MP 7,1 Mac Pro 2019 with Asus Thunderbolt 4 ePCI cards

[vadalus]

HI,

Firstly im kinda amazed there are no Thunderbolt 4 PCI cards for my mac pro, only external hub etc..

Anyway, i foolishly ordered a 4 Port ASUS ThunderboltEX 4 Expansion Card, so thought i could have a play before sending this back. Best i can get out of it is that it's identified as a unknown PCI card but i have seen A LOT of posts of people hacking firmwares and drivers to get this working (mostly on older versions).. Anything i can do / threads i can follow to see whether i can get this running... i dont need the display port stuff some some more Thunderbolt lanes!

Thanks!

 

[4wdwrx]

I tried a similar type of card but for Thunderbolt 3, the Gigabyte GC Titan Ridge PCIe card. Had the modified firmware installed, but it never worked and caused system instability.

 

[goMac]

The Mac Pro doesn't have the headers on the motherboard required to drive that card. Thunderbolt PCIe cards aren't really a standalone thing so motherboard vendors who didn't want to actually put the boards on the boards have kind of hacked them onto cards.

Probably easiest just to buy an MPX GPU with more Thunderbolt ports. Thunderbolt and graphics are supposed to go together anyway.

I think even the Apple IO card, which has more Thunderbolt ports, has similar proprietary header issues and must go into slot 1. Even Apple's Thunderbolt card isn't generic.

 

[vadalus]

I tried a similar type of card but for Thunderbolt 3, the Gigabyte GC Titan Ridge PCIe card. Had the modified firmware installed, but it never worked and caused system instability.

Thanks man, I’ll give up

 

[vadalus]

The Mac Pro doesn't have the headers on the motherboard required to drive that card. Thunderbolt PCIe cards aren't really a standalone thing so motherboard vendors who didn't want to actually put the boards on the boards have kind of hacked them onto cards.

Probably easiest just to buy an MPX GPU with more Thunderbolt ports. Thunderbolt and graphics are supposed to go together anyway.

I think even the Apple IO card, which has more Thunderbolt ports, has similar proprietary header issues and must go into slot 1. Even Apple's Thunderbolt card isn't generic.

Yeah I saw other posts where people had gotten around the header issue by connecting pins 1-3 on the TB header cable, tried that didn’t work.

As you indicated it’s all a bit bespoke at the moment when it’s comes to TB3/4 which is a bit dissapointing.

MPX is the expensive option!

Many thanks

Liam

 

[zachek]

I tried a similar type of card but for Thunderbolt 3, the Gigabyte GC Titan Ridge PCIe card. Had the modified firmware installed, but it never worked and caused system instability.

This was in a 7,1?

 

[profdraper]

MPX is the expensive option!

Probably easiest just to buy an MPX GPU with more Thunderbolt ports. Thunderbolt and graphics are supposed to go together anyway.

I think even the Apple IO card, which has more Thunderbolt ports, has similar proprietary header issues and must go into slot 1. Even Apple's Thunderbolt card isn't generic.

Indeed, that's exactly the way I went: first configured the computer with a single MPX (ie not a Duo), then latter added a second single MPX. Lots of TB, same price as the Duo, ie everything overpriced but there you go. The GPUs work resonably welll for video production /Da Vinci Resolve Studio & the TB for a host of routing across a recording studio.