ASUS Unveils World’s First Thunderbolt Add-On Card At Computex

[DejaWiz]

Any word on the Z77 Sabertooth?

I thought the same thing when USB comes out. What can USB do that I can't currently do with Serial/Mouse Port/PCI/ISA?

Although external hard drives is a weak excuse as eSATA takes care of this quite nicely.

There is a TB header on the Z77 ST.

 

[blackhand1001]

1. To connect my TB storage device that I use with my MBP to my desktop to transfer data back and forth at the fastest speeds.

2. To connect my 27" TB Display to my MBP _or_ my desktop.

3. To connect any of a number of peripherals that will start being available on TB now that it's gaining more than just Mac popularity.

Off the top of my head...

eSata would be superior for the transfering data. Its directly connected to the system bus unlike thunderbolt which has the travel through the pci bus.

 

[DejaWiz]

eSata would be superior for the transfering data. Its directly connected to the system bus unlike thunderbolt which has the travel through the pci bus.

Well, the MacBook Pro (MBP) has no eSATA port, iirc. So, that leaves TB. Kind of hard to use an external drive on multiple systems if the ports aren't there.

 

[MrGuvernment]

Oh Please. you act like anyone that's skeptical of a new tech is some sort of Luddite

Something like this comes out every year, the next great thing, Would be awesome if it turned into something cheap, useful and every MB had it. Esata and firewire and USB3.0 work fine for ordinary external device access. This is aimed more at the enterprise market.

Firewire s800T is arguably more practical, in that it uses a standard Cat 5e cable , and ethernet and firewire are usable on the same port. if at speeds a fraction of TB.

Honestly, the things people have a geek orgasm over.

TB add daisy chaining though.. which none of the others can do, not sure what it works with yet... storage i presume.. maybe monitors..

 

[Sly]

Oh that's right. I forgot this wasn't [H] with SLI and Crossfire users and black edition processors. My bad.

Even money, if Intel had engineered this and the PC picked it up before Apple did, it would be welcomed with open arms among you guys. But we'll never know, right?

As has been mentioned before, but it's likely going to be niche rather than an actual competitor for USB,and we at [H] are the niche.

 

[Red Falcon]

eSata would be superior for the transfering data. Its directly connected to the system bus unlike thunderbolt which has the travel through the pci bus.

Well it can be used for video as well, making it more multi-purpose than eSATA.
I do agree with you though, I'd rather have it do one function great rather than a lot of functions mediocre.

 

[CvP]

^ I can tell it's already going to be too much.

As long as it becomes reasonable after a year or so

 

[Red Falcon]

As long as it becomes reasonable after a year or so

...and is available on monoprice.

 

[WarlordBB]

Well it can be used for video as well, making it more multi-purpose than eSATA.
I do agree with you though, I'd rather have it do one function great rather than a lot of functions mediocre.

Look into the specs of TB, find out what it can do. It doesnt sacrifice to handle multiple functions.

Y'all are turning me into what must sound like a fanboy but I really am surprised I'm on HardOCP having to espouse the merits of new technology. This is not just USB ver. Next. If adopted with open arms in the PC world, it stands to bring you 10GbE connections quicker than you'll ever have a 10GbE switch, as well as a whole host of other good things that you' likely poo poo if I listed them.

How do things get adopted? Enthusiasts (that is still you isn't it?) demand them.

Yes, I get that there seems to be a new shiny thing every other month but this, this really is superior technology.

I convinced my work to buy 20 Mac Minis instead of Dell Optiplexes for our most recent call center systems. That's a whole 'nother story but we deployed them by connecting the Mac Minis together via TB and using target disk mode, imaged them. We tried this FireWire first and it was half as fast. Is that a compelling story for why we need TB? No, but it's a good story damnit.

Y'all need to get Hard about TB...

 

[Sly]

How do things get adopted? Enthusiasts (that is still you isn't it?) demand them.

Enthusiast gear doesn't get adopted into mainstream unless it can be reasonably downscaled. That's why we're called enthusiasts.

SSD, SLI, Crossfire, i7, are enthusiast hardware that are too expensive and rarely found in mainstream. You won't find them in office computers that are ordered by the hundreds.

The conflict here is that it's being proposed are replacement for the USB. But we've already seen how that went with firewire. Even tho we're enthusiasts, some of us are sensible enough to know what can and can't work, and a big part of that decision, is the cost.

Yes, I get that there seems to be a new shiny thing every other month but this, this really is superior technology.

It doesn't matter, firewire is long said to be superior to USB, but the cost of implementing it was too much.

I convinced my work to buy 20 Mac Minis instead of Dell Optiplexes for our most recent call center systems. That's a whole 'nother story but we deployed them by connecting the Mac Minis together via TB and using target disk mode, imaged them. We tried this FireWire first and it was half as fast. Is that a compelling story for why we need TB? No, but it's a good story damnit.

Y'all need to get Hard about TB...

For the price of a mac mini, we can get three i3 desktops, or two if you include the monitors and other peripherals.

If you want TB to go mainstream, it has to be cheap enough to go into the entry level motherboards, have TB peripherals be priced competitively, with cables that only cost $1.00. Now tell me, is that possible?

I assure you, the people here posting negatives against it, will gladly put it on their rigs (they're enthusiasts), but unless the price goes down, it'll have a hard time spreading beyond our circle, which is what they're being vocal about.

 

[Skripka]

Enthusiast gear doesn't get adopted into mainstream unless it can be reasonably downscaled. That's why we're called enthusiasts.

SSD, SLI, Crossfire, i7, are enthusiast hardware that are too expensive and rarely found in mainstream. You won't find them in office computers that are ordered by the hundreds.

The conflict here is that it's being proposed are replacement for the USB. But we've already seen how that went with firewire. Even tho we're enthusiasts, some of us are sensible enough to know what can and can't work, and a big part of that decision, is the cost.



It doesn't matter, firewire is long said to be superior to USB, but the cost of implementing it was too much.



For the price of a mac mini, we can get three i3 desktops, or two if you include the monitors and other peripherals.

If you want TB to go mainstream, it has to be cheap enough to go into the entry level motherboards, have TB peripherals be priced competitively, with cables that only cost $1.00. Now tell me, is that possible?

I assure you, the people here posting negatives against it, will gladly put it on their rigs (they're enthusiasts), but unless the price goes down, it'll have a hard time spreading beyond our circle, which is what they're being vocal about.

This post needs a "like" button.

 

[ianken]

Asus should be ashamed of the spaghetti cable hack.

Put the port on the back panel. integrate the video routing into the board. Don't waste my time with this mess.

 

[WarlordBB]

I don't disagree with any of your points Sly. However, and I'm repeating myself, there are benefits to TB over what already exists. No, it's not price competitive but neither was SSD's or <insert high end expensive new tech that is now somewhat ubiquitous and inexpensive here> when they first came out. Do you find SSD's in mainstream systems? Yes, maybe just not entry level.

Competition is not really a factor yet. This stuff will come down. Will it come down enough to meet your mainstream benchmarks, probably not for a long, long time. I don't really give a rats ass as long as I can, for a reasonable fee, have it on MY system so I can connect my external SSD array to my PC as fast as I've been able to connect it to my MBP for the last year.

As someone else already said, it's not exactly reasonably priced to have four 680 video cards in your system but right here's the place where you find such. I'm not missing the point that those are top end parts to tech that does also have reasonably priced versions but in that spirit just think of this as top end USB.

My point is, since when are we ruling out tech solely on price. Y'all aren't arguing against the merits of the specs or anything like that. All I hear is, it costs too much. And? Do you really think those prices are staying like that for the next 5 years or something?

For the price of a mac mini, we can get three i3 desktops, or two if you include the monitors and other peripherals.

No, for the $598 we paid for the i5 Mac Mini including an 8GB memory kit, at the time, you could NOT find a comparably built system (i.e. Dell or HP, not Jim Bob's roll your own) for less than about $500. You sure as hell ain't getting 3 regardless of peripherals.

 

[Red Falcon]

Enthusiast gear doesn't get adopted into mainstream unless it can be reasonably downscaled. That's why we're called enthusiasts.

SSD, SLI, Crossfire, i7, are enthusiast hardware that are too expensive and rarely found in mainstream. You won't find them in office computers that are ordered by the hundreds.

The conflict here is that it's being proposed are replacement for the USB. But we've already seen how that went with firewire. Even tho we're enthusiasts, some of us are sensible enough to know what can and can't work, and a big part of that decision, is the cost.



It doesn't matter, firewire is long said to be superior to USB, but the cost of implementing it was too much.



For the price of a mac mini, we can get three i3 desktops, or two if you include the monitors and other peripherals.

If you want TB to go mainstream, it has to be cheap enough to go into the entry level motherboards, have TB peripherals be priced competitively, with cables that only cost $1.00. Now tell me, is that possible?

I assure you, the people here posting negatives against it, will gladly put it on their rigs (they're enthusiasts), but unless the price goes down, it'll have a hard time spreading beyond our circle, which is what they're being vocal about.

This.
I couldn't have said it better myself.

For the price of a mac mini, we can get three i3 desktops, or two if you include the monitors and other peripherals.

Just what I was thinking.
Unless OS X is needed, why wouldn't one do the above quote?

 

[WarlordBB]

Asus should be ashamed of the spaghetti cable hack.

Put the port on the back panel. integrate the video routing into the board. Don't waste my time with this mess.

I agree. Do it right or GTFO. I hope the MSI board does it right. Haven't checked up on it lately.

 

[WarlordBB]

Just what I was thinking.
Unless OS X is needed, why wouldn't one do the above quote?

We flushed OS X completely (i.e. the image we used had _only_ Windows 7 on it).

We're getting way OT here but, honestly, the real reason I convinced them to buy Mac Mini's was because the system I use to remote is a 2010 Mac Mini running OS X with VM Ware Fusion to run my Windows VM's. I wanted a new Mac Mini but still have a few months to go till my next "system allowance". So I convinced them to buy Mac Mini's and then swapped my old 2010 with one of the new ones claiming I was "having some weird issues".

Now, having said that, I would still argue that it was the better route as opposed to an Optiplex (our owner won't let us build our own, it has to be a pre-built name brand).

Now, to get back on topic, somehow Apple is able to deliver this Mac Mini at a competitive price ($568 for the Mac Mini and then $30 for 8GB kit) and, what do you know, TB built-in...

 

[Red Falcon]

Now, to get back on topic, somehow Apple is able to deliver this Mac Mini at a competitive price ($568 for the Mac Mini and then $30 for 8GB kit) and, what do you know, TB built-in...

Not a bad deal overall, I see your reasoning now, thanks for explaining.

 

[bman212121]

The part that I don't really understand is why people want this so badly for their desktops. For a laptop that you can't put anything else in TB might be useful, but for a desktop you would be spending far more money to do something you can just do internally. For storage I would much rather have it networked than have to plug and unplug my array every time I use it. How inconvenient is it if you want to watch a movie but you have to take your laptop to your array, plug it in, copy it over to the laptop, then go back to the couch so you can watch the movie?

 

[magixx]

Looks cool, doubt it will go into production though

 

[calikool]

The part that I don't really understand is why people want this so badly for their desktops. For a laptop that you can't put anything else in TB might be useful, but for a desktop you would be spending far more money to do something you can just do internally. For storage I would much rather have it networked than have to plug and unplug my array every time I use it. How inconvenient is it if you want to watch a movie but you have to take your laptop to your array, plug it in, copy it over to the laptop, then go back to the couch so you can watch the movie?

Put a TB port on the back of the consumer 10Gbps switch when it is available.

 

[MotionBlur]

Put a TB port on the back of the consumer 10Gbps switch when it is available.

Agreed, 10Gbps between machines would be sweet with RAID Stripes of SSDs becoming more standard or in SSI implementations. Definitely would be interesting.

 

[Red Falcon]

^ Holy necro-res Batman!
But I'm glad we're all in agreement.