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Does anyone here currently run a eGPU on their MacBook Pro and can share their experience (including what card you are using)?
I would like to know as well. And if anyone knows if they work well with thunderbolt2.
Yes I’m losing some bandwidth stepping down to TB2 but it’s enough to satisfy some casual gaming.
https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N1080IXEB-8GD#kf
Which you can get in the $500 range which has a GTX 1080.
This eGPU is $699 and has a less powerful AMD 580.
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…
Huh. They're targeting ... people who don't know any better? I want to see rendering benchmarks (both 1080p/2160p) of this vs external Thunderbolt GTX/1060,1070,1080 enclosures (and AMDGPU equivalents). I mean if it works better and you do a lot of video, then yea, go for it. If it's only marginally better, buy something with a real PCIe slot that's upgradable. Even business customers should not buy this if the bench…
A pretty enclosure can be worth more than its contents, just accept it as a piece of furniture.
I'm sure you wouldn't scoff at PC gaming rigs with pretty flashing LED lights after all.
Are eGPUs compatable with the UltraFine 5K? IIRC they were explicitly excluded from Apple's compatibility in the early days of High Sierra.
(EDIT: Yes, "There’s even a second Thunderbolt 3 connection for connecting high resolution displays such as the LG 5K display which gives you incredible image resolution, contrast and color depth!")
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…
> $699 and no ability to upgrade Sounds like a perfect fit for the Apple ecosystem.
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…
> $699 and no ability to upgrade Sounds like a perfect fit for the Apple ecosystem.
That said, in this case, I don't see what is being gained by not making the GPU swappable or at least accessible (although it might very well still be). I'm assuming they could simply only offer official support for the one it contains but let people do whatever they want with it (which again might be the case in practice, they just aren't announcing it officially).
I don't know why the title says "Apple's". It works with MBPs but the company seems to have nothing to do with Apple Inc.
Marketing. It was either Linus or Dave2D that did some videos on external GPUs and IIRC, all AMDs work on Mac, but only a subset of nvidias do. Since we are talking about Resolve, which is cross platform, you could just save a bunch of money by buying a PC/Linux box. Several gaming laptops have really good GPUs builtin, although Apple did finally refresh their laptop offerings. Also keep in mind that if you want to w…
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…
Huh. They're targeting ... people who don't know any better? I want to see rendering benchmarks (both 1080p/2160p) of this vs external Thunderbolt GTX/1060,1070,1080 enclosures (and AMDGPU equivalents). I mean if it works better and you do a lot of video, then yea, go for it. If it's only marginally better, buy something with a real PCIe slot that's upgradable. Even business customers should not buy this if the bench…
It’s a fun hobby. And if you have the cash to spend on always having the best GPU then you probably don’t care that for $1,000 you only get an extra 10 FPS or so.
These days I can’t even remember how old a machine is let alone what GPU it even has. “Why is this box so slow? It’s four years old? Holy shit, when did that happen?”
Even when I had a rig and was reading Tom’s and Anand daily I don’t think I actually ever upgraded a video card twice. Maybe it happened once? The cycles might have been longer back then, but by the time cards had advanced two generations we were moving from AGP 4x to 8X or to PCI-E or multi core whatever. I could easily just go back in time and buy whatever middle of the road Dell lunchbox was available and just replaced the whole thing every year or two and probably saved money for the same performance.
These days I’ll take a non upgradable whatever it is as long as it has a good warranty.
I don't know why the title says "Apple's". It works with MBPs but the company seems to have nothing to do with Apple Inc.
Except every comparison on the page is using a MPB, the bottom of the page says “Buy at Apple” and when you click on the link to Apple.com, Apple’s page says “only at Apple”.