Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5-TH Now Available - Dual Thunderbolt 1.0 ports

[Giano]

I've been trying to figure out how to get the thunderbolt ports functional on the Z87X-UD5-TH over the past week or so. Fortunately, I believe I've figured out how to do so: you need a Windows installation. If you attach the device, boot into Windows, have windows recognize the PCIE Bridge chain, and restart into OSX, the device should show as mounted. After the initial boot into Windows, you shouldn't need to reboot into Windows again (i.e. subsequent restarts straight into OSX should still show the device as mounted).

Does it mean that a temporary Windows installation would be sufficient to make thunderbolt ports working ? I'm somewhat reluctant to purchase Win8 license just for that (and moreover I won't use Win8 after that)...

 

[vonblake]

Has anyone else had success getting Thunderbolt to work on the GA-z87-ud5 th? I'm about to buy this board for a Pro Tools Native Thunderbolt setup and I want to see if anyone else has had success. I plan on making my system a dual boot, so if Windows is necessary that is not a problem. Although, has anyone verified that Windows 7 fixes the problem?

 

[stevep314]

Yes, boot into Windows, install the Gigabyte drivers and everything is hunky dory for osX. Also delete AppleThunderboltNHI.Kext in System/Library/Extensions or it will boot too slow when a thunderbolt device is connected.

 

[stevep314]

How Protools is going to react to this board. Is another matter. Because I believe OSX recognises the devices as PCI on this board and not TH as such if I'm not mistaking. I'm no expert. Pro Tools or Avid is notorious about supporting only specific hardware and operating systems. One of the main reasons I switched to RME Hardware and the hackintosh story a long time ago.

 

[Fokke]

How Protools is going to react to this board. Is another matter. Because I believe OSX recognises the devices as PCI on this board and not TH as such if I'm not mistaking. I'm no expert. Pro Tools or Avid is notorious about supporting only specific hardware and operating systems. One of the main reasons I switched to RME Hardware and the hackintosh story a long time ago.

ProTools is notorious in not >officially< supporting hard- and software, but very often it does work. I cannot check here, i have a PT native PCIe, not a thunderbolt, but it would really surprise me if you can make thunderbolt work for everything but the Thunderbolt Native interface. Go for it.

[video=youtube;MBGhZn_AvoQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGhZn_AvoQ[/video]

 

[tocinoskimilan]

Hi guys, im little bit a noob, and i have the Gigabyte GA-z87x-ud5h. I cannot install maverick, iv tried all the helps and tutorials. Iv update bios, iv tried all flags and always stops at CPU ID not recognized or power supply Maybe my graphic card is bull**** Nvidia GeForce 9800gt. Sobody heeeeeeeeeeeeeelpp

 

[soundflix]

Yes, boot into Windows, install the Gigabyte drivers and everything is hunky dory for osX. Also delete AppleThunderboltNHI.Kext in System/Library/Extensions or it will boot too slow when a thunderbolt device is connected.

I did exactly this on my new z87-ud5h th.
apple fw-to-thunderbolt adapter is my only TB peripheral. Works only on lower tb port and only after straight restart into osx from windose7. After shutting down and turn on computer again tb volume is not seen, have to go back to windows.
bios firmware updated to F4, no change.

I'm on 10.8.5 though And I used Windows 7, so maybe that's the culprit(s)?
will make Mavericks test when I have time.

 

[esteve]

I went through quite a few suggestions with this motherboard, and after changing bios settings (legacy, disable boot on wake), installing windows 7 (had Mavericks already), and deleting all the TB kexts, still no luck. I updated to the latest BIOS as well.

I went back into Windows 7 and installed all the remaining Windows drivers as provided by the Gigabyte website, restarted. My Thunderbolt drive (portable) still wasn't showing up, but it was OSX formatted and I didn't expect it to. I then unplugged the drive and plugged it into the lower port and heart the windows sounds as if it had detected a new device. The device didn't appear, but I figured it was doing something differently.

I then booted in to Mavericks and my Thunderbolt drive appeared - so perhaps the other Windows drivers are related?
The one thing I did notice was my TB drive performance using the Black Magic Speed Tester was pretty poor overall. I'm going to test another TB drive and look into the speed issue some more...