News
News Categories

The Gigabyte X99P-SLI is the world’s first Thunderbolt 3-certified Intel X99 motherboard

By Koh Wanzi - on 14 Apr 2016, 12:27pm

The Gigabyte X99P-SLI is the world’s first Thunderbolt 3-certified Intel X99 motherboard

Image Source: Gigabyte

Gigabyte is continuing on its streak of being the first to offer motherboards with official Thunderbolt 3 certification. The board manufacturer announced the first Thunderbolt 3-certified Intel C236 motherboard in late March, in addition to offering the first ever such board back in September with the Z170X-UD5 TH. Now, Gigabyte has announced yet another first for it in this area, in the form of the X99P-SLI motherboard.

The board offers Thunderbolt 3 support over a USB Type-C connector on its rear I/O panel. This makes up to 40Gbps of bandwidth available to enthusiasts, and will allow them to daisy chain up to two 4K displays at 60Hz over the DisplayPort standard.

However, because the Intel X99 platform doesn’t support CPUs with integrated GPUs, the Thunderbolt 3 controller needs to be linked to a discrete graphics card via a separate cable in order for a video signal to be transmitted over Thunderbolt 3.

To do this, users will need to connect the DisplayPort input on the board’s rear I/O with a DisplayPort connector on their graphics card. DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort and DisplayPort to DisplayPort cables are helpfully bundled with the motherboard so you don’t have to worry about looking for the right ones.

This will allow users to output video – powered by their discrete graphics card – over the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, even though the display is ostensibly connected to the motherboard.

Other features of the board include four PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, a single M.2 connector, and 10 SATA 6Gbps ports.

Source: Gigabyte

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.