Gigabyte GC-Thunderbolt 2 PCIe Expansion Cards Now Available for X99 Motherboards

[lokicat]

I will have to look for something similar on my ASUS and see don't remember fully but I want to say you have to type a number in on the ASUS BIOS for that item. But yeah with my 5820k I don't even POST with only 2 GTX and TB card. It just keeps doing a reboot loop.

You should be able to move your graphics cards to the PCI slots that default to x8 mode to make everything work. I have a Gigabyte board but Asus should be similar. That is, only slot 1 is x16 for a 5820K processor so if you move your cards to other slots they should default to x8. Your motherboard manual should give you the specifics.

 

[crashputer]

Gigabyte esupport gave me the solution !

In the bios , there is an option for thunderbolt of "reserved memory", I had to put from "maximum" to "medium", and now it works !

I will write a topic about my config this week.

Works! After changing this setting and updating my SMBIOS to iMac13,1 my Firewire adapter shows up in DPCImanager, just not as a Thunderbolt device.

 

[Einsteiniac]

You should be able to move your graphics cards to the PCI slots that default to x8 mode to make everything work. I have a Gigabyte board but Asus should be similar. That is, only slot 1 is x16 for a 5820K processor so if you move your cards to other slots they should default to x8. Your motherboard manual should give you the specifics.

Correct but if you add up 16 for first card 8 for second and 4 more for TB that is 28 already and I have Wifi as well as the other lanes the board uses for functionality. Well I assume it does because the manual says some of the USB and SATA share resources with PCI2 which is what TB I have it plugged into.

 

[Einsteiniac]

Just in case anyone is wondering the Gigabyte Thunderbolt card DOES NOT work in an Asus board. I bought one because they were cheap and dual port since I can only find a single. It doesn't show up in the BIOS.

However the display passthrough still works just none of the functionality of the speakers, USB, ethernet, etc.

 

[Edkroket]

Hi, I have X99-UD4 with i7 5930K, GTX770 or GTX 970 and TB-2 PCI card.
With Clover I'm not able to boot have the OSXAptifix errors.
So now I'm on MB and I got it installed.

Have a few issues:
Boot time is long and I can't figure out where it comes from.
Biggest Issue is Thunderbolt Card not working.

I followed you instructions BIOS settings and so but still no luck.

When do you write a how to??

Thanks anyway

 

[mederock]

Hi !

It's normal, it doesn't work for now with clover, you have to switch to chimera.

For the boot time problem, you have to delete AppleThunderboltNHI.kext with kext wizard.
This kext is for the hot plug with thunderbolt. the system tries to load it at launch but can't that's why the boot is very long.

In which slot did you install you thunderbolt card ?
Do you have windows installed ?
what is your thunderbolt device ?

 

[Edkroket]

Hi !

It's normal, it doesn't work for now with clover, you have to switch to chimera.

For the boot time problem, you have to delete AppleThunderboltNHI.kext with kext wizard.
This kext is for the hot plug with thunderbolt. the system tries to load it at launch but can't that's why the boot is very long.

In which slot did you install you thunderbolt card ?
Do you have windows installed ?
what is your thunderbolt device ?

I run at chimera and without the TB-card boot is fast and machine runs fine!
I have windows on a separate SSD and TB drivers installed.

I have it running now with the TB-card in slot-2 in windows I see my TB to Firewire adapter and TB to ethernet adapter. But when I boot my main display disappear on my HDMI port.
I'm able to get in with screensharing but why is the HDMI port gone when OSX arrives?
Also you mentioned about your card not sending signal through some port. How can you direct that?

In OSX I can see my TB adapters as well. but when I connect a Ethernet cable on it systemprefs won't get a IP number.


So I'm a bit further now but not yet complete.

 

[Edkroket]

Problem solved ! It's just that my displayport output on my 970GTX was not active.

Apple thunderbolt Display works fine with x99-UD4, ONE GTX 970 and gigabyte gc-thunderbolt 2 add-in card.

Can you tell me what you have done to get this setup running? Display port activated? How?
I have the same hardware as you have.
which slot for GPU?
Which slot TB-card?
Bios settings?

I get Black screen when in OSX. Via Screensharing I can see it's all working but I have no video?

 

[mederock]

In OSX I can see my TB adapters as well. but when I connect a Ethernet cable on it systemprefs won't get a IP

What happens when you connect your ethernet cable on windows ?
If nothing happens, try in the bios thunderbolt menu "legacy mode" and "memory 128".
If it does not work you can contact gigabyte esupport, they are very efficient.
I'm not sure I can help you more with that because only the screen of the apple thunderbolt display works, the usb, firewire, webcam, ethernet don't.

I'm able to get in with screensharing but why is the HDMI port gone when OSX arrives?

It's strange I didn't have this problem. First I tried with hdmi display, no problem.
Then 1 hdmi display and 1 apple thunderbolt display, no problem.
Then, 2 thunderbolt display (and no hdmi), 25% of time the 2nd thunderbolt display doesnt't work, I have to boot again so it works.
Your gpu switch to display port output or dvi output ? I don't know how you can force hdmi.

Can you tell me what you have done to get this setup running? Display port activated? How?
I have the same hardware as you have.
which slot for GPU?
Which slot TB-card?
Bios settings?

I have 1 gpu in slot 1, 1 gpu in slot 2, and thunderbolt card in slot 3.
I didn't change settings in bios except for the memory problem.
To "activate" my display port output, I plugged it to a display port screen to check that it was working. Then I rebooted with my display port output connected to the thunderbolt card.


Here is my build : (it s in user build section but will be deleted soon)

Hi !


Here is the hack I’ve done for a friend :


Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4
i7 5930K
32 GB ram
2 GTX 970
Gigabyte GC thunderbolt 2 add-in card
2 Apple Thunderbolt Display
keyboard and bluetooth apple
dongle usb bluetooth
Corsair 860w
yosemite 10.10.2




This hack is for editing (Final Cut Pro X) and After Effects.


I first tried to install with Clover but I figured out that Clover works only if you have just one GPU. With more, there is a problem of « allocation memory ».
The problem is known from the clover developers so I guess it will be fixed in a few weeks/months.


So I installed, at this point without the thunderbolt card, following these topics :


[SUCCESS] i7-5820k / GTX 970 / GA-X99-UD4 Yosemite 10.10.x [Full Temp Guide] (100% Working)
[SUCCESS] i7-5820k @ 4.3ghz, 2x GTX 970, GA-X99-UD4 Yosemite Hackintosh!
[Success] Gigabyte X99 UD4 / I7 5620K / GT610
[SUCCESS] i7-5820k @ 4.2ghz, GTX 760 4Gb OC, GA-X99-UD4 Yosemite Hackintosh!




My post install kext is the same as the one of the first link. My smbios MacPro 3.1.


For audio working, I installed HDAEnabler1.kext with kext wizard. Then I repared autorisations, permissions and I rebooted.
And I installed the patched AppleHDA.kext. Then I repared autorisations, permissions and I rebooted.




Then I plugged the thunderbolt card on the pcie3 slot of the MB.
At boot I got a message in the bios :
« PCI OUT OF RESSOURCES »
So let’s go to the thunderbolt page in the bios and change « memory reserved » from « maximum » to « medium ».


After that reboot, and Yosemite is ok but boot very slow.
I deleted AppleThunderboltNHI.kext and the slow boot problem is gone.


The 2 apple thunderbolt displays are recognize on osx (I didn’t needed windows).


Bluetooth works out of the box with the dongle.


What I didn’t test : imessage, handoff, continuity, wifi, airplay, icloud.
The Mac App Store works.
What is not working :
Sometimes the 2nd Apple thunderbolt display is not recognized at boot, I have to boot again for it works.
The usb, ethernet, firewire ports, micro, webcam of the Apple thunderbolt display don’t work, even with windows.






Benchmarks (I’m a little bit disapointed with the performances ) :


luxmark OpenCL gpu 4263
cpu and gpu 3995


Geekbench
single core : 2724
multi core : 17451




cinebench
OpenGL 52,13 fps
cpu 1011 cb




BruceX : 50s


CUDA-Z
-----------------------
Memory Copy
Host Pinned to Device: 11.49 GiB/s
Host Pageable to Device: 9860.96 MiB/s
Device to Host Pinned: 12.2014 GiB/s
Device to Host Pageable: 11.1972 GiB/s
Device to Device: 61.7004 GiB/s
GPU Core Performance
Single-precision Float: 4037.09 Gflop/s
Double-precision Float: 129.457 Gflop/s
32-bit Integer: 1255.3 Giop/s
24-bit Integer: 969.029 Giop/s

 

[Edkroket]

Thanks for this info. I'll go on with my build.