Videoguys' 2014 Thunderbolt & Thunderbolt v2 Update
Videoguys by Gary Bettan
We bring you up to date on all the latest Thunderbolt news, products and developments. This guide also includes our recommended configuration for a new iMac as well as our Thunderbolt Wish List for 2014.
Thunderbolt was the new, high-speed, dual-protocol I/O technology designed by Intel and introduced by Apple a couple of years ago that was supposed to set the world on fire. So far it hasn't, but with the launch of the new Mac Pros, that may soon change. Thunderbolt delivers amazing performance, with ease & simplicity. Attaching blazing fast Thunderbolt enabled storage is a breeze. Thunderbolt gives you high speed expandability to add video capture and output devices, high speed networking, LTO archiving as well as professional RAID storage solutions.
All of the current Apple Macs have Thunderbolt. Soon so will all HP workstations. You can find Laptops from HP, Asus and others that have one or two Thunderbolt ports. Thunderbolt is finally taking off! We now carry a much broader range of Thunderbolt storage and devices.
The sexy, sleek, round new Mac Pro
includes 6, count 'em 6, Thunderbolt 2 ports!
With the introduction in late 2013 of the long anticipated new Mac Pro Apple also launched the new Thunderbolt 2 spec. Twice as fast as the existing Thunderbolt 1 spec, it will allow you to attach RAIDs with 6 or more drives and give you performance and sustained throughput that approaches existing Fibre Channel storage arrays. This is amazing, considering that a good Fibre Channel RAID controller will set you back a grand or more! Now you can get the same level of performance with plug & play ease and no need to install any special hardware. That is amazing!!
While we're on the subject of the new Mac Pro, it is quite an amazing computer. We don't have one here yet, but we have played around with the $3,999 step-up base model. It was running FCPX and we were blown away be the performance. The Mac Pro is optimized for FCPX and FCPX is optimized for the new Mac Pro. It takes full advantage of the dual ATI GPUs. If you're a Mac editor, there is no reason not to get one of these puppies. I don't even think most of our customers will need a build to order, fully loaded model. The $3,999 model we played with slices through HD footage like butter. Like BUTTER!
HP announces Thunderbolt 2 across all
HP z workstations and z books
We've been waiting forever to see Thunderbolt on the PC. Late last year Asus released a full line of Thunderbolt equipped motherboards and we posted our long awaited DIY10 article featuring them. Shortly after that HP released their new line of z Books with Thunderbolt ports. We have one of the 15 inch z Books here at Videoguys and we love it! We are running Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro, Grass Valley Edius and Sony Vegas Pro on it and we're editing HD DSLR & GoPro footage with it. Our zBook only has a single Thunderbolt 1 port for now, but a new update with Thunderbolt 2 is expected before NAB.
HP will also be bringing Thunderbolt 2 to their full line of z workstations. They are doing it via a proprietary daughter card which will as a single Thunderbolt 2 port. What's really cool is that owners of existing zX20 series workstations will be able to purchase the Thunderbolt 2 daughter card for under $200 and install it themselves. SWEET!
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