ASUS ThunderboltEX Add-In Card Examined

Certain ASUS Z77/H77 or upcoming AM3+ motherboards will have TB_HEADER pinout, which means they will be able to interface with the company's ThunderboltEX card.

We spotted the item around a week ago, but now it has been put through its paces. VR-Zone has tested it with the Rampage V GENE and has found that a new menu appears in the motherboard's UEFI BIOS when the ThunderboltEX is installed. Owners can adjust memory space reservation options and, thus, resolve detection issues that can appear when multiple devices are daisy-chained.

Theoretically, a good BIOS should pre-allocate required resources at boot stage and, thus, allow Windows 7 to correctly recognize hot-plugged devices. If this does not happen, a “yellow bang” error code 12 (lack of resources) shows up in Device Manager until the PC is rebooted.

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