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Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

blackmagicdesign.com

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Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#181

Post by overcast »

batrat wrote: post #110
dmix wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet 99.9% of people buying PC Laptops never upgrade a single chip... Apple's non-pro lines are likely not much different. Apple largely sacrificed that ability (in a few product lines) in favour of creating some of the thinnest laptops available. I don't remember them ever doing that before Macbook Air, for now reason. That said, in this case, I don't see what is being gained by not making the GPU swappable or at…

I work in a PC environment with 2k+ clients and even more side customers. 90% of PC customers upgrade their old laptops with more ram and SSD. Also some upgrade their network card, replace the dvd with a HDD/SSD, etc. Because the CPU is not a problem and no noticeable difference in performance from generation to generation, makes no damn sense to replace their laptops.

That's just some silly underspeced nonsense then. I have a PC environment of 5000, and it's definitely in the single digits. PC's are speced appropriately prior to purchase, with a lifetime of 5 years. Sure occasionally users will request, and IT will approve an upgrade based on individual demands. But who the hell has time to upgrade 90% of the machines, after you've already spent the time migrating / deploying them? At 5 years, you're already turning over 20% of the environment yearly.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#182

Post by jfindley »

RealityVoid wrote: post #170
aikinai wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s intentionally obtuse to assume the only reason you would ever sacrifice upgradeability is for planned obsolescence.

But is it really far fetched? I am certain some people somewhere have considered this a big plus and weighted in their decision more than perhaps many of the other reasons for making HW impossible to upgrade.

To hit their noise target they'll have substantially modified the gpu package to have much more passive cooling than normal for this gpu. Making that work in a way that allowed end-users to slot in another gpu from an off-the-shelf package would be really hard.

Maybe their next iteration might have replacable gpu cartridges or something? But I can totally see why they wouldn't prioritise this. Not everything companies do is done out of malice.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#183

Post by jclardy »

dmix wrote: post #27
cosmojg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $699 and no ability to upgrade Sounds like a perfect fit for the Apple ecosystem.

I'd bet 99.9% of people buying PC Laptops never upgrade a single chip... Apple's non-pro lines are likely not much different. Apple largely sacrificed that ability (in a few product lines) in favour of creating some of the thinnest laptops available. I don't remember them ever doing that before Macbook Air, for now reason. That said, in this case, I don't see what is being gained by not making the GPU swappable or at…

I think the gain is in footprint size and noise levels. I have a Sonnet eGPU box, and it is pretty massive, nearly the size of a microATX case. It also has a fan on the box and the fan of the GPU cooler itself.

This design looks a lot smaller, and I'm sure it is a lot quieter as well. If you don't want those things and do want upgradability there are plenty of other options available already.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#184

Post by kayoone »

mikeyouse wrote: post #56
angott wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss so much my 2009 MacBook Pro, where you could take out the DVD drive and replace it with an additional SSD for a performance boost.

Ha, I just did that this week. I have a late 2011 MBP and I noticed it was dragging a bit so I upgraded it from 8gb ram to 16gb and bought a 500gb SSD to replace the factory HDD. The next day I decided I wanted more space for my pictures so I bought the little enclosure and swapped out my CDROM and just reused the factory 1TB HDD. Like $220 later and it feels like a brand new machine.

you were using a 7 year old Laptop with a HDD in 2018 ? Some people don't seem to have any hardware requirements at all.. While i could tolerate a CPU from 2011, using it without an SSD feels so slow today, it's barely usable tbh. I switched to SSDs in 2009 in all my machines and never looked back, despite the price at the time.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#185

Post by forthispurpose »

kogir wrote: post #79
nafizh wrote: post #75

Anyone knows if I can use an nvidia card as an egpu with a macbook pro for machine learning? Any blog post or link will be appreciated.

Yep! Using Windows 10 via Boot Camp on a Late 2016 MacBook Pro, Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box with 550W Power Supply, and Nvidia Titan X Pascal, everything just works. In macOS, only tears and kernel panics though.

Latest script from egpu.io helped me get to pretty stable performance with 1080GTX:

https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/script-enable-egpu-on-tb1-2...

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#186

Post by johncalvinyoung »

blattimwind wrote: post #115
sitharus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four years ago I bought a desktop gaming PC (I'm normally a Mac user) with the idea that I could upgrade it over the years to keep it current but avoid replacing the whole thing. Turns out in practice technology changes enough over that time to only leave the case, and perhaps the PSU. The motherboard, CPU, RAM and graphics card are all obsolete now. The SSD can be reused but newer technology is much faster. I don't…

> all obsolete now What is it used for? If you buy Intel, you know beforehand you won't be able to upgrade the CPU, since the socket is changed (intentionally, of course) every generation. But the CPU isn't the issue for e.g. gaming, and upgrading every generation or every other generation largely doesn't make any sense at all with Intel parts for the last eight years or so. Since you're saying obsolete, you probably…

> If you buy Intel, you know beforehand you won't be able to upgrade the CPU, since the socket is changed (intentionally, of course) every generation. But the CPU isn't the issue for e.g. gaming, and upgrading every generation or every other generation largely doesn't make any sense at all with Intel parts for the last eight years or so.

Is it really true that the socket changes every generation? My impression was that sockets changed every 2-3 generations, not every one. Not that that entirely defeats the point, but it expands the window.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#187

Post by porker »

predakanga wrote: post #123
porker wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still using mine, with a patched version of OSX High Sierra installed. No problems.

How has your experience with that been? My MBP (early 2011) won't be supported by MacOS Mojave, so I'm anticipating a similar patch. I may end up staying with High Sierra, but I'd really like to try out the dark mode

Only problems have been after the occasional update, when the patches haven't been updated. A few times it's taken 5-6 reboots to start OSX properly. The best way is to delay updates as long as possible!

Apart from that, no problems at all.

http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/ and the related forum posts were excellent.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#188

Post by ratsimihah »

phonebucket wrote: post #134
ratsimihah wrote: post #104

An Nvidia GPU with CUDA would've been nice...

Would definitely have been nice. But if you're thinking about scientific programming, it's not so much effort to use AWS GPUs. I do that, and don't think I would buy an eGPU even if it was CUDA capable.

Isn't AWS expensive in the long term? I want to have a 1080 Ti but I don't even have a desktop to begin with.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#189

Post by mikeyouse »

gargravarr wrote: post #100
mch82 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any chance you've got a link to reliable instructions?

iFixit are great for this: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+...

Yep, I used their instructions for the hard drive replacement and then again for the CDROM swap out. I used to build my own machines so I was pretty confident going in, on my scale the HDD was about a 3 difficulty but the CDROM was maybe a 6.. you need to disconnect several tiny connectors to clear enough space which always makes me nervous about breaking one but it went fine in the end.
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