Apple Offers External GPU Enclosure to Developers As Valve Opens Door to VR Mac Gaming

[zen]

Remember to add the price of a Developer account to the box.

 

[mctrials23]

Brexit tax.

Anyway, an external GPU seems a little clunky given the Mac's design philosophy for so long. I presume this is aimed at professionals rather than consumers....

Oh its almost entirely aimed at professionals I imagine but that doesn't mean that you can artificially jack the prices up from retail. You pay a premium for a mac because you are getting great performance, a great OS and beautifully designed hardware. You can't build that yourself. This is 2 generic off the shelf components that cost ~£520 to buy online and apple want to charge you £799.

 

[zen]

You pay a premium for a mac because you are getting great performance, a great OS and beautifully designed hardware. You can't build that yourself.

Um, yes you can! Custom build PC, Windows 10, in a kickass case.

This is 2 generic off the shelf components that cost ~£520 to buy online and apple want to charge you £799.

So... you're saying that's a good thing?

 

[marioguarneros]

So I went on the US site for this and it was $599 then I tried to get it from the UK store and its coming up at £799 when I go through the checkout. Does the US site up the price at checkout as well or are we just getting royally screwed on price in the UK?

US prices do not include taxes, UK prices include VAT, and yeah due to currency fluctuations and other factors the prices tend to be higher in the UK but calculating taxes definitely bridges the perceptual gap.

 

[mctrials23]

Um, yes you can! Custom build PC, Windows 10, in a kickass case.

Thats not a super portable laptop with macOS on it is it... We all have our personal taste but I haven't seen a windows laptop that looks anything like as nice as a macbook pro, none of them have as good a trackpad, thats a fact and I prefer macOS to windows. I'm a developer and macOS is a country mile better for the development stuff I do.

So... you're saying that's a good thing?

That apple are charging a massive markup on off the shelf components? No, clearly not.

 

[MH01]

THIS IS HUGE!!!! Freakin Awesome.

Got a Sonnet and Razer Core Im looking forward to trying on a Mac Pro 2013

 

[Eightarmedpet]

Wonder if you take the current price of say a GTX 1080 or 1080Ti PCI card.

How much "extra" you will need to pay for this enclosure?

Do we though assume they will be "Special" Apple Graphics Cards?
Or rather, tweaked in such a way that a stock one won't work ?

You can buy this enclosure today via not Apple sites for under $300, others go for less and have the same tech. Cheapest starts around $240 (Aktio Thunder3).

 

[Infrared]

Brexit tax.

Could be

By way of comparison:
New iPad Pro 10.5 starts from $649.
Converted to UKP: £502.63
Plus 20% VAT: £603.16
Actual UK price: £619

That's much more reasonable.

 

[sammich]

It's $1199 in Australia

~$850 for parts (USD$300/AUD$400 for enclosure, $450 for GPU).
Tack on some GST and you're only up to ~$950.

 

[LiE_]

So this cannot drive the internal display for gaming purposes?

 

[Moonjumper]

First:


Then:


So which is it? Apple does not make the enclosure from the sound of it, it's made by Sonnet, but it's part of the Apple Dev Kit.

It appears to be the difference between what they are giving to developers now for testing, and what they will be giving to consumers when their own product is ready.

Dev kits are a common occurrence when final hardware is not ready.

 

[sound]

Could this also be used for pro apps like adobe CC, cinema4D ... working on a MBP with an external display?

 

[dan9700]

Will it mean Oculus will work or just vive

 

[chfilm]

I can't help but be very underwhelmed. I have enjoyed a lot of apple products over the years and have always looked forward to each and every announcement, with new equipment to look forward to. Yesterday however isn't even catching up with hardware available for PC from over a year ago. And with Nvidia launching its Max-Q laptop specifications why on earth do you need an external box for high end graphics when Nvidia can run a GTX1080 in a slim laptop configuration. Now we have to wait until December for the "Pro" imac using outdated Xeon cpu's, never mind how long until the new Mac Pro is available, and every spec is already superseded with 18 core Intel i9x processors that will be available for PC in a few weeks!! Come on apple, get back in the game? This is just very very disappointing.

Don't be ridiculous apple gave us more than we'd hoped for!

 

[fokmik]

i love that they use the best case, the rest of them,either is too small to fit a 580 or 1080, or is louder. This is a very good and quiet case

 

[geniusj]

I'm mixed on this. I'm happy Apple is finally giving a **** about this stuff, but what I'd really love is a mid-range Mac pro kind of configuration. No xeons, no pro GPU; just the kind of thing you'd put together if you were building a gaming PC, but running OS X.

That said, this, the largest dongle yet , is at least a step in the right direction

It also explains why Nvidia will be providing OS X drivers for the 1080, etc

 

[WatchFromAfar]

That kit is good value considering what's included.
I so glad to see Apple taking graphics seriously again, yesterday showed a big step forward for Mac graphics in many ways.

Don't forget you have to add your own seriously powerful graphics card.

EDIT
My mistake, it comes with an AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB

 

[Jsameds]

Haha! Haha! External gpus! What could be more awkward than that?

It's only as awkward as any other external accessory, so not awkward at all really.

 

[DragoniteD]

No CUDA support? No Nvidia options?

RIP deep learning.

How long will it take the popular deep learning frameworks to support metal 2 or OpenGL?...

 

[ruka.snow]

Would be curious to see if this Radeon RX 580 will work on the old cheese grater

 

[star-affinity]

No CUDA support? No Nvidia options?

I think at least NVIDIA will continue to update their so called Web Drivers and CUDA driver for macOS, so I wouldn't count out those things you mention.

 

[Garrod]

So I went on the US site for this and it was $599 then I tried to get it from the UK store and its coming up at £799 when I go through the checkout. Does the US site up the price at checkout as well or are we just getting royally screwed on price in the UK?

I suspect that 20% VAT doesn't help, alongside the weak £ against the dollar since the Brexit rubbish.

 

[fokmik]

No CUDA support? No Nvidia options?

RIP deep learning.

How long will it take the popular deep learning frameworks to support metal 2 or OpenGL?...

until spring you will have .come on...why are you trolling

 

[alexgowers]

It's such a shame Apple decided to do this because VR! F VR we need games not VR. Apple make me mental mad that they're putting money on the wrong horse.

 

[JWatt68]

Don't be ridiculous apple gave us more than we'd hoped for!

One persons hope is another persons despair! Is it too much to ask to catch up with currently available tech, we do pay a massive premium for it to be wrapped in shiny apple wrappers, so why not match the internals with the clearly class leading externals?