Installation and Setup
One of the big selling points for Thunderbolt is its ease of installation and lack of required drivers for system integration. Because the Thunderbolt controller simply creates a hub for PCI Express, all the devices are seen as internally connected to the operating system.
And while that worked nearly flawlessly in my testing, the rest of the installation is pretty damn simple.
As mentioned earlier, the Thunderbolt cable is currently only being sold by Apple for around $50, and thus far none of the Thunderbolt devices are shipping them in the box, not even the $1100 Pegasus R4. Just be prepared for that little 'gotcha' and remember how awesome this will be later.
Once you have the cable connected to your devices (in our case the Pegasus R4) all you have to do is plug in the cable to your motherboard. The area that houses the IC on each end of the cable will actually get warm to the touch after some use though it does not ever get "hot" in my experience.
When attached Windows will detect new hardware, though in our case the "RAID Controller" showed up as not having been installed correctly. Based on my reading this is happening about 50% of the time with the Pegasus drives – others are finding that it will work and mount as a drive correctly the first time.
After simply pointing the device manager driver installer to the files sent along with the Pegasus R4 unit, the device is correctly recognized as a Promise Pegasus 6G RAID Controller and console. Keep in mind that Windows sees this EXTERNAL unit as an internal storage controller, just as you find your other third-party controllers installed on motherboards and through add-in PCIe cards.
This view shows the device manager when configured to show devices by connection rather than type: the tree system is very apparent here. In this image we actually have the Apple Thunderbolt Display connected and you can see the system correctly recognizing the integrated camera and Ethernet controller on it – though without drivers they can't be utilized in Windows just yet.
Once the driver for the R4 was installed, the drive showed up as a local array (not as any kind of network or attached device). This is great as it means application support and even certain backup applications (like Carbonite) will treat the external unit just like any other internal controller.
After the base installation was completed, I installed the new Promise WebPAM Pro software that allows you to manage and control the R4 and R6 units directly from a web browser. It was here that we were able to undo the RAID 5 array that shipped (after doing some initial testing) and set it to RAID 0 for speed testing – and eventually adding the SSDs.
Actually its not entirely
Actually its not entirely accurate to say “any monitor with a DisplayPort connection” will work with Intel Thunderbolt since I believe you need to have at least a DisplayPort v1.1 or higher compatible monitor. Version 1.0 presumably wont work.
Hmm, I hadn’t heard that.
Hmm, I hadn't heard that. I'll check!
I’ll stick with (e)SATA and
I’ll stick with (e)SATA and USB 3.0. Too many issues with TB performance and cost for it to be considered a true SATA and USB 3.0 replacement for the average joe.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thunderbolt-performance-z77a-gd80,3205.html
I read the page on that story
I read the page on that story about the problems, and I didn't see ANY of them. I think the initial push MSI made with their GD80 board was causing much of that. I know that ASUS went through certification with their Premium board and MSI's GD80 has gotten significant updates.
Yea its faster then USB3 but
Yea its faster then USB3 but USB is on every machine for last 15 years and its cheap. TB on other hand it on a hand full of machines and cable ALONE costs a lot so i don’t see TB doing much less intel dumps a ton of cast in to get every computer to have it and gets those prices WAY down.
You realize USB was only on a
You realize USB was only on a handfull of machines when it first started too, right?The cables back then were costly as well.
Not exactly a good argument.
I believe there is already at
I believe there is already at least one Thunderbolt cable not manufactured by Apple already but it is the same ~$50 price. Instead of they typical Apple white color its black.
I agree that Thunderbolt is more expensive then the ubiquitous USB but its not exactly the same thing. For example, in theory you could run high-end graphics subsystems off of Thunderbolt such as something akin to an HD 7970 or GTX680, on a laptop or tablet (with Thunderbolt support). You just cant do that with USB. So the potential is there.
Very good point.
Very good point.
Yes indeed. Sony’s latest Z
Yes indeed. Sony’s latest Z series of laptops features external DVD/AMD graphics card combo.
The Asus “P8Z77-V Pro /
The Asus “P8Z77-V Pro / Thunderbolt” edition motherboard is available now for ~$259.99. It doesn’t have all the features of the P8Z77-V Premium but its cheaper and has built in Thunderbolt.
I wonder if the P8Z77-V
I wonder if the P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT has the same Cactus Ridge controller as the P8Z77-V PREMIUM.
There are different TB controllers that support differing amounts of daisy chaining.
With DisplayPort connectivity
With DisplayPort connectivity built in, is it possible we will see this replacing DVI & HDMI?
Though I love my HP z30w, I want to see 120hz 30 inch monitors. I know there is a new cable standard based on CAT5e/6 networking cables but I’ve not heard anything since it was announced like 2 years ago. With 4k TVs supposedly on the way we need to see some progress on this front.
This is fantastic. I’m
This is fantastic. I’m guessing this will open notebooks and limited desktops alike to portable GPUs. Finally a way to update that notebook video adapter!
I’ve seen the sony in action,
I’ve seen the sony in action, and it’s like a bad joke. Good luck getting the external gpu to work on the integrated monitor. i couldn’t play any games at all on it, and even aero was performing… poorly. Lots of tearing. Not to mention that the external video card requires a discrete power supply, which kills portability, and presumably is a risk to the system if it should ever come unplugged while in use, and this is looking like a design decision that puts hp’s dv6000s to shame. Oh, and the laptop sitting next to it was the same size, cost $100 less, and had a faster gpu built in. It’s a nice thought, but really guys? this is the future? If this is what I have to look forward to, half assed implementations…
Not that it’s a bad idea in and of itself. I would kill for a displaylink adapter that could output dual link dvi and sport its own small gpu inside for hardware accelerated video that can run on only the 10w available through thunderbolt. That should be more than doable, and a killer product. But as it stands, we’re no less than three generations from true external video cards.
I agree with the side
I agree with the side paragraph on “more than storage” although I don’t think people really get this.
This is the way forward with thunderbolt and is highly underrated.
When we start seeing graphics, displays, cpus, SSD banks, in the forms of thunderbolt docs (sure cpu and memory will have to wait for v2 but so did hdd with usb 1 v 2.0)
This is where thunderbolt real benefits will be seen.
Just imaging the ability to dock your phone into your pad which can doc into a workstation or gaming rig.
Each time you get more memory, cpu and gpu power or what ever it is you docked too.
Each time getting an auto backup of your primary medium.
It gives the end consumer similar advantages to blade disk and cloud (think azure cpu scaling) hardware scaleability benefits directly.
Windows OS already allows hot swapping and adding cpus, memory, gpus, hdd (old news) and what not. Now its time for the hardware to catch up to the software.
Asking questions are in fact
Asking questions are in fact fastidious thing if you are not understanding something totally,
however this post provides good understanding even.
So, what happens if you plug
So, what happens if you plug each end of a TB cable into separate PC’s?
USB has A and B plugs to prevent this due to the risk of power related damage and competing hosts. How has TB solved this issue?
It sure would make for a killer “Laplink” cable tho.
I hope that as soon as the bios and driver issues are well settled, we will see TB ports replacing display ports on high-end video cards, a nice way to upgrade a system I think.
TB has a solid future, of that I’m pretty sure but USB will remain a more appropriate bus for cheap and low bandwidth devices for some years yet.
Thanks for the great article, now I wish my new PC had TB in place, guess I’ll have to hold out for the GFX card option.
I bought the asus p8z77
I bought the asus p8z77 pro/thunderbolt and apple thunderbolt display but while i get an image from the iGPU HD 3000 (i7 2600K) on my thunderbolt display, it seems that the discrete card (GTX 560 ti) does not kick in in 3d games although the option is enabled in Lucid virtu MVP. Am I missing something? Can someone help, pls ? The article above seems to tell a different story than mine…..
Some games don’t even start although they appear as supported in lucid mvp, so I must be doing someting wrong
Thank you in advance !
Have you figured out how to
Have you figured out how to get your discrete card to run through your thunderbolt yet? I wanted to make sure this could be done on the pro before I buy one.
I have bought the P8Z77-V
I have bought the P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT too now and an apple thunderbolt display.. i have made the installation so far as described:
– installed all latest drivers (chipset, lan, usb, whatever)
– made bios-update to 1805
– installed latest intel graphics hd driver
– installed latest nvidia driver for my Asus GTX-560 Ti
– installed lucid virtu mvp
– reboot – go to bios and activate iGPU
– connect thunderbolt display and got image..
but i have only a resolution of 640×480 – the device manager is telling me, that the hd graphics card has not enough resources (error 12) and lucid virtu drops an error “wrong gpu configuration”..
all i can find in the manual is, that i have to make sure, that the integrated gpu is not deactivated when a deticated graphics card is installed.. but in the bios, i can’t find a point under “Integrated peripherals” or any other point to control that…
the other thing.. my windows is not on the latest state, cause my install cd is a little bit out-dated and currently i didn’t finish running the updates of windows.. could that cause a problem?
what have configured in this review in the bios? iGPU? Auto? or something else? what whit any other settings like wakeup over tb oder tb settings itself?
exist laptop pc whit
exist laptop pc whit thunderbolt port?