thunderbolt necessary to get?

[braveheart0707]

Hi guys~ should i be looking for a motherboard with thunderbolt ports while trying to build a new pc? and some of them has displayport, that is the older version of thunderbolt right?

thx for any replies~

 

[paperwastage]

thunderbolt is basically PCIe + Displayport combined

it's useful for laptops because they don't usually don't have full-size spare PCIe slots to expend, while your desktop has a few (and since you can chain displays as well, TB is useful)

don't need to look for it, unless you really really really want to share (expensive) thunderbolt accessories b/w your laptop and desktop... your desktop should have enough PCIe slots (and displayport through the GPU/integrated GPU) to hook up any stuff you need

 

[slayernine]

USB 3.0 FTW, forget thunderbolt. It will only make you waste money on expensive thunderbolt accessories...

Display port is free, thunderbolt is licensed.

 

[mfenn]

There's no real point to getting Thunderbolt unless there is a specific Thunderbolt peripheral you're interested in. Considering that the only things that can really benefit from the throughput are massive RAID arrays, I don't think there's much out there for your typical PC build.

 

[braveheart0707]

i see~how are displayport and thunderbolt different? from what i can read up on, Apple says u can use a thunderbolt cable on displayport, but not the other way around....

someone explain in a more simple to understand terms please~

 

[Lean L]

i see~how are displayport and thunderbolt different? from what i can read up on, Apple says u can use a thunderbolt cable on displayport, but not the other way around....

someone explain in a more simple to understand terms please~

Think of it this way. For displays, thunderbolt has the added ability to not only chain displays but to chain usb, sata, pcie devices from the monitor with no additional connections. This is great for laptops and it's cheaper than being tied to a proprietary docking station.

I think apple means that you can use a displayport display with thunderbolt but not vice versa.