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Sooo, prospects on updating non-Pro iMac should be...? Off-thread? No. If they can do this in laptop, finding the sweetspot in iMac should be great! 6-core, Radeon Pro Vega 56, cap memory at 64GB. And currently the largest SSD is 512GB, less than MBP. I love the portability of a laptop, but I need power. I don't love iMac Pro prices. Again, #sweetspot

I just checked Apple.com and you can spec up the higher model 27” with a 2 TB SSD and bearing in mind this also has an 8gb card vs 4 in the 15”.
 
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There has been a lot of back and forth about eGPU's with the new mac mini. But, do they perform the same as internal GPU's, or is there a performance hit?

Although it is anecdotal, reviews on apple store are mixed as to them working.

Does anyone have useful experience with eGPU that can share?

There is a really useful thread on the eGPU forums, comparing the effect that different Thunderbolt speeds (1, 2 & 3) have on GPUs in contrast to internal PCIE speed. There are a lot of factors (resolution being one) that affect performance, so the answer is 'it depends'. But it's almost safe to say, that with Thunderbolt 3 there is not a lot in it. The other factor to consider, is with a MacBook Pro you are comparing a mobile GPU inside a small enclosure that gets very hot and thermal throttles, vs an external desktop class GPU, with proper cooling.

https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/pcie-slot-dgpu-vs-thunderbolt-3-egpu-internal-display-test/
 
You can see now in their page how much faster is the new gpu. They say that it is 45% faster in c4d (a program that i use a lot) and concerning some reviews that have a score of 98,44fps (noteboocheck.net) in the 560x model, that means 142,73fps in vega 20. Well that is impressive for a laptop that thin. Or the 50% advantage in rise of the tomp raider. Lets wait and see if that is true...
 
Your signature says you got the 1TB option, rather than the 4TB, which is the "maxed out" model; with RAID'd 2x2TB SSD.

Jesus Christ semantics police in this forum. I even opened MacTracker to make sure I indicate exactly what iMac GPU I had because I knew for a fact the people on this forum would call me out for not adding the X in M395 or some **** like that.

I own a $4,000 MacBook Pro, I don't consider SSDs to be maxed out I"m talking about Core i9 and 32GB of RAM.

Edit: thanks for the reminder, added the new iPad to my signature.
 
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Sure, OK. But which is the current best external GPU? And what are the benchmark figures like for each?

You can extrapolate. Take the average benchmarks for the Vega 64 (the best "official" eGPU) and the benchmarks of Nvidia 1050 Ti mobile (should be similar to the new Vega Pro 20, maybe even a bit slower). I guess a factor of 2.5-3?
 
if Apple offer the same internal design (as i expect) this will be a hot very hot laptop and i would not recommend this since these vega are still on 14nm
 
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You're best going to eGPU.io if you want to know what's the best eGPU. I'd hazard a guess (for MacOS at least) is the AMD Vega 64. Both the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini (in theory) support up to 4 external GPUs, via the 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports. So the question really is, how much are you willing to spend?

https://egpu.io
But they both share two ports from one controller (hence my two LG 5K's have to be in each side of my 15MBP), so how do they achieve four eGPU's working at full speed then?
 
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Yeah, Nvidia makes me cough indeed. And hurl, on MacOS.

Nvidia drivers for MacOS have always been garbage compared to AMD GPU drivers. I'm so thrilled Apple has finally stopped selling Macs with Nvidia and is sticking with Radeon.
For the professional market, lack of Nvidia support is a dealbreaker. Hence why an unprecedented number of Mac users have moved to Windows.
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Nvidia doesn't have any better options with similar wattage. And they certainly don't have mid-range GPUs with HBM2...
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The Mini + external GPU is going to be much faster obviously.
But they have CUDA cores. That makes a huge difference for the pro market.
 
For the professional market, lack of Nvidia support is a dealbreaker. Hence why an unprecedented number of Mac users have moved to Windows.
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But they have CUDA cores. That makes a huge difference for the pro market.
AMD gives you more compute power for your money.
 
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Jesus Christ semantics police in this forum. I even opened MacTracker to make sure I indicate exactly what iMac GPU I had because I knew for a fact the people on this forum would call me out for not adding the X in M395 or some **** like that.

I own a $4,000 MacBook Pro, I don't consider SSDs to be maxed out I"m talking about Core i9 and 32GB of RAM.

Edit: thanks for the reminder, added the new iPad to my signature.
lol! You forgot the brand of memory, haha!
 
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