Thunderbolt Ready Program Lets You Add Thunderbolt Card to Your Motherboard
Now you don't have to buy a Thunderbolt-equipped motherboard to get Thunderbolt.
This week Intel announced plans for a new 'Thunderbolt ready' program that will allow users to add Thunderbolt to their PC with the addition of a simple card. The company is hoping the upgrade program will expand the footprint of Thunderbolt and is working with PC manufacturers to label motherboards 'Thunderbolt ready,' which means users without Thunderbolt can add it at a later date themselves.
Upgrading requires a GPIO header, but Intel promises the upgrade process is relatively easy. The Thunderbolt card slips right into a PCIe slot, and an included cable connects to the GPIO header. (You'll also need an available DP out connector from your mobo's processor graphics, or an external graphics card.)
"Since the beginning, 'Is there an add-in card for this?' has been one of the more popular questions asked of Thunderbolt," Intel wrote in a blog post. "Today, the answer is an enthusiastic 'yes,' and the introduction of the Thunderbolt ready program will dramatically increase the availability of Thunderbolt technology, bringing 20Gbps bandwidth, data and display over a single cable, and daisy-chain connectivity of up to six devices, to a far larger range of users in the marketplace."
Intel has named Asus as the first partner in the Thunderbolt Ready program. Asus has developed the first Thunderbolt card, the Asus ThunderboltEX II, which will go along with the Asus Z87Z Pro and adds Thunderbolt 2. Other OEMs will launch Thunderbolt Ready cards, mobos, and desktops next year.
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Besides, Intel is still using the old DMI bus between the CPU and chipset so going through the x4 slot fed from the chipset could turn into a bottleneck before Thunderbolt gets a chance to flex its muscles. Intel needs to step that up a notch.
The original Thunderbolt is only 20Gbps or equivalent to PCIe 2.0 x4. Many GPUs will start to bottleneck on that and the DMI bus between the CPU and chipset can barely handle that much so you get extra latency and potential bottlenecking there.
This is one area where I feel PC makers have completely dropped the ball. Every Apple laptop is equipped with a Thunderbolt port and almost no PC "ultra"-books have them. There is nothing "Ultra" about PC ultra books!!!! Especially considering that al MacBooks now have ultra-fast PCI Express SSD's as well. Why can't PC users have these things? Because PC users don''t want them! Why don't PC users want enhanced connectivity? Because they are stupid iHaters!
I would say mostly because most people neither need them nor want to pay a premium for stuff they are unlikely to ever need. Having data and display in one cable may sound neat but there are plenty of people who don't feel like this is worth the $50-200 premium.
Thunderbolt won't replace USB for my mouse, keyboard, tablet, phone, printer, scanner, headset, etc. and USB3 is already much faster than my external HDDs will ever need. USB is not going to go away any time soon with so many devices for which the extra cost, power and bandwidth make no sense.
This is one area where I feel PC makers have completely dropped the ball. Every Apple laptop is equipped with a Thunderbolt port and almost no PC "ultra"-books have them. There is nothing "Ultra" about PC ultra books!!!! Especially considering that al MacBooks now have ultra-fast PCI Express SSD's as well. Why can't PC users have these things? Because PC users don''t want them! Why don't PC users want enhanced connectivity? Because they are stupid iHaters!
OR every mac has TB ports because Intel had a exclusive deal with them at first.
If you want to release something that uses more expensive active cables(not that I think active cables are bad.) adds more overall cost do you ask acer or another maker who sells 300 dollar computers or do you ask the one of the companies that already knows how to get users to spend more to begin with?
It is called business.
Firewire was the same thing, cost more(and was superior to usb), but for most users did not add enough to be worth the entry price.
When Apple sells a 300 dollar system for the average facebook user(a honest majority of users now do not use the internet for anything else) let me know.
Do not take this wrong, they design some great machines, but like anything else, variety is always good and you get much more on the pc side of things. Some users want to pay lots of money for a computer to use for everything, others just want it for occasional use and do not need all these extras.
RIP
Firewire
RIP
Firewire
Sony is also partially to blame for that one since FireWire was an Apple-Sony collaboration.