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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

#191

Post by mikeyouse »

kayoone wrote: post #184
mikeyouse wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I don't have a good excuse for waiting except it was my wife's primary computer for the last few years while she completed grad school and I didn't use it much to notice how much slower it seemed as compared to a modern SSD-based machine. Definitely wish I had done it earlier now.

It was an old work machine that I got to take with me when I left that job so it was far overspecced for casual use.. though it feels so much better now.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#192

Post by DonHopkins »

whichdan wrote: post #8

From the FAQ: > Can I upgrade the GPU chip in the Blackmagic eGPU? > No, the design has been optimized for quiet operation so it’s better suited for creative customers. This means the design is not a simple chassis with a PCIe card plugged in, but an integrated electronics, mechanical and cooling design that cannot have the GPU chip upgraded or changed. $699 and no ability to upgrade makes it pretty clear that they'r…

"Creative customers" sounds like some kind of patronizing euphemism.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#193

Post by ben-schaaf »

iagooar wrote: post #120
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.

Oh yeah, let's make the MBP double thick so there is space just in case you need an upgrade...

I recently bought an Aero 15. It's less than half a cm thicker than the new MBP and only 300g heavier. It's got a free SODIMM and NVME slot once you get the right screwdriver. There's plenty of reasons not to buy this specific laptop, but it's one of many that are in the same weight/size category that are both cheaper than the top end MacBook Pro and outperform it.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#194

Post by rbanffy »

awalton wrote: post #71
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'd bet 99.9% of people buying PC Laptops never upgrade a single chip... Some huge percentage of that is because many if not most laptops shipping today have wired everything down. You can't even update the Wifi chip in most laptops today, even though the whole reason we put Wifi on a daughtercard in the first place is because we knew the standards were going to have to move... Meanwhile, I'm typing this from a fiv…

> They want you to have to buy a new one in 18 months when they ship version 2.

My laptop is 4.5 years old now and I'm starting to think about replacing it. It was upgraded the week it was purchased, with a bigger hard disk and 16 gigs of memory (and a US keyboard, but that doesn't count) and that was the last upgrade it had. The next one will probably be never upgraded, as the manufacturer offers the configuration I want (at the time, Dell didn't). I expect it to last about 5 years just like this one.

Would I love to have a faster laptop? Of course I would. Can I justify the cost in terms of productivity gained? No way.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#195

Post by dsfyu404ed »

overcast wrote: post #181
batrat wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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

You get easily get more than 5yr at less cost if you spec for upgrade ability up front (good CPU + motherboard specs) and then do a mid lifecycle ram, storage, etc upgrade. Rolling upgrades can save even more money if done properly because the hardware coming out of use becomes your service parts for the stuff that's getting up there in age.

Regardless, the best solution is whatever fits your specific needs best.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#196

Post by simonebrunozzi »

z3phyr wrote: post #78
awalton wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd bet 99.9% of people buying PC Laptops never upgrade a single chip... Some huge percentage of that is because many if not most laptops shipping today have wired everything down. You can't even update the Wifi chip in most laptops today, even though the whole reason we put Wifi on a daughtercard in the first place is because we knew the standards were going to have to move... Meanwhile, I'm typing this from a fiv…

Why is this comment being down voted?

Curious: how exactly do you see that the comment is being downvoted?

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#197

Post by blattimwind »

johncalvinyoung wrote: post #186
blattimwind wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

Yes. You get one generation (one tick-tock, so for example, Nehalem+Westmere, Sandy+Ivy Bridge, Haswell+Broadwell, though differences between tick and tock are generally not worth it). 1151/H4 deviates a bit here, because Intel fubar'd their roadmap and weren't able to deliver even single-digit advances per revision any more. So H4 now has three generations of chipsets, two of which don't support CFL (Coffee lake).

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#198

Post by rbanffy »

dragonshed wrote: post #46
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 upgraded the ram and disk on my 2012 13in MacBook Pro. The lack of upgradability on the newer machines is a real turn off.

The option is to buy it fully specced. A new 6-core i9 with 32 gigs of DDR4 amd 4TB of flash storage will probably keep you happy for the next 5 years. That means your budget is slightly above US$ 1200/year of happy computing with a Mac.

If you don't need macOS or an ultra-elegant thin computer with an incredible screen, you'll probably be happier with a PC from Dell or Lenovo with similar specs and an updated machine every 2 years. But they are neither elegant, nor thin. At least they run Linux very well.

My current personal laptop is 4.5 years old and I am now considering replacing it with a machine with specs similar to the PC I described - non-thin, non-elegant, decent-but-not-incredible screen, a non-bleeding-edge CPU, as much memory as possible, some flash storage and a hard disk and I don't expect to upgrade it in less than 5 years.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#199

Post by rbanffy »

mitchty wrote: post #179
RealityVoid wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But is it really far fetched? Yes, making things upgradeable generally adds weight and size to components. Sockets aren't "free", calling it planned obsolescence is absurd. They've been designed to have wired in components for a reason. You may not agree with that reason, say size constraints, but that is the constraints it was designed under. Weighting any decision is: how much will this cost our design? (note, co…

> Same thing as happened to our own species tails, they became obsolete.

And no ape had its tail cut in the name of evolution. It happened slowly, as older apes were replaced by newer models.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#200

Post by themagician »

blattimwind wrote: post #111
themagician wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value in the ability to upgrade is often misperceived as being worth more than it really is. If you buy something mid-to-top range you are really only going to be able to get a single upgrade cycle out of it out (where there is some substantial marginal benefit for the cost) before the rest of the system starts to obsolete itself. If you watch things closely and the tick-tock cycles are aligned then maybe you get…

> The value in the ability to upgrade is often misperceived as being worth more than it really is. If you buy something mid-to-top range you are really only going to be able to get a single upgrade cycle out of it out (where there is some substantial marginal benefit for the cost) before the rest of the system starts to obsolete itself. If you watch things closely and the tick-tock cycles are aligned then maybe you g…

It’s never “fast enough.” PCI-E motherboards are actually out now. In three years we will have either PCI-E 4.0 or 5.0 as a standard.

And you’re right—PCIe 3.0 cards out today have plenty of performance for today’s applications. That why you would get a PCIe 3.0 card today. But it doesn’t matter if it’s fixed because you aren’t going to upgrade it.

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