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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

#71
post #27
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'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 five year old laptop that I would have happily upgraded by adding more RAM if possible, and I know a lot of people that would be more than happy to do the same, since CPU technology hasn't really been improving in leaps and bounds and neither has laptop design in the past five years.

Let's not be afraid to call it what it is: It's planned obsolescence. They want you to have to buy a new one in 18 months when they ship version 2.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#74
The video being worked on in the main header image is the recent sci-fi shortfilm "Hyperlight": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od49AfIS2-U

Seems to be everywhere recently, and judging by the visuals it looks like it was used as a tech demonstration in many cases.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#77
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got the top-end i7 about 5 years ago, it's still fast. I have tried to justify upgrading it many times but I just can't see the benefit in replacing it with something that's just a bit quicker. I can at least upgrade the SSD and GPU without throwing the whole damn thing out, but even then it's hard to justify.

Well any GPU you upgrade can be used in our next system. That said there hasn't been much movement there in the last 2 years or so since the rx480 came out. I agree with the ssd, tho. The newer PCIe based ones in the m.2 formfactor areso much faster it feels a bit like a waste to buy a sata SSD.

> That said there hasn't been much movement there in the last 2 years or so since the rx480 came out.

Aren't the Vegas quicker, and the NVIDIA offering has been improving quite a bit over the last 2 years? I might not be paying enough attention, but I'm pretty sure the 1080 ti and 1070 ti's came out only recently.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#78
post #71
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…

Why is this comment being down voted?

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#79
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.

Re: Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

#80
I'm wondering why they didn't include a 10Gbps Ethernet port into this thing. They advertise it to professional graphics and video artists - don't these groups usually have to move around quite a lot of huge 3D data, image and video files?

It seems hard to imagine those people to either place all of that stuff exclusively on their new 8k$ MacBookPros with 4TB of SSD space (because even 4TB quickly runs out in that profession, and it makes it hard to work on the same project with other people) or to transfer it over 0,2Gbps (at best) WiFi connections.

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