for storing files, and the devices they purchased have hard discs, so it really isnt that fast - thats not to say TB isnt the fastest out. But the cable itself costs $50, and the drives need to be plugged into an outlet for power. It big, clumbsy, and EXPENSIVE. The drives also cost $200.

My point... usb3 would transfer info just as fast using a hard drive, and you wouldnt have to spend $50 for a cable, also USB 3.0 1TB WD drive is only $70 and comes with a USB3 cable... so what this got me thinking is that if USB3.1 comes out any time soon Id rather have that any day over TB.

Itd be nice to have a mobo with both TB2 and either USB3 or USB3.1. If I had to choose, Id choose USB3.1 over TB any day. I have a gut feeling that TB will end up like firewire, never really catching on and being out classed by other (more popular and LESS EXPENSIVE - and "better" / faster) technology.

$50 for a cable?

Hmm,
I am not sure how relevant this is to the topic but let me address a few things from your post.

1) Thunderbolt is much more than a high speed connection for hard drives and storage devices. The reasons behind your university adopting it solely for this reason, if that's the case, are certainly suspicious. But using thunderbolt purely for conventional storage tasks is its least useful function. It gets more useful if you are attaching large fast RAID arrays, but the main purpose of thunderbolt is not the same as USB or even firewire before it. Its is to extend the PCI bus outside the case. USB 3.0 or eventual 3.1 will not likely ever be suitable for these kinds of tasks. TB needs to get faster to make this idea truly flourish but even as is it is a great way to expand on a system that lacks PCI slots. If the devices your Uni is buying are big and clumsy and slow and expensive then they are not making intelligent purchasing decisions. That has little to do with TB itself.

2) Thunderbolt is relatively expensive. It will remain so despite the moaning of so many people. It is not a mainstream tech. It is a technology for people who need a faster professional grade connection and even more so, for those who need PCI bus extension. Intel has made it clear that it intends to integrate TB into the CPU at some future point. When that happens it will by default become more ubiquitous and may drop substantially in price. But it will never be price competitive with USB. They are not the same thing. Again if you are buying single TB drives and paying a boatload for them then in all likelihood (though with some exceptions) you don't understand the purpose of thunderbolt and you are wasting money. Yes apple used to charge $50 for a cable, now they charge $40, and if you ask me your pretty foolish to pay even that much since you can easily find cables for sale online in the $20-30 range (sometimes even cheaper). The cable has active chips in it, it will never be a cheap cable. It will get cheaper, but it will probably never be cheap. Get over it. At some point we will see fiber based cables as intel had originally intended.

3) While USB 3.1 will be a nice addition to the connectivity landscape, it is still not TB, they are different things with different purposes. USB 3.1 wont fundamentally change anything. It will continue to be good for the things USB 3.0 is good for. TB will continue to lead in overall speed and in the extended functions of carrying PCI and displayport signals. Thunderbolt is not going away. Intel makes the chips we all use and intel is putting thunderbolt on those chips eventually. Intel may take a very long time to support USB 3.1 natively, though again, doing so has nothing to do with TB replacement.

4) Thunderbolt is very important to OS X users, whether we like it or not. As of the release of the new mac pro, there will be exactly zero apple computers with PCI slots. This will have a very strong affect on the types of peripherals and driver support that is available in OS X going forward. There will be many legacy PCIe devices that never receive proper future OS X driver updates and there will be many new PCIe devices that never have drivers written for OS X. Because of Apple's decision, you can hate it or love it, TB will become synonymous with OS X. If you want to use OS X, you need to be taking TB very seriously now. That choice has been made for you.

5) Firewire was not a failure, it was extremely popular in certain fields such as media. That 95% percent of the PC universe ignored it i couldn't care less. It was a decent premium technology for the time. Firewire had some advantages over USB but they were fairly direct competitors. TB is not a competitor to USB. Its is a very different technology. I guess i am just sick and tired of hearing people compare USB and thunderbolt. At best it reveals a complete lack of understanding of what TB is and what types of usage it is mainly intended for.

g\


[EDIT]
Now on some very relevant news....
GA-Z87X-UD5 TH is available for purchase today
AND!!!!
GA-Z87X-UD7 TH is confirmed to be TB2.
So cool. Still wonder how much its going to cost us but that definitely makes it the hack board to own when it launches:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwTi_WY_Eco

 

[ATB]

Hmm,
I am not sure how relevant this is to the topic but let me address a few things from your post.

1) Thunderbolt is much more than a high speed connection for hard drives and storage devices. The reasons behind your university adopting it solely for this reason, if that's the case, are certainly suspicious. But using thunderbolt purely for conventional storage tasks is its least useful function. It gets more useful if you are attaching large fast RAID arrays, but the main purpose of thunderbolt is not the same as USB or even firewire before it. Its is to extend the PCI bus outside the case. USB 3.0 or eventual 3.1 will not likely ever be suitable for these kinds of tasks. TB needs to get faster to make this idea truly flourish but even as is it is a great way to expand on a system that lacks PCI slots. If the devices your Uni is buying are big and clumsy and slow and expensive then they are not making intelligent purchasing decisions. That has little to do with TB itself.

2) Thunderbolt is relatively expensive. It will remain so despite the moaning of so many people. It is not a mainstream tech. It is a technology for people who need a faster professional grade connection and even more so, for those who need PCI bus extension. Intel has made it clear that it intends to integrate TB into the CPU at some future point. When that happens it will by default become more ubiquitous and may drop substantially in price. But it will never be price competitive with USB. They are not the same thing. Again if you are buying single TB drives and paying a boatload for them then in all likelihood (though with some exceptions) you don't understand the purpose of thunderbolt and you are wasting money. Yes apple used to charge $50 for a cable, now they charge $40, and if you ask me your pretty foolish to pay even that much since you can easily find cables for sale online in the $20-30 range (sometimes even cheaper). The cable has active chips in it, it will never be a cheap cable. It will get cheaper, but it will probably never be cheap. Get over it. At some point we will see fiber based cables as intel had originally intended.

3) While USB 3.1 will be a nice addition to the connectivity landscape, it is still not TB, they are different things with different purposes. USB 3.1 wont fundamentally change anything. It will continue to be good for the things USB 3.0 is good for. TB will continue to lead in overall speed and in the extended functions of carrying PCI and displayport signals. Thunderbolt is not going away. Intel makes the chips we all use and intel is putting thunderbolt on those chips eventually. Intel may take a very long time to support USB 3.1 natively, though again, doing so has nothing to do with TB replacement.

4) Thunderbolt is very important to OS X users, whether we like it or not. As of the release of the new mac pro, there will be exactly zero apple computers with PCI slots. This will have a very strong affect on the types of peripherals and driver support that is available in OS X going forward. There will be many legacy PCIe devices that never receive proper future OS X driver updates and there will be many new PCIe devices that never have drivers written for OS X. Because of Apple's decision, you can hate it or love it, TB will become synonymous with OS X. If you want to use OS X, you need to be taking TB very seriously now. That choice has been made for you.

5) Firewire was not a failure, it was extremely popular in certain fields such as media. That 95% percent of the PC universe ignored it i couldn't care less. It was a decent premium technology for the time. Firewire had some advantages over USB but they were fairly direct competitors. TB is not a competitor to USB. Its is a very different technology. I guess i am just sick and tired of hearing people compare USB and thunderbolt. At best it reveals a complete lack of understanding of what TB is and what types of usage it is mainly intended for.

g\


[EDIT]
Now on some very relevant news....
GA-Z87X-UD5 TH is available for purchase today
AND!!!!
GA-Z87X-UD7 TH is confirmed to be TB2.
So cool. Still wonder how much its going to cost us but that definitely makes it the hack board to own when it launches:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwTi_WY_Eco

Awesome, thank you for that post. I do very much appreciate it. You definitely "schooled me". I now know much more about TB then I ever had before - the many uses, extending the PCI bus, I never considered or thought about that (or flat out never realized that).

I still have never "gotten into" firewire, I used to hear about it so much from someone I once worked with and an instructor who to me seemed arrogant, not the best reason but it just sort of annoyed me when it never really "caught on" I looked back on it and said to myself I never thought much of it anyway. It was faster than USB 2 and that is a good thing. My point is not much lol I just dont know much about computer technology other than the "specs" I read up on. Im a newbie, Ive only built one PC before and that was in 2004 a Pentium 4. I got into a new build after taking a recording course and since 2008 Ive been purchasing mic's here and there when theyd go on sale, I now have everything except a PC and the software (Pro Tools 11). So I needed a new PC, talked to someone at school and thats how I found out about "Hackintoshes" (spring 2013). So I started doing research which led me to this website, which Im very lucky/fortunate to have found. All Ive ever known are the specs I read about. TB 10gb/s, USB3 5gb/s, etc. My approach is make it as fast as I can within my budget. Radeon cards are about 1/3 the price of NVIDIA, so I looked into those. Sorry to go on here, Ive always been upfront that I dont really know much I just read the specs and make decisions based on that.

Thank you again for schooling me on the details, it definitely was an education and I appreciate it. For what its worth I never intended to sound ignorant or offensive, my understanding at the time as that TB was 10gb/s and I never really knew more, but now I do.

Thank you, hope I didnt offend (or make myself sound like a lame-ass)

As far as relevance to the topic, since I started this thread I commented on my experience with TB (which obviously wasnt all that relevant). I had never used it before and finally got the chance to do so. I didnt realize the usages of TB and commented ignorantly. But I am not sorry for it, I just didnt know (yes for the 10th time - now I do and thanks to you). thank you

Cant wait for the UD7TH to go on sale, thats still going to be the one Ill purchase.

humbly appreciative

ATB

 

[genzai]

Awesome, thank you for that post. I do very much appreciate it. You definitely "schooled me". I now know much more about TB then I ever had before - the many uses, extending the PCI bus, I never considered or thought about that (or flat out never realized that).
ATB

Awesome, glad it helped. Didn't mean to sound condescending. We are all here to get info and give info. Like i said i just am tired of seeing that comparison because its apples to oranges. I really wish apple had kept a mac pro with PCIe, but they didn't. So we move on.

g\

 

[EDGERIDER]

at first i would have showed no interest upgrading my Z77_UD5-TH but there is a couple of very interesting feature on this new mobo =

dual Gbe = link aggregation = good

6usb 3 port = 2 more usb to Gbe = more link aggregation = 4Gbe network for 50$

dual Thunderbolt 2 with Intel GPU on one and Discrete GPU on the other = those TB 2.0 controller can work WITHOUT INTEL GPU = it is not to long before we see LGA_ 2011 MOBO with thunderbolt 2 .

8 cores xeon power + 8 slot of memory + 40 lane of PCIe3 = now we are talking !!!!!!