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tigress666

macrumors 68040
Apr 14, 2010
3,288
17
Washington State
This goes against the whole point of a MacBook Air.

Someone who buys an MBA in the first place is presumably wanting portable productivity. They are probably not looking to do this type of high-end gaming on it.

EDIT: I agree wholeheartedly with all the posters the saying that this would be an at-home solution. I admit to overlooking that part. This I would not mind even for my MBP's crummy Radeon 6490M.

But seeing as I play older games and that my MacBook Pro already has a dGPU which handles them ok, I guess I just didn't see the justification of cost for something like this.

I speak as a MacBook Pro owner so I'm not going to make any presumptions of how MBA owners would feel about this. If this seems right for you, then by all means.


Honestly, I'd totally go for the idea of good gaming at home and good portability while travelling. Games suck battery power anyways so I find I don't tend to game when my laptop is actually being a laptop and not my desktop (I use mine for both). So for me this would be an awesome solution that gets the best of both worlds. Well except that the airs still dont' get enough storage space for me.
 

nando4

macrumors regular
Mar 21, 2009
111
0
How long before this turns into a kickstarter project? :D

If Intel allowed it we'd already have it. US$180 BPlus TH05 (inc Thunderbolt cable) native ~10Gbps Thunderbolt product was released in Sep 2012. Several users successfully implementing eGPUs with them below. These were simpler, cheaper and had double the pci-e bandwidth of kloper's expresscard (5Gbps) solution linked at the start of this thread.

2013 11/13" MBA + GTX570@x2.2 (TH05, BIOS) (kloper)

2012 15" rMBP + GTX560Ti@x2.2 (TH05, UEFI) (shelltoe)

2012 13" rMBP +GTX570@x2.2 (TH05, BIOS) (kloper)

2012 13" cMBP + GTX660Ti@x2.2 (TH05, BIOS + UEFI) (nando4)

2012 11/13" MBA + GTX560Ti@x2.2 (TH05, BIOS) (goggle_peace)

So what does Intel do? Gatecrash the party by threatening BPlus so they recall the product in Jan 2013 per TH05 Recall Notice. After the TH05's recall, kloper's expresscard based solution is the cheapest, most readily available one.
 
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AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,676
The Peninsula
If Intel allowed it we'd already have it. US$180 BPlus TH05 (inc Thunderbolt cable) native ~10Gbps Thunderbolt product was released in Sep 2012. Several users successfully implementing eGPUs with them below. These were simpler, cheaper and had double the pci-e bandwidth of kloper's expresscard (5Gbps) solution linked at the start of this thread.

2013 11/13" MBA + GTX570@x2.2 (TH05, BIOS) (kloper)

2012 15" rMBP + GTX560Ti@x2.2 (TH05, UEFI) (shelltoe)

2012 13" rMBP +GTX570@x2.2 (TH05, BIOS) (kloper)

2012 13" cMBP + GTX660Ti@x2.2 (TH05, BIOS + UEFI) (nando4)

2012 11/13" MBA + GTX560Ti@x2.2 (TH05, BIOS) (goggle_peace)

So what does Intel do? Gatecrash the party by threatening BPlus so they recall the product in Jan 2013 per TH05 Recall Notice. After the TH05's recall, kloper's expresscard based solution is the cheapest, most readily available one.

T-Bolt sometimes seems to be a big "bag of hurt".

Good technology, crippled by being tied to DisplayPort, shortly to be fragmented into multiple versions with potentially serious incompatibilities, single silicon vendor tied to the processor choice, virtually a single end-user host vendor, high prices and limited options, and a cheap alternative (USB 3.0) is just as good for most people.
 

MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Jun 18, 2007
5,193
1,442
I don't think the idea here is for a "mobile" gaming setup, but rather such a setup would be great to have as a home docking station gaming rig. In other words, instead of having to own a desktop AND a notebook, you could just have ONE notebook with a desktop docking station that is capable of gaming and using a larger monitor, mouse, etc. that you could conceivably plug in with just ONE connector with a proper Thunderbolt dock station.
 

Bah-Bah

macrumors member
Jan 28, 2013
71
12
Thunderbolt technology is currently just too proprietary to prosper. Technically it's great, but it seems to me that to go mass market, it has to be cheap and developer friendly.
 

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,676
The Peninsula
Thunderbolt technology is currently just too proprietary to prosper. Technically it's great, but it seems to me that to go mass market, it has to be cheap and developer friendly.

Except, of course, for the monumental blunder of putting a DisplayPort signal on your PCIe extender.

The sooner the better for Intel to define a DP-less version of T-Bolt.
 

nando4

macrumors regular
Mar 21, 2009
111
0
Except, of course, for the monumental blunder of putting a DisplayPort signal on your PCIe extender.

The sooner the better for Intel to define a DP-less version of T-Bolt.

Probably done to get maximum uptake of TB by notebook manufacturers. Idea being to use one mDP connector to provide DP and pci-e. Problem with Thunderbolt 1 is it has 20Gbps of bandwidth but it's split between the two protocols, 10Gbps each. No interleaving of the protocols is done to use the full bandwidth.

We've seen mention that Thunderbolt 2 will aggregate the bandwidth to provide the full 20Gbps. How will they do that? Will the TB controller now have a 20Gbps pipe to work with which can transmit DP or pci-e or both? For backward compatibility that's how they'd need to do it. Means the TB 2.0 controller needs to be quite a bit smarter than TB 1.0
 

Mackan

macrumors 65816
Sep 16, 2007
1,421
91
I don't think the idea here is for a "mobile" gaming setup, but rather such a setup would be great to have as a home docking station gaming rig. In other words, instead of having to own a desktop AND a notebook, you could just have ONE notebook with a desktop docking station that is capable of gaming and using a larger monitor, mouse, etc. that you could conceivably plug in with just ONE connector with a proper Thunderbolt dock station.

Exactly. And when Thunderbolt and quad-core becomes mainstream in 13'' laptops, you have the perfect combination. At the moment we are just doing the 'great wait' for this... since you can bet that the industry will work against you.

Next up will be to see if SilverStone actually releases their Thunderbolt eGPU solution. I can't imagine they started to work on it just to get rejected by Intel.
 

onelazyman

macrumors newbie
Mar 1, 2011
20
0
Next up will be to see if SilverStone actually releases their Thunderbolt eGPU solution. I can't imagine they started to work on it just to get rejected by Intel.

Sorry if it's been answered before, but what's the reason behind Intel's reluctance to authorize such eGPU solutions?

It's quite clear that TB is still not a big success for Intel as of now, so I would have thought they would want to make it as appealing as possible... :confused:
 

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,038
2,395
OBX
Sorry if it's been answered before, but what's the reason behind Intel's reluctance to authorize such eGPU solutions?

It's quite clear that TB is still not a big success for Intel as of now, so I would have thought they would want to make it as appealing as possible... :confused:

Probably because it trivializes their iGPU.
 

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,676
The Peninsula
We've seen mention that Thunderbolt 2 will aggregate the bandwidth to provide the full 20Gbps. How will they do that? Will the TB controller now have a 20Gbps pipe to work with which can transmit DP or pci-e or both? For backward compatibility that's how they'd need to do it. Means the TB 2.0 controller needs to be quite a bit smarter than TB 1.0

Same cables, same two pairs of channels - just aggregated.

Backwards compatibility will be interesting... Or perhaps a nightmare.

The mechanism behind this backward compatibility isn't fully explained in Intel's blog post, but it's almost certain that Thunderbolt 2's 20Gbps channels can be split to provide for older devices, with 10Gbps streams either multiplexed by the controller into 20Gbps streams, or with the entire bus simply falling back to Thunderbolt 1. It's also unclear how mixed Thunderbolt 2 and Thunderbolt 1 devices would behave on the same bus, and if there are guidelines for how and in what order mixed devices should be connected.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/06/sequel-to-thunderbolt-is-all-about-4k-video/
 

jjahshik32

macrumors 603
Sep 4, 2006
5,366
52
Not true. TB 1.0 is x4 2.0 (16Gbps) pci-e link but the downstream link across the TB channel is limited to 10Gbps. TB 1.0 and x2 2.0 (8Gbps) were bandwidth tested and compared finding the former about 12.5% faster confirming it is 10Gbps.

This means too Intel will need to upspec the pci-e link to x8 2.0 (32Gbps) to be able to get a full 20Gbps across it's TB 2.0 link. If they keep it x4 2.0 then it will only be 16Gbps and "20Gbps" will be false advertising.

REF: http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-...11-2012-gtx-660ti-@-2-2-no-opt.html#post33344



Starting at US$950 and you still need to buy the $36 Thunderbolt cable. Magma have dreams of big profits.

Man for that much I can just build a dedicated gaming rig desktop, lol.
 

Techtimate

macrumors newbie
Aug 6, 2013
12
0
Awesome concept. Would love to see this officially implemented as a dock or station as some sort.
 

nando4

macrumors regular
Mar 21, 2009
111
0
Hi,

I have installed a Quadro K5000 on my MacBook Air 11 inch, with Thunderbolt to ExpressCard and ExpressCard to PCIe.

I play Batman Arkham City on 1 600 x 1 200 (~1080p) with maximum details under Mac OS X.

A video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Bw4xWoi7k
Blog post : http://www.journaldulapin.com/2013/...ue-en-thunderbolt-sous-mac-os-x-la-suite-bis/

Looks like he's using the Thunderbolterizer hacked OSX driver as discussed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koE5r0Kg1Rc


Functionally same hardware, but ViDock expresscard adapter costs US$127 more

Pretty much the same solution as the OP except this user spend an extra US$127 purchasing a US$219-shipped ViDock 3+ instead of a US$92-shipped PE4L-EC060A 2.1b. Both are running just the circuit board without the enclosure using an ATX PSU so are functionally identical.

That US$127 cost difference significant when you consider:

- it nearly covers the $134 cost of the Sonnet Echo Expresscard

- could have got a PE4H-EC060A 3.2 enclosure and still pocketed $27 in change.

- could have had a native Thunderbolt solution: a ~$320 Sonnet Echo Express or OWC Helios for cheaper that provides the full 10Gbps bandwidth. The expresscard-to-Thunderbolt solutions provide 5Gbps. Just be aware these would need to run deshelled and may need a PCI Reset circuit hack applied.

Overall, the ViDock solution is poor value against other options available.
 
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donutbagel

macrumors 6502a
Jun 9, 2013
932
1
How can you upgrade an MBA's GPU but not a MBP? I didn't read the whole thing because I gave up understanding all the innards of computers a long while ago. But logic tells me that if this was done using Thunderbolt then it should work on an MBP.
You can. What I meant is that you can't upgrade the MBP's internal GPU, but you can upgrade this external GPU on a MBA (or whatever it's connected to).
 

Dandu

macrumors regular
Jan 23, 2009
118
14
Looks like he's using the Thunderbolterizer hacked OSX driver as discussed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koE5r0Kg1Rc


Functionally same hardware, but ViDock costs US$127 more

Pretty much the same solution as the OP except this user spend an extra US$127 purchasing a US$219-shipped ViDock 3+ instead of a US$92-shipped PE4L-EC060A 2.1b. Both are running just the circuit board without the enclosure using an ATX PSU so are functionally identical.

The cost differential significant when you consider:

- it nearly covers the $134 cost of the Sonnet Echo Expresscard

- could have got a PE4H-EC060A 3.2 enclosure and still pocketed $27 in change.

- could have had a native Thunderbolt solution: a ~$320 Sonnet Echo Express or OWC Helios for cheaper that provides the full 10Gbps bandwidth. The expresscard-to-Thunderbolt solutions provide 5Gbps. Just be aware these would need to run deshelled and may need a PCI Reset circuit hack applied.

Overall, the ViDock solution is poor value against other options available.

I know that, it's just to prove it works under Mac OS X (and i don't know Thunderbolterizer, but i make the same modification on the driver).

For the Helios, the PCIe connector is a x8, no ? Is this possible to install a x16 card into it without adapter ?

I use the Vidock because i have the enclosure since many year, and i have not found a BPlus TH05 to make my test.
 

onelazyman

macrumors newbie
Mar 1, 2011
20
0
Thanks Dandu and nando for the very interesting contributions.

I'll be waiting for some easy tutorials to get started on a similar project :p

----------

I have a question though, what happens if the TB cable gets unplugged by accident while you're playing?

Is it potentially dangerous for our machines?
 

Zellio

macrumors 65816
Feb 7, 2012
1,165
474
It would probably just crash the game and the system. It's not like removing a live system component which would short the system.. Plus, the gpu has it's own power supply so no issue there.
 

MWPULSE

macrumors 6502a
Dec 27, 2008
706
1
London
Yep, you can use the new Sonnet Echo Express III-D/R with Avid Pro Tools. It supports up to three Pro Tools|HDX cards:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpressiii.html

It's quite expensive, but it has Thunderbolt 2 and is upgradeable to future versions of Thunderbolt.

Or, if you're okay with previous-gen Pro Tools|HD Native, Avid makes its own Thunderbolt interface:

http://www.avid.com/US/products/Pro-Tools-HD-Native

Nice nice, im not in the market right now, but I guess that opens up alot of doors.. 48ch+ of IO for live recordings n such like... ooooooh thunderbolt could end up getting fun! ;)
 

EpicBlob

macrumors member
Feb 29, 2012
73
3
Mid-West
I know that, it's just to prove it works under Mac OS X (and i don't know Thunderbolterizer, but i make the same modification on the driver).

For the Helios, the PCIe connector is a x8, no ? Is this possible to install a x16 card into it without adapter ?

I use the Vidock because i have the enclosure since many year, and i have not found a BPlus TH05 to make my test.

Hey Dandu,

Know if this would work with a GTX card under OS X?
 

Dandu

macrumors regular
Jan 23, 2009
118
14
I suppose, it works with a Quadro K5000, and the card is technically a GTX 680.
 
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