- #2011 macbook memory upgrade driver
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UI performance is ok on a 27-inch Cinema Display driven by a MacBook Air despite the lack of a dedicated high speed frame buffer. The Thunderbolt port can also function as a miniDP output which works as expected on the Air. Thunderbolt devices appear under System Profiler the same way they do on the MacBook Pro: Write speeds were a bit higher but I suspect that has more to do with changes to performance under Lion than anything inherent in the hardware. Promise Pegasus R6 12TB (10TB RAID-5) Performance I tested the Pegasus R6 with both MacBook Airs and its performance was similar to the MacBook Pro: Remember that driving a single 27-inch 25x14 display uses up around 7Gbps of upstream bandwidth alone, but there's still more than enough for storage and other needs. This gives you 20Gbps of upstream bandwidth and 20Gbps of downstream bandwidth to use however you want. Apple clarified that you can in fact mix video and PCIe traffic on a single channel or across multiple channels. With no discrete GPU in the MacBook Air there are more than enough PCIe lanes for Thunderbolt, but this controller still only uses (and needs) 4 of them.īoth DisplayPort and PCIe are carried over to the Thunderbolt port on the system.
#2011 macbook memory upgrade driver
The unidentified RAID device is a Promise Pegasus R6, which still lacks driver support under Windows.
#2011 macbook memory upgrade windows
A quick visit to Windows 7's device manager confirms that the Thunderbolt controller branches off of the CPU's on-die PCIe controller: I already mentioned that functionally Thunderbolt in the MacBook Air is no different than in the MacBook Pro. This port is on the right side of both machines in the same location as the miniDP receptacle in last year's model. I suspect Eagle Ridge is the cost reduced version of Intel's Thunderbolt controller Apple needed to maintain profit margins while bringing out a $999 MacBook Air with Thunderbolt.īoth the 11 and 13-inch MacBook Air have a single Thunderbolt port. Eagle Ridge is offered in both a normal and small form factor package, the SFF version is what's used in the MacBook Air. You get two bidirectional 10Gbps channels (20Gbps total per channel) and one DisplayPort input/output. On the iMac it's used to drive two ports on the back of the system.Įagle Ridge is half of Light Ridge. Light Ridge supports four bidirectional 10Gbps channels (20Gbps total per channel) channels and two DisplayPort inputs/outputs.
#2011 macbook memory upgrade pro
Light Ridge Thunderbolt Controller IC on 15" 2011 MacBook Pro - Courtesy iFixit
#2011 macbook memory upgrade mac
The chip used in the MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac mini is called Light Ridge and it looks like this: This is a brand new Thunderbolt controller from Intel - codenamed Eagle Ridge. Intel's Eagle Ridge SFF Thunderbolt Controller - Courtesy iFixit Looking carefully at the new MacBook Air you'll notice a tiny Intel chip near the Thunderbolt port: In all existing Thunderbolt Macs, the controller is very close to the Thunderbolt port. It's far more likely that the Thunderbolt controller is simply elsewhere on the motherboard. I didn't measure the two but they do look awfully similar.
It looks unchanged from the square 6-series chipset die we saw back at CES earlier this year: The second problem with the assumption has to do with the QS67 die itself. While it's possible that Apple could request a special chipset from Intel, Apple would have to pay for the added design, manufacturing and validation costs or commit to huge volume numbers in order to make the effort worthwhile for Intel. First off, Intel has already announced that Thunderbolt wouldn't even be integrated in Ivy Bridge chipsets next year. Unfortunately there are a couple of things wrong with this assumption. IFixit assumed that the QS67 chipset integrated Intel's Thunderbolt controller. In fact, there are only two flip-chip parts on the motherboard - the Core i5 and the QS67 chipset.ġ3-inch MacBook Air (Mid 2011) Motherboard, QS67 (left), Intel Core i5 (right) - Courtesy iFixit If you look at iFixit's teardown of the new 13-inch MacBook Air you'll notice the absence of the traditional flip-chip Thunderbolt controller from the MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac mini.
Both the new Mac mini and the MacBook Air now support Thunderbolt as well, although the Air's implementation is slightly different. We first met Thunderbolt on the 2011 MacBook Pro and saw it again on the iMac. The other major change to the new MacBook Air is support for Intel's new Thunderbolt interface.