Please no. It would be more expensive than the machine you are plugging it into!
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Apple Shares Recommended Graphics Cards and Chassis in New eGPU Support Document for macOS High Sierra 10.13.4
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Please no. It would be more expensive than the machine you are plugging it into!
Indeed. And it would be completely non-upgradeable. The GPU would be glued to the case, and it wouldn't be compatible with anything but the latest macs.
Even a 1060 Max-Q has about a 70W TDP. The Radeon 560 in the 2017 MacBook Pro is supposed to be 35W. AMD actually has pretty powerful stuff for low wattage applications.
now imagine:
2018 macmini with quad core and tb3
tb3 sonnet puck amd 570 blessed by apple
multiple tb3 SSDs and HDDs
buy an empty Macpro (tower) or Powermac G5 case off ebay
mount everything inside the empty MacPro case
(solder wires from MacPro power button to MacMini power button?)
boom you have a desktop Mac with easily swappable GPU and drives for the first time in years
when the next “puck” sized eGPU is available you can easily upgrade
2018 macmini with quad core and tb3
tb3 sonnet puck amd 570 blessed by apple
multiple tb3 SSDs and HDDs
buy an empty Macpro (tower) or Powermac G5 case off ebay
mount everything inside the empty MacPro case
(solder wires from MacPro power button to MacMini power button?)
boom you have a desktop Mac with easily swappable GPU and drives for the first time in years
when the next “puck” sized eGPU is available you can easily upgrade
I love Apple but I hate them for not going all the way with this. There stupid reason (whatever it may be) for ignoring Nvidia in ALL their products is ridiculosly consumer-hostile and also really hurts the ability to use their damn machines with anything other than their own software.
side note concerning pro render: of the 3 times I tried pro render it took ages to "compile shaders" and whatever it has to do to even start rendering and and some point it crashed every time
and it still worked on macOS 10.13.4??? Have same Mac mini so would like to know if I can keep using it
Apparently not. It would seem Apple have purposely exercised planned obsolescence once again as the 2015 4k iMac which has Thunderbolt 2 is barely three years old...
Apple are conning the genuine Mac User with Planned obsolescence.
Does this mean I could play some AAA games (Through Windows) with a GTX 1080ti using my 2016 matchbook pro?
Edit: NM...now Nvidia support
You can still play them. I play games on my 2014 5K iMac in Windows with a sonnet eGPU case with a 1070. You might have to read forum guides and fiddle around with the setup at first, but it can be made to work.
Windows doesn't care that Apple/macOS doesn't support nVidia cards...
Batteries take up both physical space and add the most weight of any component.
Also, I don’t really care what they use. I can only try to understand why. And I can only speculate as to that. I’m assuming it’s really because of a myriad of things. NVidia is probably a crap partner who wants to shove CUDA everywhere. Apple wants to go with something else. AMD has proven they’re willing to work with anyone to make custom-ish solutions for them.
Would you work with the company that tells you what you’re going to use or the company that works with you?
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I’d rather they stick with Metal and not screw over everyone who has already moved their stuff over to Metal.
I mean, gaming on a mac is hardly ideal...And on a MBPs chip you wont push an nVidia GPU to it's max unless it's mid range and that's where AMD sits.
Not on 10.13.14 it doesn't. It will kill any functionality you have now.
not on 10.13.4. It used to on 10.13.3 and earlier.
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NO it does not. 10.13.4 will kill any functionality you have. Your solution works ONLY on 10.13.3 and earlier.
I'm pissed as I have an EGPU setup right now that works great and I am stuck on 10.13.3 for the time being
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well some people use gpus for things other than games
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Exactly.
Its unnerving.
However, I have read that a TB2 enclosure with the adapter can work on TB3 machines still
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You should be able to have it work on 10.13.3 as well. That is how I am running my setup on my 2012 mbp
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Yes, it kill the unofficial support
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Not for 10.13.4! this update kills any functionality that had existed prior.
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That is the hope. I have quite the expensive workflow that offing Apple just killed for NO reason
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Especially since it was working in 10.13.3 and earlier
If your talking games yes.
I was using a Rift DK2 for years on my Mac Pro with a 5770 card for viewing 360 renders.
Errr not really. "whoever is behind". The Khronos Group is behind the OpenCL/GL. The Khronos is basically an umbrella group for a committee of implementers and users. That group includes Apple, Nvidia, and (to a lesser extent) Microsoft.
https://www.khronos.org/members/list Apple, Nvidia are in the Promotoer level of sponsorship. Microsoft is down in the Contributor levels.
So you have folks who have their own proprietary competitors to OpenCL/GL members of the committee that gets to vote and approve of the feature list of the open solutions they are competing with.
Case in point the recent press release for OpenCL 2.2
" ... “By finalizing OpenCL 2.2, Khronos has delivered on its promise to make C++ a first-class kernel language in the OpenCL standard,” said Neil Trevett, OpenCL chair and Khronos president. ..."
https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-releases-opencl-2.2-with-spir-v-1.2
Hmmm, let's go look and see who is Trevett's "day job" employer.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Trevett " ... Vice president of Mobile Ecosystem,[1] NVIDIA Corporation "
half joking I could say "fox guarding the hen house " at this point.
Honestly, I think the guy probably separates the two as much as he can, but Nvidia (as a whole and especially the CUDA group) doesn't want OpenCL to evolve faster than CUDA. Nvidia has dragged their feet on implementation. I'm not sure they have fully implemented OpenCL 2.0 yet. When Nvidia bought the Portland Compiler group they mothballed some OpenCL aspects of those products ( in favor of surprise CUDA). There were a ton of moves Nvidia made in 2013-2015 timeframe where the company decided to fully monetize CUDA. as strategic area.
Open Standards are a tricky thing. If you try to push for a standard before a critical mass of people are ready for it, then it usually stalls in these committees. There are lots of arguments about corner cases and the focus just isn't there. Too late and most folks have jumped into their own proprietary solutions they are reluctant to let go of. So there is a bit of Goldilock moment where they work well.
OpenGL started out somewhat related to Silicon Graphics backed standard. Not only involved to gatheing a group they were proactively pushing out an implementation the discussion could evolve around.
"openGL next" turned into Vulkan. Similar thing jump started that into motion past getting bogged down in committee. AMD just opened their whole Mantle implementation. "take it and mutate to what is best".
OpenCL didn't work out as well. Partially it was Apple's reaction to AMD and Nvidia wanting to go down the proprietary path with GPGPU. Microsoft was off on the side cooking up something separate on their own as usual. It was late getting started for CUDA had some traction and AMD was somewhat failing around. There was a tight coupling to LLVM (compiler) and Apple largely controlled that too. LLVM was also evolving. At some point it appears that there was kind of a vacuum of leadership as far as implementation. Apple started backpedaling. Nvidia was not in a hurry to get to OpenCL 2.0 ( shared/mapped memory). Mobile GPU vendors didn't really have much of a shared memory problem (since pragmatically all integrated graphics).
I suspect Apple got tired of herding cats and said this is too strategic, so we are doing our own and took up Metal. ( also I think there were some rumblings they didn't like OpenCL getting friendly with C++ also. I doubt Apple is the major driver of the LLVM C++ front end. ) Metal is more of a combo of Vulkan and a subset of OpenCL compute concepts narrowed down to primary what Apple needs. No committee means Apple could move fast. Essentially the joined Nvidia and Microsoft with conflicted goals inside of Khronos.
Microsoft is winning on their "desktop" just fine. Apple has enough critical mass to win in there subset also. They have the money and resources to do it. Metal is going to be optimized for iOS and macOS second but overtime it will evolve on both.
[quote ]
It's like the CPU wars except that there's nothing analogous to cross-compiling. It sucks.[/QUOTE]
There is cross compiling. OpenCL is cranking up the integration with SPIR ( and SYSCL)
https://www.anandtech.com/show/9039/khronos-announces-opencl-21-c-comes-to-opencl
As more platforms pick up Vulkan the compilation tools for OpenCL will improve too.
( Vulkan is a different committee working at a different pace. These two standards are not trying to tightly couple because that brings too many voters together with probably conflicting viewpoints but they aren't 100% decoupled either. )
On the macOS platform I suspect it will continue to lag as long as Apple doesn't help with Vulkan, OpenCL, or OpenGL. I think the neglect they are doing now will bite in the butt later, but for now it is working for them.
Seems like a lot of people are being fussy over the lack of official support for Nvidia GPUs. CUDA drivers are available for macOS. If it’s really that bothersome then why not build a Hackintosh? That’ll way, you’ll be able to install whatever precious Nvidia GPU you want.
You will also get more in terms of customization (heck, even Ryzen CPUs work in macOS).
You will also get more in terms of customization (heck, even Ryzen CPUs work in macOS).
I had begun to dislike Apple because of iOS, user-unfriendly aggressive strategies, and their exponentially growing access to private data. However, I kept believing their hardware was better. With this step in not supporting Nvidia, I don't feel attracted to their hardware anymore. And those of you claiming that Nvidia doesn't support standards, please stop it. It's Apple who not only bashed OpenGL and OpenCL in favor of that custom nonsense called Metal, but even won't care to support Vulkan (Nvidia does).
The only Apple hardware I might be interested at this time would be a 15inch MacBook with the same weight as a current 13inch MBA (big display with maximum portability, not interested in a discrete GPU for that MB). But I don't hold my breath, I think Apple won't beat the LG Gram either: They fail in every end now: At the Pro, at the low-end, at the high-end... everywhere.
A shame.
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The only Apple hardware I might be interested at this time would be a 15inch MacBook with the same weight as a current 13inch MBA (big display with maximum portability, not interested in a discrete GPU for that MB). But I don't hold my breath, I think Apple won't beat the LG Gram either: They fail in every end now: At the Pro, at the low-end, at the high-end... everywhere.
A shame.
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The Hackintosh is not the solution unless Apple allows them in the MacOS license.
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Really? Then why MacOS is the only OS that doesn't have an OpenCL debugger? Apple has moved away from being a supporter of standards. They've been moving more and more into proprietary APIs all these years since Tim Cook is in charge. They care about Metal. They have zero interest in OpenGL and OpenCL (they mention them in this document just because they know that eGPU potential customers use standards rather than Metal, but Apple has no real interest on standards anymore). Note that they don't mention Vulkan, because they hope the potential customers of eGPU solutions are not using Vulkan yet.
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It's a shame that Apple keeps thunderbolt as a moving target. No one is going to adopt it if they keep coming out with a view version and plugs. Reminds me of FireWire. They kept changing it and there was few manufacturers that supported it.
Try to go down to Best Buy and buy a thunderbolt 2 hard drive. Nope.
Next year when thunderbolt 4 is released with a new plug all those 3 devices will need a dongle and 10.14 will drop support for thunderbolt 3 for newer tech.
That's why sata and USB are so widely available.
Try to go down to Best Buy and buy a thunderbolt 2 hard drive. Nope.
Next year when thunderbolt 4 is released with a new plug all those 3 devices will need a dongle and 10.14 will drop support for thunderbolt 3 for newer tech.
That's why sata and USB are so widely available.