What’s the best Thunderbolt eGPU for Mac in 2017? Depends on whom you ask, the answers vary. I happen to be in possession of three Thunderbolt expansion enclosures and four Apple Mac laptops which span three generations of Thunderbolt connectivity. At the moment, my pick would go to the.
How to Reset Apple's Thunderbolt Display. Steps to see if you can reset your Thunderbolt Display. Update button next to the latest OS X version in the Mac App Store. Watch out for the fact that in the case of using their USB-C (not TB3) hub, the Apple 30W charger doesn't provide enough power to (1) use the hub, (2) use the Mac, and (3) charge it at the same time (even without using any of the ports on the hub), and that if you do not use the Mac but just charge via the hub, you will lose 50% of charge power.
My conclusion came after I ran all four Mac laptops through all three Thunderbolt enclosures. The Node is the only enclosure that is a ready-to-go eGPU solution from the factory. Its 400W power supply and generous chassis dimensions mean it can accomodate up to the most powerful AMD or NVidia cards available. It also has the newer USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 controller, TI83, which macOS fully supports.
The other two enclosures, and, require a more powerful power supply than their factory 60W unit to run any AMD or NVidia card. They also have older and unsupported Thunderbolt controllers.
The list of Thunderbolt equipped Mac laptops for this evaluation with the Thunderbolt 3 enclosure are:. Late 2016 15″ MacBook Pro with iGPU HD 530 and dGPU Radeon Pro 450. Late 2016 13″ MacBook Pro with iGPU Iris 540. Early 2015 11″ MacBook Air with iGPU Iris 6100. Late 2011 17″ MacBook Pro with iGPU HD 3000 and dGPU Radeon HD 6770M The Late 2016 Mac laptops are running at Thunderbolt 3 speed (40Gbps) through the AKiTiO Thunderbolt 3 cable while the older Mac laptops are running at slower speed via the. The Early 2015 11″ MacBook Air is running at Thunderbolt 2 speed (20Gbps) and the Late 2011 17″ MacBook Pro is running at Thunderbolt 1 speed (10Gbps). An running with is fully functional in macOS 10.12 Sierra.
To enable the use of an eGPU in Mac OS environment, the one prerequisite is. At the moment, Nvidia GTX 900s series and older are Mac compatible.
The soon-to-be-released version 1.0.0 of this script will have better support for AMD Polaris and Fiji graphics cards. I successfully ran automate-eGPU script on these four Mac laptops to enable eGPU with the enclosure. The graphics card used is an EVGA GTX 980 Ti Hybrid with liquid cooling; it’s a perfect pairing with the Node. Below are the benchmarks – you can click on the scores to see the screen captures. Mac Laptop Thunderbolt PCIe Speed Luxmark 3.1 Unigine Valley Unigine Heaven Late 2016 15' MacBook Pro 32Gbps-TB3 Late 2016 13' MacBook Pro 32Gbps-TB3 Early 2015 11' MacBook Air 16Gbps-TB2 Late 2011 17' MacBook Pro 10Gbps-TB1 The performance difference between older Thunderbolt Macs vs the latest Thunderbolt 3 ones is very marginal. The only scenario in which you would benefit from native Thunderbolt 3 speed is in Windows using or to accelerate the internal display; I will be testing these same four Mac laptops in the coming weeks with Windows 10. In macOS environment, full usage of an eGPU requires an external monitor.
I know many people (myself included) want a solution for eGPU accelerated internal display. It’s not possible yet through software. There are workarounds using hardware though. A very clever and resourceful forum member built a to trick the operating system into using eGPU through the internal display. Alternatively, you can get a.
Update 1/21/2017: It’s now possible to have the. Thunderbolt eGPU for Mac is becoming more of a reality than it has ever been. With the demands of VR development, 4K video editing, and immersive video games, the performance boost of an external graphics card would enable your Mac to do things Apple didn’t think you could. Browse for other successful eGPU implementations with Apple Thunderbolt computers. Here’s a simplified overview of how Windows and macOS interact with eGPU: Step 1 – Communication between the Thunderbolt enclosure to the computer.
Step 2 – Recognition in Windows or macOS that the enclosure contains a graphics card. Step 3 – Appropriate drivers for the GPU are installed and loaded in Windows or macOS. The AKiTiO Node with TI83 controller passes Step 1 because macOS fully supports it. Enclosures with older controller such as Razer Core and AKiTiO Thunder3 are unsupported. Therefore they need TB3-Enabler to pass this Step 1.
Automate-eGPU script takes care of Step 2 and Step Read more ». Edwin, the AKiTiO Node has only the single TB3 port. There are no additional ports to daisy chain off. Your early 2013 15″ MBP (GT650M) has 2 Thunderbolt1 ports on it. There you’d attach one to your Thunderbolt display and the other to the AKiTiO Node via the Apple Thunderbolt3 to Thunderbolt2 adapter. Just Note that this LCD configuration is seen as attached to your internal GPU and so apps started in that LCD wouldn’t use eGPU acceleration by default. To have full use of the performance of the eGPU, you’d require a HDMI/DP LCD to attach to the eGPU.
I have an Early-2015 MBP 13″ (Intel Iris 6100 1536 MB) and want to get an eGPU set up. Because my laptop does not have Thunderbolt 3 ports, I thought I was only limited to Thunderbolt 2 eGPU enclosures. But reading your post, TB3 enclosures (like the Akitio Thunder 3 and Node) seem to work with older Macbooks with TB2 ports with the use of Apple’s TB3 to TB2 adapter. I was wondering if the Akitio Thunder 3 or Akitio Node would work for my Macbook Pro with the use of Apple’s adapter.
If yes, will other TB3 enclosures like Read more ». Hello from Berlin and thank you so much for this post and the further insight in the comments.
I am a documentary director, in our ongoing project we have just switched to 4K video (Sony a7s II) so my old “mule”, the MBP 2011 2,5 GHz with 16GB Ram for the first time EVER reached its limits. Until yesterday I felt stupid that I still had not bought the new MBP 2016 done it, decision to wait came from the RAM limitation of the current Apple CPUs. Today (April 4) Apple announced that they “will do more for Pro users, Read more ». Thank you for this great overview. I loved the idea of eGPU from the beginning!
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Until now I was happy with my MacBook 15″ Late 2013 with a 750m graphics card because I mainly do design stuff. I recently started with 4k video editing in FCPX and use plugins which heavily rely on GPU power. Question is: What is the best affordable eGPU for my system?
I know that I can’t use the internal display of my MacBook since i only have TB2. I use a Dell 4k display anyway.
Any recommendations for us 2013 mac “oldies” with TB enclosure Read more ».