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11" MacBook Air Owner Connects High-End Graphics Card With Complex Thunderbolt Setup

pk7 said:
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.

However, yes, in a portable enclosure, this can be pretty neat.
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Yes and no. If you only want one computer, that you wish to take everywhere with you and then connect it to a larger screen, mouse keyboard and external HD's when you get home... adding a more powerful GPU would only be a natural step.
 
danielsutton said:
As another poster said, why use an ultra-thin laptop for this kind of setup if a user is only going to bulk it up with adapters and extra hardware so that it can accept a PC graphics card? And, more importantly, how does this affect the MBA's battery life? I am sure that this is a battery-guzzler and would kill the machine before even the first level of a game is finished...
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I haven't seen the video but I imagine it's powered externally, and I think the thrill is running high-end graphics on Apple's lowest spec machine.
 
danielsutton said:
As another poster said, why use an ultra-thin laptop for this kind of setup if a user is only going to bulk it up with adapters and extra hardware so that it can accept a PC graphics card? And, more importantly, how does this affect the MBA's battery life? I am sure that this is a battery-guzzler and would kill the machine before even the first level of a game is finished...
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I think that is a moot point. You are going to be using this at a desk, not on the go.

MacsRgr8 said:
So, how about a 27" LED Display with a Titan card built in...?
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Would be cool but thunderbolt 2 doesn't have the bandwidth.
 
Cougarcat said:
This would be perfect for me. I want the convenience of having one machine that can be portable, yet still play games well at home. Right now, I make do with a MBP and Hackintosh.

However, the tech isn't quite there yet. Thunderbolt, even 2, can't compare to a dedicated PCI slot in terms of speed. I suspect he's getting away with it because of the low resolution of the 11".
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It's very comparable to a PCI-E slot. It's comparable to a PCI-E 2.0 4x slot, which I happen to have a benchmark for:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010...ie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x4x4#.UfgftY3xq38

That's a 480 SLI being tested, which is a pretty nice card even today. To quote:

Even with all the data that GTX 480 SLI is pushing across the PCIe bus, x4/x4 is NOT a bottleneck in a single display setup at 2560x1600 with AA enabled.
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So a true Thunderbolt device to do this will result in VERY playable power.

EDIT: So the bandwidth of TB is 20 Gbit/s, a 1x lane for PCI-E 2.0 is 500 MB/s. A TB connection is therefore slightly faster than a 4x PCI-E 2.0 slot, but some bandwidth may be lost due to the conversion process.
 
pk7 said:
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.

However, yes, in a portable enclosure, this can be pretty neat.
Click to expand...

Not at all for me. I love the portability. But I'm at home now, and it's plugged into a 27" monitor.

I would totally try some more serious gaming if this were an option.
 
pk7 said:
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.

However, yes, in a portable enclosure, this can be pretty neat.
Click to expand...

And the purpose of Thunderbolt is exactly this.
 
I'm glad someone got it to work, but i mean...why bother?

I just dropped a $170 GTX 650 Ti Boost into my old 2008 Mac Pro, and it's way more than twice as fast as this frankenair.

This is great as a "can it be done" experiment, but it isn't a "solution" by any means. It would probably be less annoying to carry around a mac pro and a monitor than to carry around all of those cables and adapters and such in the name of mobile gaming.

And it only works on the windows side right now. and this solution costs more than a used mac pro.

I wouldn't call a 570 "high-end graphics" either. A 790 is high-end, or a Titan, or a couple of 660s in SLI.
 
To be quite honest, the Haswell (Intel HD 5000) graphics are pretty stellar for some medium-heavy gaming already.

I currently play SWTOR with no issues (except for a loud fan and some heat) on my 2013 13" MBA. Granted, I got the ultimate version (8GB RAM, 512 GB SSD) - but it works quite well - better than I expected actually.

From a windows experience index standpoint, My MBA scored a 6.7 (which was its lowest score) on Gaming Graphics - pretty stellar for an all flash 13" notebook that weights 1.5 pounds.
 
Wasn't this the whole point of thunderboldt? Why is this so surprising.. the new mac pro has soldered graphics cards... this is the direction apple is headed.
 
afawcett said:
that's really cool. im sure countless people said this wasn't possible, but i'm glad someone persisted until it worked.
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Yeah the greats don't listen to people who say that's impossible. This tech really throws the game plans of a lot of businesses out the window. For the consumer this is pure brilliance. Separate the gaming power and the cpu, perfect. You can upgrade one or the other at your leisure.

However the suits would rather put a stop to this I'd imagine as it would overnight kill a lot of marketshare for gaming laptops and devices. It would in other words revolutionise this section of the industry. Very useful stuff and I hope it comes to fruition through some channel, though I suspect all the big manufacturers would like to see this shut down asap, as it's messes with their revenue stream.

This guy is the essence of creativity and productivity without all the commercial BS that entangles 99% of products out there.
 
pk7 said:
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.

However, yes, in a portable enclosure, this can be pretty neat.
Click to expand...

Proof of concept means nothing to you I guess? The guy did this on a Macbook air to show that a computer that didn't have a snowball's chance in hell to run Borderlands 2 out of the box could run it incredibly well with this setup. SUrprised you didn't comment on the shoebox he had the GPU sitting in. Think about the big picture here...
 
szhark said:
Wasn't this the whole point of thunderboldt? Why is this so surprising.. the new mac pro has soldered graphics cards... this is the direction apple is headed.
Click to expand...

Thunderbolt is going to have to get a LOT better before an external GPU will compare with high-end internal ones.
 
benpatient said:
I'm glad someone got it to work, but i mean...why bother?

I just dropped a $170 GTX 650 Ti Boost into my old 2008 Mac Pro, and it's way more than twice as fast as this frankenair.

This is great as a "can it be done" experiment, but it isn't a "solution" by any means. It would probably be less annoying to carry around a mac pro and a monitor than to carry around all of those cables and adapters and such in the name of mobile gaming.

And it only works on the windows side right now. and this solution costs more than a used mac pro.

I wouldn't call a 570 "high-end graphics" either. A 790 is high-end, or a Titan, or a couple of 660s in SLI.
Click to expand...
I'll bet you're really fun at parties. :)
 
this is so cool, like he said loads of patience to get this all to work :D

:cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool::cool: LOVE it, need someone to put it in a nice cool looking case and sell sell sell ..... not apple though cos that will be freaking expensive ;)
 
danielsutton said:
As another poster said, why use an ultra-thin laptop for this kind of setup if a user is only going to bulk it up with adapters and extra hardware so that it can accept a PC graphics card? And, more importantly, how does this affect the MBA's battery life? I am sure that this is a battery-guzzler and would kill the machine before even the first level of a game is finished...
Click to expand...

Use an ultra thin laptop on the road where you might not need the dGPUs power, then plug in the external dGPU when you arrive at home/work. Plug in a large display or two if needed, and voilà, you have a powerful modular system.

I see many, many use cases where such solutions would be very handy.
 
Cougarcat said:
Yes, but not this use case, obviously. Its gpus are more powerful than anything you could connect to it.
Click to expand...

From what I hear, those workstation cards aren't particularly great at gaming. So something like this would be an option for someone who also wants to play some high end games at full quality.
 
Who cares about the mobile applications for this tech?
If Apple built a solid framework around this tech and marketed it as a pro accessory for the Mac Pro...

Imagine two Thunderbolt 2 cables running a 4-way Nvidia Titan SLI rig.

Implementing something like this would immediately make the Mac Pro, even with it's tiny design, far more expandable than any full tower ATX pro rig out there.
 
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