Pre-Computex Thunderbolt on PC Motherboards Overview

[tonymacx86]

Thunderbolt Comes To The Windows PC
http://vr-zone.com/articles/thunderbolt ... 15929.html

Decent early once-over on features and functionality of Thunderbolt on these early Thunderbolt enabled motherboards.

 

[Alfa147x]

I'm guessing the Z77A-GD80 from MSI is the best bet for hackintoshing. Seems like the Kext are available and are stable for all things on board. And if what Anandtech says is true:

The beauty of Thunderbolt is it's near invisible to the OS. You don't need to install any drivers to take advantage of it, just plug your devices in and as long as your devices have driver support they'll just appear. The OS has no idea that your SATA, Ethernet or RAID controllers are sitting a few feet outside of your box, they all appear as normal PCIe devices.

Then getting T-Bolt to work with OS X should be easy. I might pick up the MSI board on launch day. Just need to learn how to make DSDTs

What board is everyone else looking to pick up?
Also do ASUS UEFI boards have some type of locked power management which makes them difficult to hackintosh?

 

[p8blr]

I have a question. Since thunderbolt can display video via display port, it must be using the onboard Intel HD Graphics. But what if I install an add-in graphics card, will the thunderbolt port utilize that graphics card, or is it bound to the intel graphics forever?

Edit: New video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1t7Rc9q ... ture=g-u-u

 

[renjithis]

I'm guessing the Z77A-GD80 from MSI is the best bet for hackintoshing. Seems like the Kext are available and are stable for all things on board. And if what Anandtech says is true:

The beauty of Thunderbolt is it's near invisible to the OS. You don't need to install any drivers to take advantage of it, just plug your devices in and as long as your devices have driver support they'll just appear. The OS has no idea that your SATA, Ethernet or RAID controllers are sitting a few feet outside of your box, they all appear as normal PCIe devices.

Then getting T-Bolt to work with OS X should be easy. I might pick up the MSI board on launch day. Just need to learn how to make DSDTs

What board is everyone else looking to pick up?
Also do ASUS UEFI boards have some type of locked power management which makes them difficult to hackintosh?

I have an ASUS P8Z68-V LE (which has UEFI) board with hackintosh Lion 10.7.3
I don't have sleep functionality - it wont wake up. But that maybe because I haven't tried to get it work (I don't use sleep, even when I had them, I just shutdown my PC)

 

[the_gael]

Thunderbolt Comes To The Windows PC
http://vr-zone.com/articles/thunderbolt ... 15929.html

Decent early once-over on features and functionality of Thunderbolt on these early Thunderbolt enabled motherboards.

I'm sure you will be looking for an hackintosh solution for this

 

[Badeendje]

Anyone seen any M-ATX boards with Thunderbolt yet? So far I've seen several brands but all full ATX.
I'd like to buy one of those, and on paper they have all the PCI-e lanes available for thunderbolt...
For me it's a reason to postpone my M-ATX build as I want to connect a raid 1 enclosure for storage.

 

[geigi]

Found a Video-Review on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hmpmoWHrEM

 

[pwalth21]

I have a question. Since thunderbolt can display video via display port, it must be using the onboard Intel HD Graphics. But what if I install an add-in graphics card, will the thunderbolt port utilize that graphics card, or is it bound to the intel graphics forever?

Edit: New video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1t7Rc9q ... ture=g-u-u

I thought this was a very good question. How is that going to work for hackintoshing? With that OS X not being able to use multiple GPUs is that going to mean TB displays are going to have to run off of onboard?

 

[Alfa147x]

Using a Dedicated GPU most likely will be fine.

Anand (Link) said it's invisible to the OS so all of the switching will be handled by the Cactus Ridge controller. A high chance of OS X support, since there are VERY few Thunderbolt controllers out and the Cactus Ridge controller is used in Apple products. The controller already does GPU switching between the Intel HD Graphics 3000 and a 6750M / 6770M on the MBPs. On laptops the GPU is still using PCIe lanes just the same way on a desktop PCIe lanes are used for our graphics cards.

The MSI board seems to be packing the DSL3510 which is the quad-channel dual DisplayPort vs the double channel single DisplayPort model DSL3310.

Another aspect that makes the DSL3510 interesting is that it supports multiple internal DisplayPort inputs. What this means is that it could in theory interface with a discrete graphics card as well as the integrated graphics from an Intel CPU.

(Link)

Since only two Thunderbolt controllers exist (DSL3510 and DSL3310) we will mostly likely see support with the new Ivy Bridge Mac that are (hopefully) released soon.

 

[subaro0o]

I would buy it instantly right now from new egg (they have it in stock) if I didnt just build the X79 rig.. I am gonna need a new rig at work soon though!

Anyone order one yet?? Maybe I'll be tempted to try if you will offer help if needed!