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TH3P4G3 Thunderbolt eGPU Dock Review (2022)

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Re: TH3P4G3 Thunderbolt eGPU Dock Review (2022)

#21

Post by dangus »

gymbeaux wrote: post #7

The link doesn’t load for me but in my experience eGPUs are buggy whether it’s a Mac, PC, Lenovo, Dell… in fact Thunderbolt in general is a buggy experience everywhere. It had so much promise.

I think the problem is ultimately that there never was going to be benefit even if it was assumed to work perfectly.

You spend $150+GPU+PSU cost, tether your laptop to a wall outlet, and add size and weight to your “portable” kit.

That doesn’t compete all that well with just buying a higher end laptop or waiting a few years to buy the next generation of laptop. If you’re willing to go through all that expense and compromise of portability you’re probably willing to have a separate desktop system and reap the benefits of having a second more fully modular system.

It reminds me of that Voyager III concept car where you could detach a small car from the rear minivan section. Cool idea for an auto show, but why not just own a second vehicle?

https://www.hotcars.com/plymouth-voyager-iii-concept-car/

Re: TH3P4G3 Thunderbolt eGPU Dock Review (2022)

#24

Post by deaddodo »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #12

I was going to ask if this would be good to use with a Framework laptop... but it doesn't look like you can even get Thunderbolt for the Framework... Update (I can't reply to the reply because of HN's "posting too fast" bullshit): Thanks for the reply. I thought a TB port would have to be one of the modules, and none is listed. But I guess TB ports are built-in, based on this: https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop…

Thunderbolt isn't a port type, it's an interconnect. You can read a summary of this here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1225cru/how_d...

But, the takeaway is, you wouldn't see a "thunderbolt" port separate from a USB-C port; the physical interface doesn't differ, just how the data is marshalled along the wire.

Re: TH3P4G3 Thunderbolt eGPU Dock Review (2022)

#25

Post by dijit »

jitl wrote: post #3

Just as this technology is being commoditized in a high quality way, Apple decides to drop support :(

Devils Advocate: the issue is that theres no OEM ARM drivers afaik.

I am quite convinced Apple would have loved to throw in a Radeon GPU in their mac pro, but the limiting factor is the drivers themselves.

You can effectively use eGPU docks for other PCIe devices, like 10GBe cards or NVMe enclosures. Its a waste of space though.

FWIW, I have a razer chroma X and I cant even fit modern GPUs into it anyway.

Re: TH3P4G3 Thunderbolt eGPU Dock Review (2022)

#26

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

arjvik wrote: post #15

This is quite cheap compared to name brand eGPU docks—is there any reason to buy a $400+ Razer dock or other similarly expensive ones over this?

There are some downsides to this kind of barebones design at the end of the article. The Razer enclosure (and many others?) include a power supply (and presumably fans?) as well as an outer casing that hides the cables and protects from dust and other hazards (i.e. making it safer to move around than an open design).

Re: TH3P4G3 Thunderbolt eGPU Dock Review (2022)

#27

Post by kibibyte »

arjvik wrote: post #15

This is quite cheap compared to name brand eGPU docks—is there any reason to buy a $400+ Razer dock or other similarly expensive ones over this?

It's cheap because it doesn't come with a case or a PSU, and appears to only be available through AliExpress (not necessarily a bad thing, but could make manufacturer support tricky).

A case might be nice if you prefer not to have a bare GPU on your desktop and if you want to slow down the dust buildup. SFX power supply units appear to run you about $100 for something like 650W. The power delivery is limited to 60W (in terms of how much power it'll deliver to charge a laptop), which is sufficient for many laptops but probably not all of them (I think the last generation of Intel MacBook Pros might want more than 60W).

Re: TH3P4G3 Thunderbolt eGPU Dock Review (2022)

#29

Post by kelnos »

natejlong wrote: post #13
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #12

I was going to ask if this would be good to use with a Framework laptop... but it doesn't look like you can even get Thunderbolt for the Framework... Update (I can't reply to the reply because of HN's "posting too fast" bullshit): Thanks for the reply. I thought a TB port would have to be one of the modules, and none is listed. But I guess TB ports are built-in, based on this: https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop…

No, they do (unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying). Framework laptops with 11th gen Intel boards seem to unofficially support it, and 12th-gen and beyond boards are officially thunderbolt certified. This applies to all four ports on the Framework 13. Source: https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptops-are-now-thunderbol... If you're seeing something otherwise let me know, though!

Unfortunately, the BIOS update for the 12th-gen for full TB compliance has been in beta (and has known issues) for more than 6 months now, with no final release in sight. Most TB devices work fine without the update, though, from what I understand.

Re: TH3P4G3 Thunderbolt eGPU Dock Review (2022)

#30

Post by AnthonBerg »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #5
zeusk wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did apple ever have eGPU support? and even if they did, they had a nasty fallout with nvidia some time ago.

I have a 2020 Intel Mac Mini where it works reasonably well with a Razer Core X and some midrange 2018 era AMD card. Nvidia cards were never supported but AMD got to the point where they were reasonably plug and play for awhile. It isn’t without its warts but I even got it working with Bootcamp to the point that I was playing Windows games natively on Mac with eGPU. Not enough juice to run Cyberpunk on full settings…

Yep!

I have a 2018 Macbook Pro and a pretty interesting/fun/skeletal eGPU setup made out of a Thunderbolt-to-M.2 adapter (intended for SSDs), M.2-to-PCIe adapter for the card, and a fanless 600W ATX power supply. I use it with an AMD 5700 XT and 6800 XT. Hooked up to a 55” LG OLED TV. It’s been very fun to operate.

It Just Works to a degree, and takes some tinkering as well. Quite a bit of tinkering actually.

The dedicated cards make windowing around in macOS snappier and smoother. It’s noticeable everywhere. IntelliJ is way, way snappier (it has Metal-based GPU acceleration these days.) The 6800 XT is noticeably smoother and faster than the 5700 XT.

For me, the responsiveness is worth it working as a programmer. 100%. Caveat: I enjoy the tinkering. Bought the setup to learn things and mess around.

Also, it’s a bit unstable. The GPU driver will lock up from time to time; I think it’s power supply fluctuations in my setup having a bad effect on a card running super tight video timing to push 4K 120Hz over a DisplayPort-to-HDMI-2.1 adapter. The wall power circuit breaker has too many devices on it (my fault). What happens is that the GPU or GPU driver sometimes locks up and the card becomes unresponsive and I can’t “safely remove” the device from the macOS menubar thing. When I unplug it, the Macbook Pro hard-poweroffs with a PFFFFT-gasp from its fans. It’s pretty clearly a systemic weakness. Might even be unfixable at the motherboard chipset level given how brutal the hard-poweroff is. –I’m not that surprised that they dropped support for eGPUs, given that adding support in their ARM M-series CPU platform would have needed some different core design decisions.

Playstation 3 emulation runs great, in macOS.

That said, if you’re biologically wired to be sensitive to responsive and smooth GUIs everywhere, then a fast GPU works really well with macOS. What you really want if you’re like this is not an eGPU but an M2 pro or better with HDMI 2.1 output and an LG OLED TV. This gives you 4K at 120Hz, HDR, variable refresh rate, and super low output latency. Full viewing angle too. It’s magical.

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