The fastest, most versatile connection ever!

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Thunderbolt™

Thunderbolt™ is a new Intel® technology that combines the bandwidth of PCI Express and Display flexibility of DisplayPort technology. With a Thunderbolt™ enabled mainboard you can, for instance, connect six external storage devices or DisplayPort monitors to a single Thunderbolt™ port with 20GB/s bandwidth on your Z77A-GD80.Because of the Capabilities of Thunderbolt™ you can also have high bandwidth demanding devices connected outside of your computer without losing performance, for instance Graphics cards, Gigabit LAN ports or USB hubs.

Amazing flexibility

The MSI Z77A-GD80 allows - Daisy Chaining - of Thunderbolt™ devices and gives you the ability to link many devices in a variety of combinations. For instance: six Thunderbolt™ Devices and one DisplayPort Monitor or 6 DisplayPort Monitors.

Another big benefit of this solutions is that only one single cable is required and the connection to a PC is relatively simply as only a single cable is now necessary for all your devices!

Simple Plug & Play with just one cable

Thunderbolt™ technology on the MSI Z77A-GD80 removes the need for cables to your graphics card thanks to the inclusion of Lucid Virtu technology. Thanks to Lucid Virtu, the Thunderbolt™ port automatically switches between your energy efficient Intel HD Graphics and Powerful Discrete graphics cards from either AMD or NVIDIA.

Thunderbolt™ allows near transparent operation of all your connected devices. You do not need any drivers and the experience itself is plug and play. Want more graphics performance? Connect a Thunderbolt™ based Graphics adapter. Need more storage space? Select one of the many, many Thunderbolt™ based storage devices, plug... And go!



New level of Bandwidth

With over 20Gb/s of bandwidth available on a single Thunderbolt™ port there is enough to go by for everyone. Just to give you an impression of how fast Thunderbolt™ is 20Gb/s is over four times faster than USB 3.0 (at ~5Gb/s) or three times faster than the fastest SSD drive (6Gb/s).

Thunderbolt™ up-to-date Technology

Thunderbolt™ combines the bandwidth of PCI Express and the flexibility of DisplayPort technology. With a Thunderbolt™ enabled MSI Z77A-GD80 you can, for instance, connect six external storage devices or DisplayPort monitors to a single Thunderbolt™ port. Because of the Capabilities of Thunderbolt™ you can also have high bandwidth demanding devices outside of your computer without losing performance, for instance external Graphics Cards or Gigabit LAN ports.

The Thunderbolt™ controller on the MSI Z77A-GD80 is connected directly to the Intel® Z77 Express Chipset allowing for massive bandwidth for your Thunderbolt™ devices.

Because the Thunderbolt™ chip is integrated in MSI Z77A-GD80 mainboard design, you have a hassle-free solution where you don't need any extra cables. True plug and play.