External Thunderbolt PCI Expansion Chassis and Hub in Development

[chaosbunny]

I recall to have read here multiple times that thunderbolt is not fast enough to support highend desktop gpus. So we are looking at low/middle class gpus at best?

I really like the idea though, desktop-like gaming performance with a small laptop.

 

[Spectrum]

Shame thunderbolt isn't fast enough to support full-speed PCIe cards, otherwise it'd be a lot more interesting.

Exactly. Didn't this idea get discussed and sunk a few weeks ago? Apparently TB doesn't provide enough bandwidth for a top end graphics chip.

However, could it work if the graphics chip only needs to send its output directly on to the display? I don't know about the electronics necessary here at all - pure speculation on my part.

Do you normally go: Processor>Graphics chips>Processor>Graphics chips>Display?

Or just: Processor (data) >Graphics (draw)>Display?

 

[pepitko]

This is a cool idea, you could buy a MacBook Air and dock it for supercharged graphics power and large monitor. I wouldn't worry about it not being able to utilize the latest and most powerful graphics cards, because CPU would become a bottleneck pretty quickly for the lower end Macs.

 

[kyjaotkb]

Yes I wondered that too - hence my comments about writing software drivers. - It would be far better if the hardware supports Mac and PC graphics cards (if this is possible). There are a far greater (and cheaper) range of PC cards available - but they would require the necessary drivers for them to be supported on the Mac.

If the hardware only would work with Mac compatible graphics cards, what's the guarantee that these work under Windows 7 even IF thunderbolt was supported.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4617

Thunderbolt DOES work under Boot Camp / Win 7.
Though, no plug-and-play. Like good'ol parallel/Serial port.
Plus it deactivates plug-and-play on the ExpressCard slot of your MBP17.
Plus it only powers the devics which is directly connected to your TB port.

Anyway, that's a fairly good idea to provide external graphics muscle through TB.
The question is : will there be a TB>PCI case so I can plug-in my 3DFX Voodoo 2 ? Can't wait to run my Glide-enabled games on my shiny new 2011 13" Air.

 

[arn]

Exactly. Didn't this idea get discussed and sunk a few weeks ago? Apparently TB doesn't provide enough bandwidth for a top end graphics chip.

Apparently, going over 4x PCI is not that big a deal in practice:

http://hardocp.com/article/2010/08/25/gtx_480_sli_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x4x4

though I don't know how the MBA's thunderbolt implementation affects it.

arn

 

[Hellhammer]

Apparently, going over 4x PCI is not that big a deal in practice:

http://hardocp.com/article/2010/08/25/gtx_480_sli_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x4x4

though I don't know how the MBA's thunderbolt implementation affects it.

arn

MBA's TB (Eagle Ridge) is still good for 2x10Gb/s, it shouldn't be any slower than the one in MBPs and iMacs (Light Ridge). As far as I know, only 27" iMacs use it at full potential by utilizing two TB ports (2x 2x10Gb/s), other Macs have only one TB port (thus 1x 2x10Gb/s, same as MBA).

This shows PCIe scaling even better.

 

[henrikrox]

This would be so awesome.

However playing in native resolution on the mbp/air, you really dont need a high end gpu. However if you are planning on hooking up a monitor and play, then its a different story.

 

[Hellhammer]

This would be so awesome.

However playing in native resolution on the mbp/air, you really dont need a high end gpu. However if you are planning on hooking up a monitor and play, then its a different story.

I'm pretty sure this would be limited to external monitors. AFAIK, the current ViDock only works with external monitors. It would need some serious software to support the internal display since the external GPU has no connection to the internal display (some kind of SLI/CF setup would be needed so the GPUs can work in parallel and the internal GPU can share the load with the external one).

 

[gnasher729]

Exactly. Didn't this idea get discussed and sunk a few weeks ago? Apparently TB doesn't provide enough bandwidth for a top end graphics chip.

However, could it work if the graphics chip only needs to send its output directly on to the display? I don't know about the electronics necessary here at all - pure speculation on my part.

Do you normally go: Processor>Graphics chips>Processor>Graphics chips>Display?

Or just: Processor (data) >Graphics (draw)>Display?

Apparently lots of people talk a lot without knowing much what they are talking about. While high end graphics cards can use 16 PCI lanes instead of the four the Thunderbolt provides, that doesn't mean they actually improve performance. PCI lanes are only used for sending textures and commands to the graphics card. Giving the graphics card plenty of video RAM avoids having to resend textures, and Thunderbolt is still tons faster than the hard drive that these textures are read from. And you don't send _that_ many commands to the graphics card, especially with physics on the card. And what makes a high end card really high end is the amount of pixelshader code that it can run, and that is completely on the card and doesn't go over Thunderbolt at all.

And the normal case is that a graphics card sends data directly to the display. So an external card could have a DVI or HDMI adapter, or Displayport, or even Thunderbolt so that you can attach two displays, but not connected back to the main computer. It basically works exactly the same as any old graphics card that you buy and put into a MacPro or a desktop PC.

 

[Zulithe]

I love it, but we also need Apple to support more GPU technologies to fully utilize the features of modern PCI-e GPUs. Even Lion is using standards that are several years old.

If reports are correct, Lion has OpenGL 3.2 support, which is a standard from 2009.

OpenGL standards are currently at 4.1, which is more along the lines of what DirectX 11 is capable of.

Even so, as long as one of these devices would work fine with bootcamp (windows 7) i would consider buying one for my macbook pro.

 

[Hurda]

and Thunderbolt is still tons faster than the hard drive that these textures are read from.

That's why textures are usually preloaded into RAM, and DDR3-peak transfer speeds are well above 8 gigabyte(!)/second.

 

[jouster]

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Thats a cool idea. Wouldn't surprise me if Apple themselves have played around with the idea too.

would love to see this on thunderbolt displays. it would actually influence me to buy one.

Think of the new Apple Thunderbolt Display if Apple put a monster GPU in the display and when you dock your MacBook Air it turbo charges it with a beautiful display and ports already there! This sounds like a logical progression for mobile computing coexisting with power users!

That display is $999 without the monster GPU. Add that in and it'll cost more than an iMac.

 

[trip1ex]

This thing will never survive in the marketplace. Doubt it will be practical.

 

[ghost187]

I could really see a Thunderbolt Display with a powerful graphics card built in next year. Actually, they could put an airport extreme and an apple TV in there too. They are way overcharging for those displays anyways. Might as well just make it an iMac without cpu/ram.

 

[crazy dave]

Compatibility of Current Generation ViDock Chassis?

On the Village Instruments website, they state that the current PCIe ExpressCard slot ViDock chassis are compatible (in regards to graphics cards) only with generations 1, 2, and 4 of the MacBook Pro line because Apple has restricted how much memory can be allocated to PCIe devices through the ExpressCard slot. (http://support.villagetronic.com//faq.php?cid=1&answer=3#f3)However that FAQ is old, the last MacBook Pro model discussed is the original unibody 2009 (generation 5) MacBook Pro.

As I have a 2010 generation 6 17 inch MacBook Pro, does anyone know if the same restriction applies? Would I be able to drive an external graphics card through the ExpressCard slot?

Just curious.

---------

When they announced the thunderbolt displays, I did wonder if Apple might include a graphics card. I thought not for a multitude of reasons, but it crossed my mind.

The future should be quite interesting ...

 

[anomie]

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What's the bandwidth? Isn't it only x1? And wouldn't that consume any advantage even out of a mid-range graphics card?

 

[ugru]

Even if TB throughput it's less than PCIe x4 (roughly comparable to 3X) and you cannot put a HD6970 inside the external dock the results of this thing on an external display @FullHD will without any dubt be superior than crappy INTEL HD 3000 ones....

In the end, a MacBook Air 11" or Mac Mini + TB external dock + HD6870 will give you a machine with good gaming performance, at least comparable to a high end iMac, with less money.....

so i'd buy one ASAP....

 

[VitaminD]

I wonder if the output of an external video card using a device such as this can be feed back into a 27" iMac display given that the 27" iMac has 2 Thunderbolt ports?

 

[teloche]

Thats a cool idea. Wouldn't surprise me if Apple themselves have played around with the idea too.

they sure did, making new things and replacing them with newer things in no time has been profitable for apple, as long as their customers are ignorant of the fact that by the time they learn to use or even establish lets say a FCP hardware rig, even with thunderbolt, im certain it will be replaced by fiber optic, way faster then anything.

so yes they planned this out, if you like the way the products looks its apple
if you want the product that works, well, thats another question.

thunderbolt may work, but by the time its a standard i say 3 years on.

 

[kiljoy616]

First I am excited about this as a gamer, but second we may be seen another great reason why Thunderbolt is a sweet tech. So basically you can come home from a hard days ROFL, take out your 13 inch Air and drop Crysis 2 and rock.

 

[antic]

This would be great - I've been clammering for something like this for ages. (Ever since Apple started putting underpowered none-upgradeable graphics cards in their machines.)

I can only see one major downside though...

- Who the heck is going to write the software drivers for these Graphics cards? Apple sure isn't - and it's not like there are a whole bunch of Mac compatible graphics cards out there to choose from...

I think you are being a bit naive if you believe that Apples video drivers only work with the cards found in Macs. There are many thousands of people out there with Mac hacks all using normal AMD & Nvidia cards running OS X perfectly.

 

[gnasher729]

That's why textures are usually preloaded into RAM, and DDR3-peak transfer speeds are well above 8 gigabyte(!)/second.

Irrelevant. The bottleneck is loading from disk into RAM, and Thunderbolt will transfer 1.25 GB per second which is easily 20 seconds of read time from a hard drive. Nobody cares whether it takes 20 seconds or 21 seconds. There are those who care about 8 gigabyte(!)/second numbers, and there are those who care about what technology actually gives them. The first kind are not Apple's target market.

 

[godknows]

I insist that the iMac is actually the perfect dock for a MacBook.

 

[diamond.g]

Apparently, going over 4x PCI is not that big a deal in practice:

http://hardocp.com/article/2010/08/25/gtx_480_sli_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x4x4

though I don't know how the MBA's thunderbolt implementation affects it.

arn

As long as your GPU has gobs of RAM (the example you give has 1.5GB of RAM). You would never need to read textures out of system memory.

Irrelevant. The bottleneck is loading from disk into RAM, and Thunderbolt will transfer 1.25 GB per second which is easily 20 seconds of read time from a hard drive. Nobody cares whether it takes 20 seconds or 21 seconds. There are those who care about 8 gigabyte(!)/second numbers, and there are those who care about what technology actually gives them. The first kind are not Apple's target market.

As far as I know textures wouldn't get read off the disk once you ran out of GPU RAM. They would get read from system memory, like a page file of sorts. I mean in the end yes if comes from disk, but most graphics engines use the loading phase to load everything into RAM. I know that RAGE can stream textures off disk fairly effectively. I think UE3 can as well, but have only seen it used in 360 games.

 

[341328]

dust filters

I hope decent manufacters put washable and removable dust filters on their cases.

It's an easy addition that would help a graphics card getting clogged with dust!