The Apple Thunderbolt Display Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 23, 2011 2:56 AM EST- Posted in
- Displays
- Mac
- Apple
- Thunderbolt
- Thunderbolt Display
Thunderbolt Performance
The Eagle Ridge Thunderbolt controller is home to two Thunderbolt channels, each one is good for up to 10Gbps in either direction (up or downstream). That works out to be 20Gbps of bandwidth per channel or 40Gbps aggregate between the two. You can only send two channels worth of data down a single Thunderbolt cable, so there's no point to having more than two from a performance standpoint unless you have more than one port on your system.
If DisplayPort and PCIe traffic are indeed carried on separate channels, then the Thunderbolt Display by itself is eating up around 70% of the bandwidth of a single channel on its own (2560 x 1440 x 32bpp x 60Hz with 8b/10b encoding > 6.75Gbps). That leaves 10Gbps in each direction for PCIe traffic. If we look at our benchmarks from the previous section we see that we can hit just under 2Gbps with all of the auxiliary interfaces (GigE, FW800, USB2) running. Given our previous investigation with the Promise Pegasus we know that 8Gbps is feasible there as well. It's possible, that with everything running at once, we could actually run into bottlenecks with Thunderbolt.
To find out I ran a few tests. First I needed a baseline so I threw four SF-2281 SSDs into the Pegasus R6 chassis and configured them in a RAID-0 array. I ran a 2MB sequential read test (QD=16) and measured 909MB/s from the array. This value was obtained without the Thunderbolt Display connected, only the Pegasus R6.
Next I connected the Thunderbolt Display directly to my test MacBook Pro, and then connected the Pegasus to it. I repeated the test, this time getting 900MB/s. Thankfully the presence of the Thunderbolt Display doesn't seem to impact the max data rate I can get from the Pegasus.
For my third test I added a Gigabit Ethernet transfer from a file server to a local SSD using the GigE port on the display. During this test I was also playing back music using the Thunderbolt Display's internal audio codec and speakers. I re-ran the Pegasus test and got 855MB/s.
For my final test I re-ran the third test but added a FireWire 800 to USB 2.0 SSD transfer, both connected to the Thunderbolt Display. I also fired up the FaceTime HD camera on the display using Photo Booth and left it on during the test. The final performance score from the Pegasus was 817MB/s.
With everything running Thunderbolt performance took a 10% hit. Note that the standard Pegasus configuration isn't able to hit these data rates to begin with, so unless you've pulled out the 12TB of storage and stuck in your own SSDs you won't see any performance drop.
What this does tell me however is the ultra high end users that are looking to daisy chain multiple Thunderbolt storage boxes together may not want to do so. I only have a single Pegasus R6 on hand, but I'm guessing there will be significant performance drop off after the first box. Not that I'm complaining about being able to push nearly 1GB/s over a $49 cable from a notebook, I'm just trying to give a heads up to those who may have aspirations of even higher performance.
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GotThumbs - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
It's a hardware review and the specs are in the article. This is not intended to be an MTV production to keep ADD kids entertained. Either you find the content interesting or now. If not, change the channel.Iketh - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
OSDs would have only distracted me... i was listening to him like we were having a 1 on 1... overlays would have fucked that upxodius80 - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
i must say is not only entertaining to see the video but its so much easier to understand, notes on what ive seen u might need:Fisrt a green screen so u can put your logo anywhere so you dont compromise your publicity on depending hardware reviews, your persona blocked your logo, and thats not good for bussiness, all the time it was reading nandtech, def not good =), a little more post production if u got the time, even tho it was perfect , heres an idea, like the time u where explaining the motherboard inside the monitor, it should have disolved to the picture into a main whole frame, while your voice in off, then disolve back to you. things like that make videos more intresting.
sorry for my english, just helping you out since ive studied video here in my country, nice job man! ohh yeah and cool mic haha.
fynamo - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Just for everyone's reference, these displays do work with Windows. I've been using one for a while and love it. The only issue I had was when trying to adjust the brightness. You have to do some weird tweaks with AppleControlPanel.exe but I was eventually able to make it work.KLC - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Interesting hardware information, but why doesn't anyone talk about the stupid name? What's a thunderbolt? I know lightning bolts and I know thunder claps. Who made up this name Google Translator?jecs - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
The technology is from Intel and I am not sure if the name itself is Intel or an Apple idea based on the Intel name. This is the first implementation and has a lot more potential but depends on how it will be adopted by the industry.Dug - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
I really enjoyed it too. This gives a far more personal touch to the review and the visuals give a clear example of what you are talking about.I've always liked seeing things in action because stagnant pictures don't tell the whole story.
SickBeast - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
How much does the thing cost?This website needs to stop functioning as marketing PR and should get back to its roots as a hardware review website. The price of this display should be boldly listed both in the introduction and the conclusion of the article.
The review of Windows Vista on this website really opened my eyes to the fact that AnandTech has gone in a completely new direction. It's too bad.
Anand, please revert to your role as a journalist and stop acting as a puppet for these large corporations.
jecs - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
$1000 formally $999But tell me what product, a decent one deserving a good review, does not comes with a brand name and marketing?
Your whole observation is very emotional.
Anand, please keep with the good work! not because I ask for it.
mharding - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
The Thunderbolt Display's motherboard is full of controllers driving all of the rear facing IO ports. On the front we actually see the very first non-SFF Eagle Ridge IC. Although the MacBook Air uses Eagle Ridge, it uses the SFF version in a cheaper package. I'm sure what determines whether or not Apple uses the flip-chip packaged version.Thanks for the review - I much prefer reading quickly than watching a video slowly.