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A Thunderbolt display with built-in GPU? Is it a good idea?

Good idea?

  • Total voters
    15
poiihy

poiihy

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Aug 22, 2014
2,303
64
Wouldn't it be cool if the Apple Thunderbolt Cinema display had a built-in GPU? And a plug-and-play technology which allows you to switch GPUs instantly without rebooting? Then when you dock your MBP, it would use a more powerful GPU inside the display, rather than the one in the MBP. And if the display is plugged into something that does not support this feature, it would just pass-through and act like a regular monitor. Is this a good idea? Comments please.
 
Last edited:
poiihy said:
Wouldn't it be cool if the Apple Thunderbolt Cinema display had a built-in GPU? And a plug-and-play technology which allows you to switch GPUs instantly without rebooting? Then when you dock your MBP, it would use a more powerful GPU inside the display, rather than the one in the MBP. And if the display is plugged into something that does not support this feature, it would just pass-through and act like a regular monitor. Is this a good idea? Comments please.
Click to expand...

The problem is that the Thunderbolt interface is much slower than the multi-lane PCIe interface inside the box. GPUs typically have a X16 PCIe interface... which is much faster than you can get from Thunderbolt. 8Gb/s PCIe X 16 lanes is the equivalent of 128 Gb/sec.

With a 10-20 Gb/s Thunderbolt interface to the GPU, I think you would be disappointed.

/Jim
 
flynz4 said:
The problem is that the Thunderbolt interface is much slower than the multi-lane PCIe interface inside the box. GPUs typically have a X16 PCIe interface... which is much faster than you can get from Thunderbolt. 8Gb/s PCIe X 16 lanes is the equivalent of 128 Gb/sec.

With a 10-20 Gb/s Thunderbolt interface to the GPU, I think you would be disappointed.

/Jim
Click to expand...

Do GPUs currently saturate x16?
 
boast said:
Do GPUs currently saturate x16?
Click to expand...

You can always run things slower... but the short answer is yes, they need the X16 interface to get the best performance. If they didn't benefit, then GPUs would generally use a X8 interface to be more affordable. BTW: Thunderbolt 2 is still only about 1/3 the performance of a X8 PCIe.

/Jim
 
flynz4 said:
The problem is that the Thunderbolt interface is much slower than the multi-lane PCIe interface inside the box. GPUs typically have a X16 PCIe interface... which is much faster than you can get from Thunderbolt. 8Gb/s PCIe X 16 lanes is the equivalent of 128 Gb/sec.

With a 10-20 Gb/s Thunderbolt interface to the GPU, I think you would be disappointed.

/Jim
Click to expand...

Aww :( Well... maybe with Thunderbolt 4 or 5...

If Thunderbolt could reach such high speeds, would this be a good idea?
 
flynz4 said:
The problem is that the Thunderbolt interface is much slower than the multi-lane PCIe interface inside the box. GPUs typically have a X16 PCIe interface... which is much faster than you can get from Thunderbolt. 8Gb/s PCIe X 16 lanes is the equivalent of 128 Gb/sec.

With a 10-20 Gb/s Thunderbolt interface to the GPU, I think you would be disappointed.

/Jim
Click to expand...

Would be more than fast enough...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7987/running-an-nvidia-gtx-780-ti-over-thunderbolt-2
 
Given that Thunderbolt 2 offers only 20Gbit/s of bandwidth while a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot offers 128Gbit/s
Click to expand...

Just this quote alone from that article shows me that Thunderbolt is not ready for a solution like this.
 
flynz4 said:
The article says that synthetic benchmarks were performing at 89-90% performance. It then goes on to say that for some applications, there would be no performance degradation, while others could suffer as much as 50%.

IMHO, That variability seems excessive for a product aimed at the enthusiast market.

/Jim
Click to expand...

Right, but be aware that Anandtech experiment is a cobbled together, with no official support. Now, make that officially supported by Apple, and we're in business. It would work well, or - at least significantly better than the Intel HD5000 in a MacBook Pro..

This wouldn't be the first time an external GPU has made a helluva difference. I have a Vaio Z2, and it has an eGPU from Sony using Lightpeak (essentially Thunderbolt), taking you from the Intel HD3000 to the AMD 7670 when it's connected. It also adds USB 3.0, HDMI out, and a Blu-ray drive - with the GPU! The difference in performance is huge.

Either way, the technology WORKS, and I wish it existed with higher-end GPUs officially.
 
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