AMD: Thunderbolt Another Proprietary Standard

[GaMEChld]

[citation][nom]echdskech[/nom]That said, if TB does speak PCI-E, wouldn't it follow that external desktop-spec graphics cards for laptops are not only feasible but relatively trivial? (Even if they would require their own power brick or two =p) I imagine a TB-to-PCI-E-16x slot adapter mated to a couple of 200W pico-psu's (the ones used in ITX PCs) should allow a vanilla desktop card to run. Or I could just be dreaming...[/citation]

A nice notion, but that's probably impossible. You are talking about PCI-E x16, which carries 16 PCI-E lanes. Thunderbolt carries only one PCI-E lane. It's funny, as a high bandwidth interconnect, it has people excited, but people forget how much bandwidth is needed on the inside of the computer. An external video card would pretty much annihilate the bandwidth of TB.

If on the other hand, TB makes the evolution to Fiber Optic, maybe then it'll have the capacity needed for a project like that. However, it does seem unlikely even in that case, because the entire mobile graphics evolution has been making the existing integrated graphics smaller, faster, and more efficient. We are nearing a point where an external video card for a laptop would be wholly unnecessary. Even now, there exists laptops that have some crazy Crossfire Radeon 6970's and other ridiculous things. How much more do we really need out of a laptop?

 

[echdskech]

[citation][nom]GaMEChld[/nom]A nice notion, but that's probably impossible. You are talking about PCI-E x16, which carries 16 PCI-E lanes. Thunderbolt carries only one PCI-E lane. It's funny, as a high bandwidth interconnect, it has people excited, but people forget how much bandwidth is needed on the inside of the computer. An external video card would pretty much annihilate the bandwidth of TB.[/citation]

Thanks for pointing that out to me. A quick trip to Wikipedia indicated that a single TB link, in its current spec, is just enough for a 4x PCI-E v1 link (10Gbps vs 8Gbps). Most anything worth putting in my suggested device would definitely choke.

[citation][nom]GaMEChld[/nom]How much more do we really need out of a laptop?[/citation]

If my laptop can game even half as well as my desktop can, I'd drop my desktop in a heartbeat. That's considering my desktop's over 3 years old and my lappy's not even 3 months. =)

 

[GaMEChld]

[citation][nom]echdskech[/nom]If my laptop can game even half as well as my desktop can, I'd drop my desktop in a heartbeat. That's considering my desktop's over 3 years old and my lappy's not even 3 months. =)[/citation]
I bet there are laptops that can game half as well as your desktop or match it (I am ignorant of your desktop specs) but the ultimate problem becomes price. That example I used of a laptop with dual Radeon 6970M is probably around $5000. (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6970m-mobility-radeon-eurocom-panther,2847.html)

Until desktop video cards stop making big performance gains every year like clockwork, laptops will always trail in the price/performance point as far as video cards are concerned. However, as a gamer, at some point you can say enough is enough, because now (unfortunately or fortunately depending how you look at it) most of the games making it onto the PC these days are simply console ports, and are designed to run on much less powerful hardware.

If however you are a graphics professional, and constant improvements to the tech is a productivity concern, then bring on the powerful cards every year!

 

[jkflipflop98]

[citation][nom]Vladislaus[/nom]Hard drives don't even come close of saturating sata 3gb/s, let alone sata 6 gb/s.[/citation]

3gb/s comes out to roughly 300MB/s transfer rate. So, you're saying there's no hard drive you can buy that goes faster than 300MB/s?

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]filmman03[/nom]As it has been mentioned, only time will tell if this new technology is worthwhile. I mean, look at eSata, not a huge hit, my ASUS mobo included onboard eSata (which is nice cuz i have an eSata external) but retail PC's don't include and of course Mac's don't.[/citation]They don't? I have seen a decent amount of computers with eSATA. My friend has a laptop with a dual-purpose eSATA/USB port. Plug in an eSATA external drive, bam it works. Unplug it and plug in a USB flash drive, oh look it works. Don't get me wrong, I think USB is a lot more important than eSATA, but eSATA is can coexist nicely with USB. Also eSATA is based on the industry-standard SATA, unlike proprietary standards like Thunderbolt and Firewire. Every chipset has onboard SATA and USB of some variety, some *also* have additional controllers for more/faster versions, but they all at least have them.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]TA152H[/nom]Where do you guys come from? RDRAM was EXTREMELY successful for the Pentium 4, so much so that it DDR was consider an inferior solution. RDRAM wasn't very successful on the Pentium III, but that's got nothing to do with the RDRAM. DDR didn't fare any better, because the Pentium III could not handle the extra bandwidth. The Pentium 4 was a different animal, and benefited greatly from the additional bandwidth of RDRAM, and to a less extent DDR.[/citation]RDRAM wasn't strictly "faster" in all regards. It had greater bandwidth, sure. But in a P3 system RDRAM could even be SLOWER than a DDR P3 system. So not only was the P3 incapable of "handling the extra bandwidth", but the higher latencies actually HURT performance!

The Pentium 4, on the other hand, was optimized for bandwidth and nothing but bandwidth. So yes, RDRAM was the better performer for that architecture. However, the difference in real world applications was usually only 5-10%. So in many cases you were better off either getting a cheaper DDR-based machine, or spending the extra money on a faster model of CPU or GPU.

Bottom line: Sometimes being the best performer isn't good enough, by itself.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]bayouboy[/nom]Intel makes some of the best NIC cards available on the market. Also, their SSD's are a solid performer and in some cases blow the competition away.[/citation]
They do make very good NICs. Some posters though will scoff at the idea of a high dollar NIC, though. Look at all the flack Killer NICs take - though Bigfoot brings it on themselves with their marketing.

Their SSDs are good too. Very good reliability ratings. However, they have fallen behind in performance, and their latest 510 SSDs use a Marvell chipset and are Not Impressive (tm).

 

[eddieroolz]

I'm wary of any standards Intel imposes on us as well.

 

[esummers]

Probably just sour grapes. I hope they get it. External expansion will allow machines to be smaller, less expensive, quieter, and better engineered thermal properties. Thunderbolt is also backwards compatible with PCIExpress so hardware doesn't need to be completely redesigned from scratch and you could use external enclosures for PCIExpress cards. Thunderbolt is the future. Apparently Thunderbolt is designed to be faster in future releases too.

 

[esummers]

[citation][nom]echdskech[/nom]Thanks for pointing that out to me. A quick trip to Wikipedia indicated that a single TB link, in its current spec, is just enough for a 4x PCI-E v1 link (10Gbps vs 8Gbps). Most anything worth putting in my suggested device would definitely choke.If my laptop can game even half as well as my desktop can, I'd drop my desktop in a heartbeat. That's considering my desktop's over 3 years old and my lappy's not even 3 months. =)[/citation]

Actually that is incorrect. Thunderbolt can run either PCI-E 4X or PCI-E 16X over the thunderbolt connection. PCI-E 16X is 8 GB/s. There are two full-duplex 10 GB/s thunderbolt channels in a single thunderbolt cable, so you could run two video cards in SLI mode off one cable. PCI-E 4X is only 2 GB/s. Technically PCI-E maxes out at 16 GB/s for 32X cards. I'm not sure if any motherboard or cards exist for those specs yet.

 

[esummers]

[citation][nom]GaMEChld[/nom]A nice notion, but that's probably impossible. You are talking about PCI-E x16, which carries 16 PCI-E lanes. Thunderbolt carries only one PCI-E lane. It's funny, as a high bandwidth interconnect, it has people excited, but people forget how much bandwidth is needed on the inside of the computer. An external video card would pretty much annihilate the bandwidth of TB.If on the other hand, TB makes the evolution to Fiber Optic, maybe then it'll have the capacity needed for a project like that. However, it does seem unlikely even in that case, because the entire mobile graphics evolution has been making the existing integrated graphics smaller, faster, and more efficient. We are nearing a point where an external video card for a laptop would be wholly unnecessary. Even now, there exists laptops that have some crazy Crossfire Radeon 6970's and other ridiculous things. How much more do we really need out of a laptop?[/citation]

I'm not sure where you got that PCI-E 1X thing from. Thunderbolt can bridge PCI-E in two modes: 4X mode and 16X mode. You can chain multiple to the same port. Each Thunderbolt port has two 10 GB/s full-duplex channels. Each port can also hold two separate DisplayPort signals at the same time. So there is a lot of bandwidth there. One Thunderbolt port has more bandwidth then all of the expansion ports combined in a typical PC.