The high-end Intel X99 platform lacks one feature that is worth having – Thunderbolt 3 – but thanks to the efforts of Gigabyte this is no more – the popular Taiwanese maker of motherboards has announced the GA-X99P-SLI model, which happens to be the world’s first X99 motherboard with support for Thunderbolt 3.
In the GA-X99P-SLI the Thunderbolt 3 interface is available through an integrated USB Type-C port. The interface allows data transfer rates of up to 40 Gbit/sec and allows users to connect devices such as external discrete video cards and other various M.2 and U.2 storage drives with high data transfer rates. The interface can also be used to output images but since all Intel Haswell-E processors lack an integrated graphics core the Thunderbolt 3 interface must have a connection to a discrete video card. To create such a connection the new Gigabyte board is equipped with a rear DisplayPort connector that can be connected to a video card. The Thunderbolt 3 interface supports up to six different monitors.
Apart from this nice feature the board comes with tons of others as a high end motherboard should – the GA-X99P-SLI features the LGA 2011-3 socket and the Intel X99 chipset and has eight DDR4-3333 memory slots for up to 128 GB of memory, support for Intel XMP memory profiles, two PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots in x16 mode, two PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots that work at x8 speed, two PCI-E 2.0 x1 slots, ten SATA 3.0 ports, one M.2 connector, one SATA Express port, a Gigabit Ethernet network controller by Intel, Realtek ALC1150 7.1-channeled audio, audio jacks, a USB 3.1 port, three USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, an RJ-45 port, a PS/2 port and more.
No word on pricing as of now.
Source: Gigabyte