Does the thunderbolt port on my Asus motherboard utilise my graphics cards?

Apologies if this is a stupid question!

I have an integrated Thunderbolt port on my Asus Maximus motherboard:

http://www.ebuyer.com/392402-asus-maximus-v-extreme-maximus-v-extreme?utm_source=google&utm_medium=products&gclid=COu3prq5-LgCFfMbtAodNwIA2Q

But I'm confused as to how it works exactly. If I were to plug an Apple LED monitor into the integrated thunderbolt port, would my graphics cards still be utilised by the port? Could I play Crysis 3 on maximum settings and do my 3D animation and all the rest of it?

To me it seems really odd how no monitor would actually be plugged into my cards if I were to use the Thunderbolt!

Starkers

Posted 2013-08-12T17:43:38.507

Reputation: 1 798

The thunderbolt port is limited to data transfers. your graphics card would have to have a thunderbolt port in order to support a thunderbolt display. Furthermore unless you have a graphic card just because you have thunderbolt doesn't mean you can play Crysis 3. – Ramhound – 2013-08-12T18:18:46.073

Very true, though Starkers link describes a motherboard with Graphic Integrated Graphics Processor [sic] and Supports DisplayPort / Thunderbolt with max. resolution 2560 x 1600 @ 60 Hz. Starker: you already provided your own answer in your own link. – Hennes – 2013-08-12T18:23:54.353

@Hennes - I only saw the data transfer aspect of the thunderbolt connection. Good to know the thunderbolt connector on ASUS products are connected to the PCI-E bus. I missed the resolution and DisplayPort support. – Ramhound – 2013-08-12T18:46:29.557

1There are (almost) never stupid questions! – Keltari – 2013-08-12T19:00:55.903

http://hackaday.com/2013/07/31/a-macbook-air-and-a-thunderbolt-gpu/ - in case anyone is interested. A guy built his own external PCIe graphics card. – Keltari – 2013-08-12T19:01:43.407

Here is a link to give you n idea how fast the HD3000 is compared to other graphics solutions.

– Hennes – 2013-08-13T17:06:13.900

Answers

Your thunderbolt port actually has two parts connected to it on the computer side:

A PCI express connection.
A DisplayPort connection.

It is actually slightly more complex because different chips result in the nu,ber of PCIe lanes which are connected, and the PCIe and display signal are multiplexed, but the important part is that the output from your onboard graphics is available on the thunderbolt port.

This means that yes, your graphics card will be used to display the image on the LED monitor.

Note that you can also use thunderbolt on systems with no on-board graphics. And that you can connect external graphics cards to the thunderbolt port (using the PCI-e lane part).

Hennes

Posted 2013-08-12T17:43:38.507

Reputation: 60 739

Do you have a source that confirms that you can pass the output from a discrete GPU via TB port? Even a youtube video would help me, the infidel. – Lech Rzedzicki – 2017-10-10T14:12:50.267

with the maximums v Extreme board you do not need to add a graph card to you sys to have 3 display the thunderbolt port can be use as a display port as if you have two display port and a HMDI

Paul Sawyer

Posted 2013-08-12T17:43:38.507

Reputation: 1

what is sys exactly? – Sickest – 2014-04-28T19:20:55.227

@Sickest he probably means "system". – None – 2014-04-28T19:29:55.607