Re: Does This Kill The Mac Pro?

[John-Michael Seng-Wheeler] "It's all up to apple, wether they'll let you set up the computer such that there's no display signal in the Thunderbolt connections."

But I'm asking, why can't there be both? If something is plugged straight in to the GPU, then it uses that (DVI/Displayport/whatever). If it plugs in to thunderbolt, then display goes out through thunderbolt as long as the monitor gives the proper handshake (from what I have read, Displayport 1.1 devices must be at the end of the chain). Or does it not work that way? Do you know or are you guessing? I sure as hell am making a lot of guesses at this point. It's all the information I have. :)

Look at the 17" Thunderbolt MBP. It has both PCIe ExpressCard (1x) and Thunderbolt. Can't it use both at the same time? Not all data has to run through the thunderbolt port. In a MacPro with dedicated GPU and Thunderbolt, would all display data have to run through Thunderbolt? Maybe, maybe not. I'm thinking not as that would severely hobble a MacPro that can easily handle more than 4x PCIe.

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-17inch.html

Another crazy theory. What if a Thunderbolt monitor itself had an integrated GPU in it and it was used for display, leaving the dedicated GPU for computation. That might be getting too crazy!

Jeremy