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Am i the only one who doesn't care about thunderbolt?

FW800 is fast enough for all of my needs, for any external peripheral or HD I could want. It might not support the full speed of a 4-SSD RAID, but I am not running anything of that nature external to my Mac Pro.

I don't even use MiniDisplayPort, I use DVI to hook to my 23" Cinema Display.

So Thunderbolt is pointless to me at this moment. It would be a nice to have a really fast-bus way to connect super high speed peripherals and drives, this kinda reminds me of the old days with UltraWide SCSI-3 cards and such that you could put in a PowerMac.

The only really cool thing I see about Thunderbolt is the ability to DaisyChain a ton of external displays, like if you were driving a multidisplay media wall or something. Really, I am happy with my Mac Pro as it is. If a new thunderbolt-equipped Mac Pro comes out anytime soon, I have no need to upgrade.
 
WardC said:
FW800 is fast enough for all of my needs, for any external peripheral or HD I could want. It might not support the full speed of a 4-SSD RAID, but I am not running anything of that nature external to my Mac Pro.
Click to expand...

I dunno. FW800 isn't even fast enough for one SSD...
 
goMac said:
I dunno. FW800 isn't even fast enough for one SSD...
Click to expand...

eSata is so much faster than FW800.

For me, when it comes to storage it makes no sense to buy any of the pre-configured solutions.

I say:
-Buy your own enclosure -- preferably multi-interface including eSata. You can get hot-swappable bays, ultra-RAID...whatever. OWC has nice options.
-Then buy bare drives and install

People don't think of bare drives as being as convenient...but with the right enclosure they are plug and play.
 
goMac said:
I dunno. FW800 isn't even fast enough for one SSD...
Click to expand...

Huh?

SSDs max out FW800 easily. It only has a transfer rate of 0.8Gbp/s or around 100MB per second. The new Intel510s for example can go up to 500MB p/s for read and 315MB p/s for write.

Thunderbolt can theoretically shift more than a gigabyte of data per second, although it is bottlenecked by the SATA interface.
 
gullySn0wCat said:
Huh?

SSDs max out FW800 easily. It only has a transfer rate of 0.8Gbp/s or around 100MB per second. The new Intel510s for example can go up to 500MB p/s for read and 315MB p/s for write.

Thunderbolt can theoretically shift more than a gigabyte of data per second, although it is bottlenecked by the SATA interface.
Click to expand...

You might want to re-read what goMac wrote. I think you misunderstood.
 
gullySn0wCat said:
Thunderbolt can theoretically shift more than a gigabyte of data per second, although it is bottlenecked by the SATA interface.
Click to expand...

Or at least in this point, it would be bottlenecked by the SSD controller since 500MB/s shouldn't be the real world maximum of SATA 6Gb/s (although it may depend on the SATA controller but a good one should be able to provide speeds close to 600MB/s).
 
philipma1957 said:
looks like apple is cranking up a t-bolt team this make me think that t-bolt in mac pros will take some time.
Click to expand...

Quality engineer is testing, not designing, which implies that a lot of new devices with Thunderbolt have already been developed and that they need more quality certification engineers.

The firmware engineer would likely be device side.
 
WardC said:
FW800 is fast enough for all of my needs, for any external peripheral or HD I could want. It might not support the full speed of a 4-SSD RAID, but I am not running anything of that nature external to my Mac Pro.

I don't even use MiniDisplayPort, I use DVI to hook to my 23" Cinema Display.
Click to expand...

Me too on all points.

However, I really like external drives to be bus powered. It is super convenient not to have to drag around extra power supply and cable, then find a free AC port nearby. It's extra hassle to route the wires too.

The problem with bus powered drives right now is that they are 2.5" drives. Expensive, slower, and smaller.

I can see Thunderbolt powering 3.5" external drives over the data cable, and I like that.

It's not enough to get a whole new computer, so I sure hope IBM's "no cards" statement is wrong and that someone makes a PCIe card.
 
TB does sound very promising, and i would like to buy an external monitor once apple adopts OLED...
ps loving the idea of daisy chaining multiple peripherals incld. one HD display

i do wish the redundant expresscard/34 in my MBP 2011 would have better use for the interim period till TB peripheral becomes more available

i would really like to see a functionally working usb3 expresscard 34 as i have a usb3 hdd.. esata on the MBP is bit hit and miss also!
 
goMac said:
The firmware engineer would likely be device side.
Click to expand...
Quite possible they're already adding it to device designs (expect they certainly have plans to if the development cycle's not yet begun for a particular product that could benefit).

But it's also possible that they're expanding the laptop/portable computer lines as well as the iMac to include TB (all have integrated GPU's that can be easily tied to a TB chip).
 
I didnt think this thread would get so many posts!

I dont see why you would need an SSD to be external. They perform best for the operating system and applications. So put it inside. That still leaves space for another 5 Drives without much modifications to the Mac Pro. with 3TB HDD's that a possible 15TB's of fast storage (depending on how you set it up with RAID etc..). So why would you really NEED more storage space with speeds that exceed esata?

For me my only external drives are for backups and complete work, so FW800 is fast enough for that.
 
mjsmke said:
I didnt think this thread would get so many posts!

I dont see why you would need an SSD to be external. They perform best for the operating system and applications. So put it inside. That still leaves space for another 5 Drives without much modifications to the Mac Pro. with 3TB HDD's that a possible 15TB's of fast storage (depending on how you set it up with RAID etc..). So why would you really NEED more storage space with speeds that exceed esata?

For me my only external drives are for backups and complete work, so FW800 is fast enough for that.
Click to expand...

Indeed. My only external drive is the "weekly clone" backup drive I use.
 
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