Thunderbolt ViDock and Windows?

Sorry if this is the wrong forum. I figured this falls in line with GPUs.

As I mentioned, will the upcoming Thunderbolt ViDocks be compatible with Windows Thunderbolt machines? I would love having an Ultrabook that I could carry to classes and then plug it into a dock in my apartment and have a full desktop set up.

 

Of course ,that's the purpose... And Village Tronic is far from getting their hands on Thunderbolt development kit, the "Nino R" guy on their facebook page doesn't even work for them, he's just happy customer ~ don't rely on his "coming soon".

You may get the MSI GUS II when it comes out (around late Q2-Q3), I think it's ideal. It should cost roughly < 200. Only con is it supports 150w card only. So far, I think the new 7850 is the perfect card for it, or if NVIDIA offers something similar

 

If you would like the performance boost now, you are able to use the Sonnet Echo thunderbolt/expresscard adapter; and it works on Windows 7. The adapter bandwidth is limited to only 2,5gbits (1.0 1.1) while thunderbolt will be 2.0 x4. I guess it depends on how long you would like to wait .

And wild05kid05,

I would call Nino far from just a "happy customer". He is knowledgable on the topic, take cares of customer service for VillageInstruments, and works closely with Hubert, their CEO. His advice/ cooperation helped me immensely while testing out the Sonnet Echo.

And the product they are soon to be releasing will be the Vidock 4G. The thunderbolt connection will be something separate (I believe called the Weedock, at least it used to be). From updates, the Vidock 4G is going to be released soon, while the thunderbolt add-on won't be released until Intel pulls itself together and releases it to 3rd party distributers.

 

I agree with you on Nino, I just didn't have much experience with him, and apparently he did call himself a happy customer.

As for ViDock 4G, they are just going to offer changeable adapter (expresscard, Thunderbolt, etc.) & 375w capability. TB is not going to be separate. Other than that, it's not really "Intel" , it's just Village Tronic is way too small to consider giving out developer kit. If you really look at the market, only the big "3rd party" companies have their hands on it. (LaCie Little Big Disk, OCZ's Portable Thunderbolt SSD: Lightfoot, and the most promising MSI GUS II -already demoed on MBP with TB). The only Pro Village Tronic can offer over MSI GUS II is more powerful GPU, as the GUS II limits at 150w. However, to be practical, I did look into the ViDock enclosure dimension, there's a design flaw, though it can handle powerful cards, let's say > 225w, now look at the heat plus noise. When I was doing my homework on the ViDock, I thought of getting the most quietest/coolest GPU or just a GPU with quietest/coolest after-market cooler. Neither option would fit in the ViDock enclosre. Recently when they announced the G4, they said they will still remain the same enclosure & its dimension in order to minimize "shipping fee".

To be honest, if you're mobile (having a notebook), you would not want to lug 2x 150watt,1x 75watt AC. I understand the part where you leave the setup at home, still consider the heat + noise, if you want a quiet and cool setup, you have to go for a dual-slot card, which will never fit the ViDock, OR get a lower performance card with good noise & heat level ~ < 175watt as far as I know.

 

Great! I'm glad I found someone who is using the setup!

It looks like you're using a MBP but running windows. What are you doing for drivers? I'm not too familiar with Boot Camp but does it only utilize the integrated Intel graphics or does it use the ATI chip?

If it's only using integrated graphics like in the case with Ultrabooks shouldn't any ole' desktop driver work with whatever GPU you use? Then when you unplug the device it switches back to Intel's setup?

Sorry if I'm asking a lot of questions. I've been doing nothing but looking into this stuff and redoing my whole desktop/laptop setup based around the capabilities of thunderbolt PCIe(s) set up.

 

if you are going for tb egpu, I wouldnt use the mbp 15 or 17. Since those 2 run only on the dedicated gpu on windows.

Bootcamp provides you with a drivers set, and you can download from the manufacturers page as well, its just for convenience that they provide all the providers in one package.

To game, you go to windows, thats it. There are more mac games out there? yes. However they are still not as readily available as windows are

I would wait for proper tb egpu implementations, sincerely because there is a certain demand, and there will be more with more widespread adoption of tb in this year and the next one.

 

Ok so that answers my question about Boot Camp. I'm not planning on getting a Mac anytime soon. I'm looking more at a device like the Acer Aspire S5. It would have a thunderbolt port and Ivy Bridge integrated graphics.

Since current eGPU setups work through Boot Camp do they just use those bundled drivers? Essentially the laptop would see the better ATI card and use that but since no driver change occurs it doesn't effect anything when it's not there?

My main concern is what about a device like the S5 without a discrete card. Could we slap a GTX560 in an eGPU set up and download the latest Nvidia desktop driver for it and it will work? Would the integrated graphics kick in as soon as it was unplugged and the Nvidia driver start back up when plugged in?

I'm pretty sure no one will have a definitive answer but speculation will ease me a bit, I guess.

 

I'm getting a Lenovo S430 with MSI GUS II. Doing exactly what you're planning. It will work, just like notebooks with iGPU ONLY paralleling with expresscard eGPU. An advice, I would not recommend you getting an "ultra book" for that purpose. 1) they are likely to have ULV CPUs which will bottleneck the GPU performance. 2) even if it has mainstream i7/i5, it will run hot.

And you need to pay attention to the TB chip on the notebook you're getting. As I remember, the "smaller version" of TB chip is on the MBA, -Light Ridge- ,while the full size -Eagle Ridge- on MBP has 4 TB channels. (4 x 10Gbps bidirectional = 80Gbps aggregate bandwidth) and two DisplayPort outputs. The Light Ridge comes with two channels only (2 x 10Gbps bidirectional = 40Gbps aggregate bandwidth). They rename it to Cactus Ridge this year but the configuration will be the same , 4 and 2 channels.

Hope that helps.

 

Thanks for the response. I'm not set in stone on a particular laptop but I'll be looking around for the best option for a set up like this.

Another thing I'm looking at with this is if I daisy chain another rig for a sound card. I noticed the MSI GUS II had another thunderbolt port. Surely there would be enough bandwidth to host a sound card as well, right? Even if it is just a 2 channel set up?

 

Not so sure about that but the Magma ExpressBox 3T is more specialized in that area, and their enclosure can fit more. The MSI wouldn't PLUS neither option has enough power connectors to do that. You have to compromise. And even so I believe if you daisy chain, the bandwidth should be divided up equally, I may be wrong . Are you thinking of that for professional audio stuff or entertainment/gaming

 

Wow, sorry I had no idea about the channel thing. Just spent the last half an hour reading about that. So Eagle Ridge and Cactus Ridge will max out at PCIe 4x speeds, correct? If so it's not really a deal breaker as performance would still be far superior to what I would have.

As for my application I really don't have any. Haha, I'm really just a nerd with this stuff and love messing around with this. I want to have the capabilities to game but more importantly I have an Asus Xonar STX sound card miles away in my desktop that I would love to use.

I figured If I got two of the MSI's (If the thunderbolt port on its back allows for another to be connected) I could have a mid range graphics card (GTX560 or GTX660 by the time I'd actually purchase) in one and my Xonar card in the other.

In my head I imagine having my desk with my monitor, mouse, keyboard, and audio equipment set up just like a desktop and all I would need to do is plug my laptop in for power (Maybe even have an HP Touchstone type deal so I wouldn't even have to plug power in manually) and the thunderbolt port to activate everything else in a matter of seconds for a fully featured desktop.

Maybe I'm dreaming but for the past few days this has been all I can think about, nerdy I know, but I'm learning a lot more in the process. Really excited to see what possibilities thunderbolt will have. At first I thought it was just going to be something new that Apple could throw in the faces of PC users.

 

Alright going to ask another question after reading through this ( Magma Introduces Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion Box - Page 3 - MacRumors Forums.

Even the current Eagle Ridge which supports two channels has enough bandwidth for PCIe 4x speeds. So an eGPU would use one channel correct (20gbps)?

This would leave another channel available for whatever else which in my case would be another PCIe card which would be even slower at 1x.

The benefits to having Light Ridge or 4 channels would just be the ability to add more things right?

 

I'm looking forward to this as well because I'm sick of overpriced and under-powered mobile graphics.

 

I'm not so sure the 2 channels version and its performance difference. But for sure the 4 channels will deliver 4x 2.0 with probably 5-20% fluctuation. Getting two TB enclosure and hook it into one does not seem to work... You are not going to find any notebook with two TB ports.

Another TB ePCIe implementation is the mLogic mDock, but they limit the max tdp to 75w. Magma Epressbox would cost like > 500.

 

The mLink adapter would work great for my sound card! Thanks again for another product to look at!

As for the two TB enclosures, I was looking at a photo from The Verge of the GUS II and it looked as if it had two TB ports. One for the computer and another for another TB accessory.

If a TB expansion came out do you think that would cut bandwidth too much? Such as a TB hub.

 

I'm sure the bandwidth will have to be divided & shared. At what ratio ? that's a mystery...

 

its actually the oposite, eagle ridge is the smaller version, while the light ridge is the one equipping the mbps and the imacs.

each tb port or cable can only support 2 channels, so you are not losing anything. and yes you are going to be limited to pcie x4 almost speeds due to this being the amount of pcie lanes allocated for tb.

Sure thats usually the way it works, you just go and install the drivers (sometimes a tweak is necessary), but its usually like that.

as I said, the tb connector or the cable is limited to 2 channels, so you have a device using both channels.

when you daisy chain things, you are going to share the precious bandwidth, with whatever devices that are connected, thus lowering the gaming performance.

I dont think that its going to divide equally the bandwidth equally, since it can daisy chain, I think, up to 15 devices, so if we divide equally this, its going to be a hell of a mess.

However be assured that the gaming performance of a pcie x4 2.0 is nothing to sneeze at, the loss of performance aint that great. There are several test on the net about it, using high end cards, like the gtx 480.

 

Again, thanks for the responses. I've been learning a lot over the past few days. The last time I really looked into GPUs was back when I got my 9800GTX+. So yeah, it's been awhile.

 

This should be a good read for you.
GeForce GTX 480 PCI-Express Scaling Review - Page 1/25 | techPowerUp

Just bear in mind, TB implementation would fluctuate between 5-30%, at least 10%, of 16x 2.0. Still great IMHO.

 

I've been looking at a lot of the PCIe scaling reviews from the eGPU thread on here. I also have been noticing that the newer PCIe 3.0 cards really aren't benefiting too much from the extra bandwidth so do you think (Looking at the "leaked" specs) the GTX660 would be a good card for a eGPU setup?

Besides the fact it will more than likely be over 150w will the bandwidth not be an issue and when will the bandwidth become too much issue? The GTX680?

 

GTX 660 / ATI 7850 are very ideal. Don't know about the TDP on GTX 660. But 7850 is max out at 135w already, giving you 15w of headroom for overclocking. You really shouldn't be worried about bandwidth, put it this way, you are not going to have full desktop power with a less than 5 pounds machine. But rather, you can game with the performance same as those in > 6 pounds gaming notebooks OR in some cases BETTER. Let's just wait untill mid summer and we will "probably" see some light. We can't have it all .

 

http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/09/thunderbolt-could-get-faster-with-pci-express-3/

Interesting

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

That's funny. Apple Thunderbolt devices are already outdated before its popularization.

 

Actually it's not outdated yet. It's in its early adoption phrase now. It's like saying USB 3 was already outdated 2 years ago when Intel announced LightPeak.