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Thunderbolt Port Pictured on Z77 MSI Motherboard

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Alfa147x said:
iammachine said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZB_l0CnCTA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

for all the Displayport naysayers, in this video they show you the thunderbolt controller on the motherboard, now the only question is will OSX support this out of the box or is it a version that Apple doesn't use.
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There is a high chance that OS X will easily support them since there are only a few controllers out and they are all from the same manufacturer.
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Even if it does, I could see the display being powered by HD4k, but in terms of getting automated graphics switching working and getting your discrete card, that seems pretty iffy....

On the Windows front they have it working w/ a gtx 680 w/ some Virtu technology/software.. I'm less sure about hackintosh solution for getting a headless graphics card running through thunderbolt display.
 
Good point. Why not use the discrete graphics card all of the time? Just hook your display up to it.

Are there any downsides I am missing?

I wonder how OS X would handle the switching since they do some type of switching on the Mac Book Pros with discrete GPUs
 
Alfa147x said:
Good point. Why not use the discrete graphics card all of the time? Just hook your display up to it.

Are there any downsides I am missing?

I wonder how OS X would handle the switching since they do some type of switching on the Mac Book Pros with discrete GPUs
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I happen to own the Thunderbolt Displays and they won't work w/ the outputs on a discrete GPU, but rather only a Thunderbolt port.... i've been happily using them w/ my MBP for the last 6mo, but now my needs are changing and I'm looking to use them w/ a proper desktop.... so that leaves me w/ an iMac (really don't want one), maybe a new mac pro (would love that), or a hackintosh solution which would also make me happy... or I need to trade them for Cinema Displays or sell them (not likely happening, like 5 other people in my city are selling TB displays on craigs) /firstworldproblems.
 
cosmicjoke said:
Even if it does, I could see the display being powered by HD4k, but in terms of getting automated graphics switching working and getting your discrete card, that seems pretty iffy....

On the Windows front they have it working w/ a gtx 680 w/ some Virtu technology/software.. I'm less sure about hackintosh solution for getting a headless graphics card running through thunderbolt display.
Click to expand...

It would be beneficial to see how Apple tackles this problem with a new set of Mac Pros!

I was definitely impressed with the review showing Virtu working with TB in Windows, though. It really wasn't necessary for a first look video, but AnandTech went that extra mile. This is the first time I've seen a TB display driven by anything other than on-board graphics, so it strikes me as a good sign, even though it's not a solution for Hackintoshes.
 
phocion said:
I was definitely impressed with the review showing Virtu working with TB in Windows, though. It really wasn't necessary for a first look video, but AnandTech went that extra mile. This is the first time I've seen a TB display driven by anything other than on-board graphics, so it strikes me as a good sign, even though it's not a solution for Hackintoshes.
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Hmm? What do you mean, on a PC? This is the first time I've seen a PC utilize Thunderbolt/Displays... On my MBP, just the act of putting it in clamshell disables the system on a chip graphics, the displays are entirely driven by its 6770m.

I guess it would be curious to see how a Mac Pro is designed for thunderbolt, it's hard for me to imagine several displayports on its graphics card and a thunderbolt port or two on their logic board.... would be amusing, will prompt many calls to tech support I'm sure :p maybe they'd use a dual dvi graphics card and have the backwards compatible thunderbolt ports on the logic board for Thunderbolt/Cinema Displays... I think automatic graphics switching is already the equivalent of Virtu, I think the technology is more or less in place.
 
Anandtech says:
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.
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I'm guessing it's going to be 100% hackintosh compatible out of the box
 
xdid5 said:
Man I hope they make a pcie card for thunderbolt (if its even possible)!! I just bought a great motherboard! :problem: :banghead:
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Thunderbolt uses 4 PCI-E v2.0 lanes, so you'd have to have a free x4 (or greater) slot for it, besides the slot for your 3d video card.

It would be nice if there was a thunderbolt compatible card that uses just 2 x pci-e 3.0 lanes (since each lane is twice the bandwidth of pci-e v2.0.)
 
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