Asus Showcases Thunderbolt Riser Card

Asus launched their Z77 boards a few months back, and if you have been notice the motherboard properly you will find a TB_HEADER. This header is used to connect to a riser card which is sold separately. To date there is only two asus motherboards which has native thunderbolt ports. 

Asus announced the thunderbolt riser card a Computex. This riser card is holding the Cactus Ridge 2C chip and requires a PCI-E X4 and a motherboard which has the header (refer the chart above). To be able to use the riser card you must connect the ThunderboltEX to the internal header of the motherboard this is so that the it can send/receive signalling information (for hot plug and pray events) from the motherboard BIOS, the header is powered so it also serves as power for the riser card. There is two ports on the ThunderboltEX riser card, one of it is the thunderbolt/mini display port and the other is a full size display port. The reason there is a display port is to receive display port signals from the motherboard so video out can be supported via the thunderbolt/mini display port.

If you think that 1 thunderbolt port is not enough asus has gotten ready another riser card which has two thunderbolt ports. This riser card is using the top of the line Intel DSL3510 Cactus Ridge 4C host controller. Like its similar single port sibling this riser card will need to be plugged in to the motherboard TB_HEADER for sending/receiving signalling information (for hot plug and pray events) from the motherboard BIOS and also additional power. This riser card has 2 thunderbolt/ mini display ports and 2 displays ports so that it receive display port signals from the motherboard.

Vr-Zone was at the Asus computex booth and they noticed that all of the AM3+ motherboards for Bulldozer FX/Phenom II processors have been refreshed. So they asked the product manager about details about the new refresh and they were answered " meet windows 8 WHQL requirements " without any major changes. Then they looked at the ROG Crosshair V Formula-Z (revised C5F), which was located at the bottom of a glass case. From what they know, the memory overclock capabilities of the board have been fine-tuned and storage options buffed up to two internal SATA ports and another eSATA and the onboard sound solution was also bumped to the Supreme FX III. And located below the lowest PCI-E slot is a thunderbolt header labeled TB_HEADER, which is to be paired up with their Thunderbolt EX riser cards.This can only mean that thunderbolt will be available in future Asus AMD motherboards.

The Crosshair V Formula-Z

Sabertooth 990FX R2.0

Source: Vr-Zone, Vr-Zone, Engadget 

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