Apple's $1,199 Blackmagic eGPU Pro Now Available for Purchase, Delivers Mid-January

[LordVic]

Twitch streamers say the opposite. Gamers love to show off their cases, their internals, and their numbers.

Let’s say they start making everything a thunderbolt accessory. Someone will eventually fabricate a case that holds a mish mash of thunderbolt accessories (hard drives, vid cards, etc). No one wants to have random parts laying around ... which was the purpose of a computer case in the first place

That too was one of the biggest drawbacks that did the Mac Pro in. the "spaghettification" of the desk.

with internal expansion, you can do a lot of expansion without changing the form factor of your device or needing additional desktop space... (Plus they also support external expansion). But with these locked down boxes, ALL expansion is external. Which means that you have to have a place to put all those external devices.

To many, this image below is a real issue with the idea that everything that's not "core" should be external.

 

[Jyby]

Science Rules!

 

[MacAlien]

No, but you said “I’ve seen some bad deals from Apple but th8nk this may just be a winner of tha prize.”

I think most rational people would find it difficult to interpret that any other way than that “tha prize” refers to “bad deals from Apple”.

If we’re gonna be really technical, Kaibelf probably should have said “Apple did not price this” but generally the maker is the pricer (as is the case here) so his rebuttal that “Apple did not make this” seems reasonable.

Reach much? From Apple...from Apple. Not by Apple. /boggle

 

[lilrush]

Which make of VEGA 64 did you go with? I got a VEGA 56 from MSI for my Razer Pro X and my MBPr - it doesn't play too nicely at all

Mine is a Sapphire, so far works perfectly fine.

 

[Detnator]

Reach much? From Apple...from Apple. Not by Apple. /boggle

From Apple, by Apple. No difference. It’s made by another company, it originates from that company. The matter at hand is the pricing, and the pricing of this product has nothing to do with Apple.

 

[tallscot]

PC Gaming industry was a 36 BILLION dollar industry in 2017...

you might really want to check your own biases at the door.

you still have not actually countered a single point I've made. YES Thunderbolt 4 MAY resolve the bandwidth and latency issues for the extreme cases. BUT IT DOESN'T EXIST RIGHT NOW.

I'm not talking about mythical computer direction in 10-20 years. I'm talking about right now. People who are making money with their machines. People who are gaming. people who use them for more than just facebook or iMessage.

RIGHT NOW the best technology for the best performance is still internal PCI-E slots.

I'm not sure why this is so hard for you to understand. your very argument is boiling down to "in the future thunderbolt will resolve these issues, so thunderbolt is the best technology today"... it's a stupid point to be trying to make as it doesn't reflect reality.

So the only question is why do you keep repeating this nonsense if not to assuage your own bias and perception.

As I've said time and time again in responses to you, with TODAYS standards, if you are looking for bleeding edge performance, than you will want internal expansion capabilities via direct PCI-E attached devices. This is factually true today no matter how amazing Thunderbolt 4 may be in the future.

are the days of custom computer building obsolete? Today? No. in the future? Possibly. But you still keep trying to argue that the future is here now, when it's factually NOT. If you want to continue with your charade of an argument, so be it, won't be with me anymore since you're trying to ignore reality so that you can keep pushing factually incorrect statements for your own purposes (which I am not even goign to remotely begin to guess)

I noticed that the benchmarks of internal SS drives are significantly faster than any SS drive connected via Thunderbolt 3, especially when writing.

http://barefeats.com/hard232.html
[doublepost=1546624337][/doublepost]

From Apple, by Apple. No difference. It’s made by another company, it originates from that company. The matter at hand is the pricing, and the pricing of this product has nothing to do with Apple.

You can only get it from Apple, right? So how can an Apple exclusive have nothing to do with Apple?

 

[trifid]

The drop is due to latency not bandwidth. If they solve the latency issue there is no reason to use PCI in the future.
Plus you only get 4-5 slots max most of the time... With thunderbolt you can daisy chain all day as long as your total bandwidth is not consumed.

That 10-30% performance drop of eGPU vs PCI-E GPU is unacceptable for the pro market, period. No excuses.

 

[Jyby]

Science Rules!

 

[Detnator]

You can only get it from Apple, right? So how can an Apple exclusive have nothing to do with Apple?

I didn’t say the product has nothing to do with Apple. I said its pricing has nothing to do with Apple.

 

[Jyby]

Science Rules!

 

[Detnator]

Well if its an Apple exclusive the pricing might be negotiated with Apple. The BOM might not, but certainly Apple wants a slice of the pie for doing the work and selling this product for Blackmagic. I'm sure that cost gets to the use in some form or another... Who knows right...

Right. It’s one thing to speculate and right, who knows? So fair comment.

The people I’m responding to are up in arms about how this is supposedly another example of Apple overpricing their products when we can’t possibly know that and it’s very likely not...

This thread has 11 pages of comments more than half of which are complaining about the price and yelling at Apple about it.

On the other hand a number of others have pointed out the unique features of this product (quiet, TB 3, etc) that do in fact add a lot of value to some customers, and that require some pretty significant engineering and cost to achieve and that’s why it costs $400 or whatever more than what one might build themselves with standard parts. It’s ridiculous to make that comparison.

It’s also ridiculous to complain about it since if you (generic you, not you specifically) don’t see the value in those specific features then you have the choice to go buy any of the cheaper options and not pay extra for the features in this you don’t want. While the existence of this product, providing those extra unique features still allows those who do want those features the ability to have them - where without this product and it’s engineering, that wouldn’t be possible for them.

 

[Jyby]

Science Rules!

 

[PickUrPoison]

Not only engineering effort, but licensing costs too.. Who knows what royalties they have to pay to make a product like this. I'm sure royalties exist. Also if this product is made with Aluminum then it might cost more. Aluminum is costing more and more these days. Apple controls the price well because they use it in everything... But other company might have more cost associated with manufacturing low volumes with Aluminum.

But I also would highly suspect Apple throws an easy $300 on the price of this item.

I guess you mean Blackmagic throws an easy $300 on it?

 

[Jyby]

Science Rules!

 

[here4evr]

Also don't forget that in 3 years you can ditch the Vega 64 for whatever the latest card is and upgrade for $300-500, vs buying a whole new one of these.

After 30 years in the biz, and going from typesetting, to web design, and finally 3D modeling and animation, I'm jumping off the Apple cart. Got my new PC coming next month. Stuff like this tells me I made the right choice. Need GPU rendering support, and Radeon doesn't have it.

You'll be back...Microsoft OS has made positive strides in the last few years, but is still nowhere near surmountting Mac OS for reliability, stability, functionality, multi-platform tie-in, simplicity, privacy, security, or productivity.