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MacBook Air + RED Rocket via Thunderbolt

Interesting! I hadn't seen that Sonnet Chassis. However their website store doesn't seem to work, is it available to purchase yet? Price?
 
Sonnet it is a weird company...they brag all day about their products....yet they never release the damn things to the public! The PCI-e/34 to thunderbolt adapter is finally for sale....they've been talking about it for like a year now! Who knows when this chassis will be for sale!!! What I want to know is, will we be able to buy a high end graphics card. Plug it into the MBA and use it for gaming in windows?? If so it would basically make buying a desktop obsolete...the MBA can handle everything flawlessly....add in the ability to plug in a high end GPU and plug into a display (the chassis has an output TB plug...hopefully it will allow display out!!)

When is someone going to create a proper TB dock for the MBA already???
 
gentlefury said:
Sonnet it is a weird company...they brag all day about their products....yet they never release the damn things to the public! The PCI-e/34 to thunderbolt adapter is finally for sale....they've been talking about it for like a year now! Who knows when this chassis will be for sale!!! What I want to know is, will we be able to buy a high end graphics card. Plug it into the MBA and use it for gaming in windows?? If so it would basically make buying a desktop obsolete...the MBA can handle everything flawlessly....add in the ability to plug in a high end GPU and plug into a display (the chassis has an output TB plug...hopefully it will allow display out!!)

When is someone going to create a proper TB dock for the MBA already???
Click to expand...

Exactly - although hopefully they would bring in drivers for OSX so we can just play in that. I have a bootcamp partition, but don't want to use it unless I absolutely HAVE to. I don't miss windows at all!

But basically, having an MBA and a dock is amazing. I had a desktop PC when I bought my MBA, it very very quickly become redundant. Now I've bought a 24" ACD and a stand etc. so that my MBA can either be a desktop or portable... Who would want to spend money twice? If I only I could add a graphics card to it (and a few more ports) it would do everything. Would love either a chassis with ports, or a display with built in gcard! Although the latter is less good as things would go out of date faster...
 
Oli3000 said:
Exactly - although hopefully they would bring in drivers for OSX so we can just play in that. I have a bootcamp partition, but don't want to use it unless I absolutely HAVE to. I don't miss windows at all!

But basically, having an MBA and a dock is amazing. I had a desktop PC when I bought my MBA, it very very quickly become redundant. Now I've bought a 24" ACD and a stand etc. so that my MBA can either be a desktop or portable... Who would want to spend money twice? If I only I could add a graphics card to it (and a few more ports) it would do everything. Would love either a chassis with ports, or a display with built in gcard! Although the latter is less good as things would go out of date faster...
Click to expand...

I just think it would be perfect if you could have a high end GPU for use at home, then what comes with it on the go. That way you can have the power of a desktop at home and the form of a micro portable on the go.
 
Response on the Thunderbolt MacBook RED tech demo

Saw this on the RED forum in response to questions about his demo. This guy is from Adobe.

----
Just thought I'd respond to a few questions on the Thunderbolt (TB) demo.

No real reason I chose to show it to run under Windows 7 other than I've been surprised that we haven't seen any demos of Windows running TB before now. It actually works pretty good in it's current beta state. That said the Mac OS kicks @ss running the same config. Please keep in mind that half the battle is getting alpha/beta Windows drivers for each TB device. All TB devices need drivers at some level. There are also various rules about the order of TB devices in the chain and the number of devices. Laptops and desktops have different TB controller chips and each has different limitations - Welcome to what I call THUNDER WARS.

The Mac + TB is really last years news and we all want more TB peripherals to start shipping and to start showing Intel and PC makers that there is lots interest on both sides and it will benefit all TB users. I have no preference on OS and use both everyday.

Adobe and Intel are working weekly on various things and TB is near the top of the list. They have been great about picking Adobe ProVideo to partner on all things TB and we want to insure our Premiere & AE users we are running all on cylinders when it comes to TB. I have provided TB devices to both engineering teams and you can bet they are making good use of them ;) Yes, Dave McGavran and his Premiere Pro development team have been busy.
 
This is something my friends and I (avid lanners) have been clamoring for for years, and it's exciting technology.

I won't claim to have a complete understanding of this environment, but isn't this setup limited by the speed of PCI-E 2.0 as opposed to the speed of the interface? I mean, over thunderbolt this will have the same performance of the expresscard options that have been around for a while, right? I'd read before that it'll be around half of the performance that you'd get out of putting a card into a desktop system. Still a huge boost over the IGP in most cases, but worth clarifying.

Would love to hear from insight from people with a more complete understanding of the technology.
 
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