ASRock Unveils Thunderbolt 4 Add-on Card

[X71200]

You said USB will sound late, there are 20 USB interfaces out too, but you're not going to use 20 at the same time likely anyway... you also said TB is Intel's thing but you don't seem to realize it was a standard set with Intel AND Apple, and Apple was for the most part guilty for these absurd prices on the standard. The guy who created USB got zero money from it, it's been a free standard.

 

[Dredi]

You said USB will sound late, there are 20 USB interfaces out too, but you're not going to use 20 at the same time likely anyway...

It does sound late in comparison. I will not use 20 inputs at the same time and you don’t sound like you need those either, but as I said in the beginning, studios may.

you also said TB is Intel's thing but you don't seem to realize it was a standard set with Intel AND Apple, and Apple was for the most part guilty for these absurd prices on the standard.

I’d need a source for this claim. It was a design collaboration, but I’m unaware of any royalty fee set by apple as part of that collab.

 

[X71200]

It does sound late in comparison. I will not use 20 inputs at the same time and you don’t sound like you need those either, but as I said in the beginning, studios may.


I’d need a source for this claim. It was a design collaboration, but I’m unaware of any royalty fee set by apple as part of that collab.

There are hundreds and thousands of studios on earth. Some small, some massive. What a studio uses is dependent on their size and their intend. Saying THIS is studio grade and THIS is not makes your statement look silly.

TB does require fee. It's no free standard. Go do your research.

 

[Dredi]

TB does require fee. It's no free standard. Go do your research.

It does not. Intel removed the fee a couple years ago.
Please state your source on that Apple was behind the ”high amount” of the fee in the first place.

There are hundreds and thousands of studios on earth. Some small, some massive. What a studio uses is dependent on their size and their intend. Saying THIS is studio grade and THIS is not makes your statement look silly.

Yes, that was not the best wording. What I meant was that TB is not found in typical consumer devices, and instead mostly in studio equipment.

 

[TheLostSwede]

What's even the point of the TB header, shouldnt the data be going through the PCIe slot?

Well, so far no-one really seems to have worked that bit out. The best anyone knows, outside of Intel and the board makers, is that it's an SPI interface. I guess it has something to do with keeping some clock or some other timing in sync, or possibly for synching the display and data signals or something along those lines. It's not needed for data usage as such, but still has to be connected for the cards to work properly.

 

[Dredi]

Well, so far no-one really seems to have worked that bit out. The best anyone knows, outside of Intel and the board makers, is that it's an SPI interface. I guess it has something to do with keeping some clock or some other timing in sync, or possibly for synching the display and data signals or something along those lines. It's not needed for data usage as such, but still has to be connected for the cards to work properly.

I read somewhere that it is also used to somehow validate the use of the thunderbolt card. At least in some uses there is data running through the TBT header only during boot, which to me indicates that it should technically be possible to make a TB card that doesn’t need any extra cabling. We will see once USB4 makes it’s way to diy PCs, as those are supposed to be TB compatible.

 

[X71200]

It does not. Intel removed the fee a couple years ago.
Please state your source on that Apple was behind the ”high amount” of the fee in the first place.



Yes, that was not the best wording. What I meant was that TB is not found in typical consumer devices, and instead mostly in studio equipment.

Regardless of whether Apple was being the fee or not, TB has always been an expensive niche item thanks to those two corporations. It could have been the standard for actually fast data transfer over drive enclosures, but we're still stuck with the dreadful 4k speeds of USB.

Again, you can't just slap this is studio equipment and this is not depending on what interface it has. If you go and actually look at a list of interfaces on a place like Sweetwater, you will find THE SAME HIGH END INTERFACES in BOTH USB AND TB. A number of them come in both forms, because compatibility.

A studio can use lower end gear or high end depending on what they record / do. Stop with the assumptions and thinking every studio magically needs fancy crap.

 

[Frank_100]

Most modern audio interfaces are USB or leftover stock Firewire, both of which work well.

Thunderbolt can go up to much higher 4k speeds than USB with external drive enclosures and such, but thanks to Apple's stupid licensing, it never really took off outside of some expensive boards and the Apple ecosystem.

Some Thoughts:
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 will go to 20 Gbps so there will be some better interfaces in the future.

PCIe cards are still the fastest as far as lag and they seem to offer more performance for the dollar.

If buying a system today, I would get a Thunderbolt 2 interface and run it with a PC.
Something like the AX4rt or something from Universal of Presonus because there is already a slot in the rack.

Apple is under powered. Maybe their new chip is something but I'll wait for the bench marks.

 

[Dredi]

Again, you can't just slap this is studio equipment and this is not depending on what interface it has. If you go and actually look at a list of interfaces on a place like Sweetwater, you will find THE SAME HIGH END INTERFACES in BOTH USB AND TB. A number of them come in both forms, because compatibility.

Did you read what I wrote?

What I meant was that TB is not found in typical consumer devices, and instead mostly in studio equipment.

I did in no way state that studio equipment is defined by having TB. I just said that _if_ a device has TB it is _likely_ a piece of studio gear.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I read somewhere that it is also used to somehow validate the use of the thunderbolt card. At least in some uses there is data running through the TBT header only during boot, which to me indicates that it should technically be possible to make a TB card that doesn’t need any extra cabling. We will see once USB4 makes it’s way to diy PCs, as those are supposed to be TB compatible.

The issue with Thunderbolt is how you get the display signal to the TB ports. If you have an Intel CPU with integrated graphics, this isn't an issue and there are clearly ways to solve this when you have a soldered down discrete GPU on the board, such as in Apple's computers. This would also negate the need for this cable, as it would be part of the motherboard layout.
However, with an add-in card, it's trickier, as the PCIe slots don't allow for other signals, as they weren't designed for it.
If you take a look at QNAP's NAS appliances, you'll see that they have developed a custom connector that looks like a PCIe x1 slot in front of a PCIe x8 slot. This requires a custom QNAP Thunderbolt/USB 4 card, but this removes the need for additional cables and wires.
So until we get a common standard, we're most likely going to have to live with the current mess.

There are some pictures of the QNAP setup here.

QNAP TVS-h1288X 12-bay NAS Review

In our QNAP TVS-h1288X review, we tear down the system to see how QNAP built this QuTS Hero ZFS NAS and how it compares to its competition

www.servethehome.com

 

[X71200]

Some Thoughts:
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 will go to 20 Gbps so there will be some better interfaces in the future.

PCIe cards are still the fastest as far as lag and they seem to offer more performance for the dollar.

If buying a system today, I would get a Thunderbolt 2 interface and run it with a PC.
Something like the AX4rt or something from Universal of Presonus because there is already a slot in the rack.

Apple is under powered. Maybe their new chip is something but I'll wait for the bench marks.

PCI-E cards are fast, but they introduce EMI, and there aren't many of those around.

Did you read what I wrote?

I did in no way state that studio equipment is defined by having TB. I just said that _if_ a device has TB it is _likely_ a piece of studio gear.

You don't understand it, there is no set in stone definition for "studio gear". You're making silly assumptions regarding this. There are lower end Thunderbolt equipment meant for the home usage as well. The guy I used to buy second hand guitars and other gear from, owns a mid sized studio. All he got there is a mid range Yamaha USB mixer and a pair of Adam A5X's for the mixing. For playing, he has a very old, beaten up Fender 4x12 cab which he was willing to give me for some 200 bucks, alongside of some old Roland keyboard and a bunch of Strats, Ibanez guitars and whatnot. NOTHING fancy at all. He does own a total of about 200 guitars that include $5000 Suhrs, Tom Andersons, etc... but nobody can get to play them in the studio.

If you look at your "average studio" we're talking about here, you'll mostly see a V67G or similar mic for instance, which is a $150-200 mic some random guy can buy off the Internet. In fact, if you watch Dave Grohl's documentary about the Sound City studio, you'll find out that many big name bands have recorded there with old and beaten up crap almost nobody would pay a dime for.

You seem to think these "studios" ALL seemingly resort to high end gear, but this is false at best and in fact a laughable statement. Back in the old days, people didn't even have good mics down most studios. There would be like one Telefunken somewhere everybody would like to use, and the rest garbage mics. You're lucky to have the gear available today.

 

[Dredi]

You seem to think these "studios" ALL seemingly resort to high end gear, but this is false at best and in fact a laughable statement.

In no way do I think that.

 

[Deleted member 205776]

I currently have a B350-F, but I'm planning to get an X570-E (and I will not go Gigabyte, Gigabyte's RGB software sucks).

Not only do their RGB software suck, their boards do as well.

 

[WhitetailAni]

Not only do their RGB software suck, their boards do as well.

ASUS or Gigabyte?
I've had no problems with ASUS - my Slot 1 ASUS board works fine, my AM3 ASUS board works fine, and my B350 board with a Ryzen 5 3600 works fine.
Gigabyte, on the other hand...

 

[Deleted member 205776]

ASUS or Gigabyte?
I've had no problems with ASUS - my Slot 1 ASUS board works fine, my AM3 ASUS board works fine, and my B350 board with a Ryzen 5 3600 works fine.
Gigabyte, on the other hand...

Gigabyte. No problems with ASUS products, or their software.

Many BSODs with RGB fusion, two dead boards with Gigabyte.

 

[Tardian]

Quoting from a forum post:

"Incorrect: as jeremy noted, it's the controller(s) behind those connectors that determine what version(s) of USB devices are supported, or not.

That may sound nitpicky, but it's critical: consider the case where you plug a USB 1.1 Type-A device into a USB 3.2 Type-C connector (via a Type-A to Type-C adapter). The data from the device will still be received by whatever controller is at the other end of the connector's cable - if that controller is a USB 3.x controller, it'll say "I dunno what to do with this" and pass the data down the chain to the next controller - which happens to be the USB 2.0/1.1 controller, which does know what to do. So there's a little more latency, but your legacy USB devices are still going to work.

Important to note here is that the USB 2.0/1.1 controller I mentioned is actually just part of the CPU or PCH. There are no discrete USB 1.1 or 2.0 controller chips (except on add-in cards), as these versions of the interface are so well-known, small (in terms of die area) and simple to implement, that every new PC has implementations of these versions baked in. This is unlikely to change within the next decade - if ever.

tl;dr don't worry about your USB 2.0/1.1 devices no longer working in new computers. They will continue to work, probably until the end of time, thanks to Type-A to Type-C adapters."

https://www.techpowerup.com/270853/...ler-and-strategy-to-phase-out-type-a-revealed