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

Sorry if this is stupid, but aren't there some TB -> PCIe chassis that allow graphics cards?


Johnnnny said:
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.
Click to expand...

Not really. Even if we use 2 TB cables, that's only equivalent to an 8x PCIe 2 slot. So, still not as fast as an ATX rig.
 
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...

Wrong :)

With something like that thing you get best from both worlds... the mobility and the ability to play any games :rolleyes:
 
That's nothing new. I'm using an external video card with my 13" Retina MBP for over a month now. It's nothing new, it's just not widely talked about because it's not cheap compared to buying a full size desktop
 
There is a pretty neat enclosure / express card setup called a VI Dock (?) don't have the details to hand right now... Throw in the the thunderbolt adapter and away you go. As I recall they have a number of enclosures depending on your power requirements for the GPU. The limited bandwidth of the external PCI interface means that the cards only work at about 80% of their potential, but Nvidia cards work nicely with intel chipsets in Windows 7 (or 8) and can drive the internal laptop screen as well as an external screen.
I've been looking at this setup with an external 1080p screen and bootcamp for a bit of serious gaming at home whilst keeping the portability of something like the 11" Air...
 
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...

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.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised by how many people are completely missing the point of a setup like this. If you hadn't noticed, Thunderbolt is not a permanent physical connection. When you're at home at your desk, plug in the video card and do some gaming. Then when you're done, unplug, pick up your ultrabook in one hand, walk around, and feel free to plop it in an airplane or lecture hall seat tray for your productivity.

Can you do that with an old Mac Pro?
 
blackcrayon said:
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.
Click to expand...

The workstation cards aren't great because of drivers, and that's not really true anymore. And even with bad drivers, they would still beat this setup. There's two of them, and it has 6 GB of VRAM...
 
get used to that general tangle of wires and adaptors when you get your new Mac Pro!
 
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...

Did you read the article?

Direct quote:

"Because his setup can be easily unplugged, it is especially useful for gamers who want to play games on a desktop-screen but still have a lightweight notebook for traveling."
 
Well I personally don't need a Mac Pro, but it does give me hope that if I decide to game/video edit with my base 27" iMac then the option of buying a thunderbolt external gfx card for it would be awesome. :D
 
Johnnnny said:
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.
Click to expand...

That wouldn't work quite yet. Maybe by Thunderbolt 3 or 4, but right now Thunderbolt is much slower than a PCI 3.0 slot.
 
ExnomenDei said:
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:



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.
Click to expand...

Thunderbolt is 2 independant 10 Gbit/s channels. Thunderbolt 2 allows both channels to work in a kind of RAID 0 so they're combined to one 20 Gbit/s but still begin as 2 channels so that GPU was still functioning with severely crippled bandwidth. The whole point of high end GPUs is that they offer significant performance using all the bandwidth available. This is an interesting use of Thunderbolt as an experiment but you're NEVER getting full bandwidth out of 16xPCIe GPU over Thunderbolt 2
 
Johnnnny said:
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.
Click to expand...

1. This stuff already exists, and is commercialized. The problem is feeding the signal back to the native display.

2. Not enough bandwidth for a 4-way SLI. Even with 2 TB cables. That's only the equivalent of 5 lanes of PCIe 3.0
 
As far as I know there are already commercially available rigs for this that connect through thunderbolt. I think it was magma that had one. The only problem is there aren't an Mac compatible drivers for most cards so one would have to dual boot windows for them to work. In other words, this is nothing new.
 
barkmonster said:
Thunderbolt is 2 independant 10 Gbit/s channels. Thunderbolt 2 allows both channels to work in a kind of RAID 0 so they're combined to one 20 Gbit/s but still begin as 2 channels so that GPU was still functioning with severely crippled bandwidth. The whole point of high end GPUs is that they offer significant performance using all the bandwidth available. This is an interesting use of Thunderbolt as an experiment but you're NEVER getting full bandwidth out of 16xPCIe GPU over Thunderbolt 2
Click to expand...

I'm on the same page as you for the most part, but most high end GAMING GPUs don't use the full x16 3.0 link by a long shot. Maybe for compute, but not gaming.
 
Cougarcat said:
The workstation cards aren't great because of drivers, and that's not really true anymore. And even with bad drivers, they would still beat this setup. There's two of them, and it has 6 GB of VRAM...
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. Of course it still might be worthwhile in a couple of years if there are no available upgrades for the internal cards...
 
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...

It's not about the purpose of the Air, it's about doing crazy ****.
 
Vertigo50 said:
Did you read the article?

Direct quote:

"Because his setup can be easily unplugged, it is especially useful for gamers who want to play games on a desktop-screen but still have a lightweight notebook for traveling."
Click to expand...

A more elegant solution would be Sonnet Echo Express Pro. It offers an internal power connector used by higher end audio DSP cards or GPUs, supports dual width, full length cards, connects with Thunderbolt (no converters) and offers a Thunderbolt throughport. Much less wires. Much more compact and much more portable.

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

Presumably you're not going to be gaming on the go. Take your Macbook Air around with you at work, get home, plonk it on your desk, plug in the video card and bingo you can game to relax.
 
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.
Click to expand...

Same here! High five. Also $170 because Fry's's $15 rebate turned out to be false.
 
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