Any chance Apple could ever have GPU enclosure support?

[SnackeyG]

I'm sure we'd all love to have an iMac with a respectable graphics card in it for gaming, but it's probably never going to happen.

What if we could get GPU enclosure support like the Razer core? I would reconsider building a PC if I could just plug in whatever GPU I want using thunderbolt.

 

[Malus120]

I know it's hard but just be patient, the fall Mac/iPad event event is (hopefully) almost upon us, and that will hopefully provide us with some answers.

I think the chance of thunderbolt 3 appearing on the next Macs is around 99.99% (barring a surprise switch to AMD Zen or Apple ARM CPUs).

Now whether thunderbolt 3 eGPU enclosures like the razor core "just work" or not will depend on Apple.

That said, given that with a little elbow grease you can get a thunderbolt 2 pcie enclosure working with a gpu today, I'm sure it will be possible to get thunderbolt 3 GPUs working.

The bigger problem for everyone salivating over the GTX 1070/1080 is likely to be the current lack of driver support. Whether or not that willl be getting resolved anytime soon is anyone's guess.

 

[maflynn]

People are hoping that the next version of the iMac will include TB3 and thus have support for an eGPU

 

[theitsage]

eGPU will arrive with the new Macs. It is not going to be an enclosure. Apple with its planned obsolescence will integrate a Polaris 10 chip inside the new 5K display.

Why would you sell a kit car for $6K when you could sell a sports car for $40K? On top of that, it's crazy to think Apple would be willing to provide driver support for BYOGPU.

With that said, I'm hoping the eGPU community will be able to come up with workarounds for Thunderbolt3 enclosure.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

They already do just not on the internal screen that's because they had to create their own connectors etc to get a 5k screen running before any general support became available on the silicon and motherboards etc. This may not be a viable option with the internal screen until Kabylake or cannon lake goes into the iMacs.

 

[Astelith]

If you are looking for a gaming/working windows compromise the way to go is a streaming server with a Nvidia 1080 GTX, GeForce Experience and Moonlight plugin in the mac to recieve the stream.
0 latency and resolutions up to 4K, so I can have the best of both world

 

[Malus120]

If you are looking for a gaming/working windows compromise the way to go is a streaming server with a Nvidia 1080 GTX, GeForce Experience and Moonlight plugin in the mac to recieve the stream.
0 latency and resolutions up to 4K, so I can have the best of both world

Yeah thanks for bringing this up recently! I had no idea about what you could do with the moonlight plugin until you started posting about it.
While I'd still really prefer to have only one (desktop) machine, it's certainly an intriguing option. Quick question is it possible to stream anything besides games?

 

[Redface]

If you are looking for a gaming/working windows compromise the way to go is a streaming server with a Nvidia 1080 GTX, GeForce Experience and Moonlight plugin in the mac to recieve the stream.
0 latency and resolutions up to 4K, so I can have the best of both world

Very interesting! I'm thinking of going this way as well - to build a small gaming PC and use Moonlight. What's the image quality like? 1080p/60 fps is the max setting? Any issues?
I know I will need a second monitor to initially set up and pair the plugin on PC. But can it be set up so that the stream starts automatically on PC start so I can ditch the monitor? I read Moonlight can stream the whole desktop as well, not just Gefore experience.