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Sonnet Shipping First New Thunderbolt 2 PCIe Expansion Chassis

macduke said:
Again, these are for professionals.
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No they aren't. These are for everyone who requires PCI expansion, which is why they have a rack mount version and desktop versions.

This may include professionals, but it is also for home users and gamers.

That's just how much they cost... Which is a lot.
 
barkmonster said:
There really should a Thunderbolt usage for beginners FAQ on here somewhere and if there is, it should be linked on every thunderbolt article for easy reference.

Thunderbolt2 offers 2 x 10Gbit/s channels combined. Thunderbolt offers them as seperate channels. Neither of those speeds offer anywhere near the bandwidth of a 16xPCie card and even then, most higher end GPUs are double-wide and need internal power. You'd end up using 2 slots for 1 card, leaving only 1 PCIe slot for other uses and then cripple the card with bandwidth that doesn't even come close to 4xPCIe.
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You misunderstand my question. I'm not a Thunderbolt beginner.

I asked why graphics cards aren't compatible with this enclosure. From the results in the forums, the Vidock clearly is compatible with graphics cards. Yes, people are already using graphics cards over Thunderbolt in other enclosures.

Despite the drastically reduced bandwidth, the external graphics card is a huge improvement over the internal GPU. Benchmarks show that drastically reduced PCIe bandwidth does not have an identically drastically equivalent reduction in actual performance. But to those paying attention to external GPUs, we've already known this since the early days of hooking them up to laptops even over 1x PCIe via Express Cards.
 
Porco said:
If you have a mac with two TB ports, I don't really understand why one would buy the three-slot when you can get two of the two-slots for barely any more money… ?

Great that these exist though.
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I own one of the III-Ds (the upgrade to TB2 is replacing the card inside, so I'll be doing that).

It is not obvious until you dig a bit deeper, but the Echo Express II-SE (2-slot version) differs from the Echo Express III-D (3-slot version) in that the III-d supports full-length cards, while the II SE supports half-length cards only.

I'm using mine to host a few SSDs. I can install 6 SSDs in the III-D by using Tempo Pro or Tempo cards with 2 drives on each.

Had I gone with the II-SE, I could only use the Tempo and then only in the single-drive configuration (i.e., the II SE can only host 2 drives total).

That might work for some, but if one plans to use more than 2 fast drives the II SE is a non-starter.
 
The little squiggly red heat arrows coming out the top make me chuckle.

I am not really interested in this product for my own uses (since apparently I was under false impressions about the capabilities of Thunderbolt regarding graphics cards) but am happy to see thunderbolt advancing along.
 
critter13 said:
That would be a shame, external graphics card could make a MBA even more appealing
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In most cases it would be cheaper to buy a MBP. Except for the case of compute acceleration I've just don't see a rational reason for external GPU's. The whole point of a laptop is portability.
 
analog guy said:
I own one of the III-Ds (the upgrade to TB2 is replacing the card inside, so I'll be doing that).

It is not obvious until you dig a bit deeper, but the Echo Express II-SE (2-slot version) differs from the Echo Express III-D (3-slot version) in that the III-d supports full-length cards, while the II SE supports half-length cards only.

[….]
Click to expand...

Ah… good to know. I thought there must be a good reason!
 
imageWIS said:
That's the prob with Thunderbolt: the prices are astronomical UNLESS you are a corporation or very wealthy. The rest of us are SOL. :mad:
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well, maybe so, but i suspect the target market for this is more for the person who replaced a Mac Pro (1,1-5,1) with a new Mac Pro (6,1) than for someone using a lower-end MBA or MBP.

sonnet are not trying to capture a portable market here.

if one can saturate the TB2 bandwidth, then one needs something like this...or if one wants a PCIe card in their nMP they don't have too many choices for less $$. half-length enclosures are ~$500 and full-length are $900-1,000. this one, however, has TB2 while the others do not yet have it.
 
eladnova said:
These dont officially support Graphics Cards, right?

I heard something about intel not approving external GPus andthen driver probs?
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Graphics cards work fine in windows in every current mac except for the Mac mini , there is no OS X driver support yet. I was one of the few people who set up a geforce Titan over thunderbolt to a MacBook Pro when the last version first came out.
 
magbarn said:
Doesn't TB2 support channel bonding? Even without bonding the channels you still have 10Gbit which approx equal to PCIeX4. There's been several benchmarks done on earlier GPU cards with different PCIeXx connections and unless you're gaming at 1024x768, the loss in fps from going from PCIeX16 down to PCIeX4 is minimal at higher resolutions. The lack of a TB2 to GPU adapter is purely political from Intel and possibly Apple's standpoint as the ability to plug in a GTX780 to upgrade your 2012 rMBP would keep upgrade dollars out of their hands as the lowliest i5 in rMBP is more than capable of driving a AMD 290 or Nvidia GTX 780

EDIT:
HERE
is a great article, looks like AMD cards take a smaller hit than Nvidia cards with <x16 PCIex
Click to expand...

10Gbit is equal to 4xPCIe but not PCIe Gen2/Gen3.
Gen2 is 5Gbs and Gen3 is 8Gbs.
It may be equal to 4 Gen1 links but that's it.
Gen2 gives you 20Gbs for four lanes
Gen3 gives you 32Gbs for four lanes (actually more because Gen3 is ~9Gbs)

Now you can have up to 16 lanes on a single PCIe slot.
Think about the bandwidth of Gen3 x16 => 8Gbs x 16 = 128Gbs.

Thunderbolt is a slow peripheral interface compared to in the box PCIe.
 
analog guy said:
well, maybe so, but i suspect the target market for this is more for the person who replaced a Mac Pro (1,1-5,1) with a new Mac Pro (6,1) than for someone using a lower-end MBA or MBP.

sonnet are not trying to capture a portable market here.

if one can saturate the TB2 bandwidth, then one needs something like this...or if one wants a PCIe card in their nMP they don't have too many choices for less $$. half-length enclosures are ~$500 and full-length are $900-1,000. this one, however, has TB2 while the others do not yet have it.
Click to expand...

Perhaps I wasn't clear, I meant TB in general, i.e. all TB items, from cables to even the simplest external HD.
 
macduke said:
Again, these are for professionals.
Click to expand...

Just because it's for "professionals" doesn't mean it has to be expensive!

It's like being a "professional" product is an excuse to price gouge the customer.


Though being a niche product these prices are okay, otherwise it's all still quite pricey when you factor the fact that you can't do anything with these enclosures by themselves.
 
wikiverse said:
No they aren't. These are for everyone who requires PCI expansion, which is why they have a rack mount version and desktop versions.

This may include professionals, but it is also for home users and gamers.

That's just how much they cost... Which is a lot.
Click to expand...

No, these are for professionals.

These aren't for home users and gamers.

The audience is defined by the price. Home users and gamers don't spend $1000 on PCI expansion slots.
 
prowlmedia said:
In all fairness Sonnet do very high end kit and charge too much. MLink is a cheaper option.
Click to expand...

does MLink have an option for full-length cards? i see one product for full-length cards, but it is $600 and for ONE card only.

there are a couple other manufacturers who make enclosures for full-length cards (2-3 cards) but they are all $900-1,000 and don't have sonnet's reputation.

thank you!
 
alphaod said:
Just because it's for "professionals" doesn't mean it has to be expensive!

It's like being a "professional" product is an excuse to price gouge the customer.


Though being a niche product these prices are okay, otherwise it's all still quite pricey when you factor the fact that you can't do anything with these enclosures by themselves.
Click to expand...

Yah I think the price is fine. LOL @ complaining about $500 PCI expansion slots when you're paying $80,000 for a camera.
 
analog guy said:
does MLink have an option for full-length cards? i see one product for full-length cards, but it is $600 and for ONE card only.

there are a couple other manufacturers who make enclosures for full-length cards (2-3 cards) but they are all $900-1,000 and don't have sonnet's reputation.

thank you!
Click to expand...

The new ones are not on there yet.

Thank you! <rolls eyes>
 
mozumder said:
Yah I think the price is fine. LOL @ complaining about $500 PCI expansion slots when you're paying $80,000 for a camera.
Click to expand...

If you are going to buy say a RED camera, you are also going to buy their hardware, and not an expansion chassis.
 
barkmonster said:
There really should a Thunderbolt usage for beginners FAQ on here somewhere and if there is, it should be linked on every thunderbolt article for easy reference.

Thunderbolt2 offers 2 x 10Gbit/s channels combined. Thunderbolt offers them as seperate channels. Neither of those speeds offer anywhere near the bandwidth of a 16xPCie card and even then, most higher end GPUs are double-wide and need internal power. You'd end up using 2 slots for 1 card, leaving only 1 PCIe slot for other uses and then cripple the card with bandwidth that doesn't even come close to 4xPCIe.
Click to expand...

While I understand that Thunderbolt has a MUCH lower bandwidth than x16 (8 GB/s), couldn't a graphics card, not necessarily a powerful one, still increase the computational power for gfx a fair amount?
 
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