MSI reveals the Z77A-GD80, the first Thunderbolt certified motherboard.
The MSI Z77A-GD80, world's first Thunderbolt mainboard, recently achieved full certification by Intel. This ensures MSI's position in a select group of certified Intel Thunderbolt vendors. MSI was also careful to implement the Thunderbolt chip on the mainboard itself. This prevents cable clutter and reduces the possibility of critical failure because of badly installed add-on cards, loose cables or connector failure. Unlike uncertified brands, single port Thunderbolt is the only valid solution for current mainboards, as dual-port solutions cause congestion reducing the overall performance of the Z77 platform.
Intel certifies MSI's Z77A-GD80 for Thunderbolt
While MSI was already first on the market with a Thunderbolt mainboard and now offers a fully certified solution, ensuring the best compatibility with Thunderbolt devices. As such, Information about the MSI Z77A-GD80 can also be found on Intel's thunderbolttechnology.net website. This Thunderbolt certification builds upon the Military Class III components that were already certified to pass strict MIL-STD-810G tests.
Ultimate Thunderbolt performance
The Intel Thunderbolt controller is a bandwidth intensive chip onboard MSI mainboards. In order to provide the most flexibility and best performance MSI is using just a single Thunderbolt port on the MSI Z77A-GD80. This ensures that both the Thunderbolt devices as well as on-board devices like USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s have enough bandwidth. Installing an add-in card or dual-port device regularly leads to situations where devices are disabled (PCI Express, USB 3.0, Firewire) or performance is simply degraded due to the lack of bandwidth (not getting what you paid for.)
One cable for everything
One of the biggest benefits of the Thunderbolt interface on MSI's Z77A-GD80 is that you only need one cable to daisy-chain up to six devices and a Thunderbolt display to your mainboard. By fully implementing Thunderbolt on the mainboard MSI Engineers implemented a design that ensures the best signal quality and stability as external cables and cards are more prone to failure and miss-installation and add cable clutter. Something you'll have no problem with on the MSI Z77A-GD80 with integrated Thunderbolt
