Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge & Thunderbolt

[kmhacker]

I have a great early generation Sandy Bridge Hackintosh I use for video editing. I am thinking of upgrading to a new Z77 mobo with dual thunderbolt. Do I need to upgrade the proc as well or can I get away with my old proc on the new Ivy Bridge mobo?

Thanks,

KMH

 

[sonicseamus]

As long as you aren't using the HD3000 graphics on the Sandy Bridge processor, the answer is yes. However, you won't be able to take advantage of all of the features on the new Z77 board as many are Ivy-specific.

 

[Going Bald]

As long as you aren't using the HD3000 graphics on the Sandy Bridge processor...

Why you say this? SB HD3000 works on IB board. I had a 2500K on the MSI Z77A-GD65 working with HDMI OOB.

 

[sonicseamus]

Sorry GB. I had just heard of problems like these people's, but I guess they don't happen for everyone. Maybe it's 'cuz you're using an MSI board? Either way, it should be doable, even if a little tinkering is required.

 

[Going Bald]

Sorry GB. I had just heard of problems like these people's, but I guess they don't happen for everyone. Maybe it's 'cuz you're using an MSI board? Either way, it should be doable, even if a little tinkering is required.

It also works on an ASUS board.
I didn't bother to read the whole string, but here is what I did:
1. boot to BIOS and select optimized defaults
2. check to make sure AHCI SATA (this was default setting)
3. check to enable s3, disable s5 setting and enable wake from S3 by USB device
4. set first init gfx device to iGPU and set iGPU memory to 64Gb.
5. save & exit

 

[dtrvndrn]

As long as you aren't using the HD3000 graphics on the Sandy Bridge processor, the answer is yes. However, you won't be able to take advantage of all of the features on the new Z77 board as many are Ivy-specific.

I was wondering about the same as I 'd like to upgrade my mATX system to ATX but keep the 2600k CPU. Which are the IB features that won't work? Thunderbolt and PCIe3.0?

 

[Going Bald]

I was wondering about the same as I 'd like to upgrade my mATX system to ATX but keep the 2600k CPU. Which are the IB features that won't work? Thunderbolt and PCIe3.0?

TB and PCIe3.0 are not supported in SB, so they definitely will not work.

What you should do is download the manual for the board you are thinking about getting and compare the system block diagram in the manual to the one in your SB manual. Basically, anything handled by the 6 chipset that has moved to the processor on the 7 chipset, or that exists in the 7 series board block diagram that does not exist in the 6 series block diagram will not be functional with a SB CPU on an IB board.

 

[dtrvndrn]

tanx for clarifying!

 

[kmhacker]

TB and PCIe are not supported in SB, so they definitely will not work.

So, an Ivy Bridge proc is required to get Thunderbolt to work. Thanks GB!