Apple's Upcoming BlackMagic eGPU Pro Delayed Until December

[Eric5h5]

People get eGPU to have Nvidia cards, not Radeon. Best render engines runs on Nvidia.

Not on Macs. Some time ago, I got a nVidia card that was supposed to be an improvement over the old Radeon card I had, and it was, but only in some cases. In the worst case, it was 50% SLOWER. Sent it back and got a newer Radeon instead, which was consistently faster in all cases. It's probably drivers rather than hardware, but that doesn't make the problem any less real.

Anyway, yeah, I can't see how the price is justified. The Vega 56 is $400 (I know, I have one; the crypto mining inflation is mostly over and the prices went back to normal). So $800 for the enclosure? There simply isn't nearly enough there where that makes any sense at all.

--Eric

 

[alien3dx]

The price is insane, even for a higher-end card like the Vega 56.

It's really quite surprising how a full setup for a Mini, some sort of external storage solution if you can't stomach Apple's insane storage prices, and an eGPU box is supposed to make any sense unless one has money to burn.

Don't get me wrong, it's cute and modular and allows you to use whatever display you wish, but this makes no sense to me at all - just get a top of the line 27 inch iMac and call it a day.

All mac price is insane anyway. Mac mini is nice because can easily can bring anywhere. Why not macbook ? no thanks you for low performance intel .

 

[Ploki]

I seriously don't understand the Mac Mini + eGPU setup. It's super janky! The best use of an eGPU is to connect it to a MacBook. That way, you have a portable machine to use on the go, and a desktop-class computer once you get home.

But the idea of splitting up a home desktop PC into multiple components that sit on your desk is a super wonky idea. I don't like it at all. We need a solution where the GPU is INSIDE the Mac and can be user-upgradeable. Hmmm, what could that be... Oh! That's right. Mac Pro.

I disagree.

GPU is another heat source and a huge power hog. And you barely need it for audio. I much prefer the whole modular design... + you can stick it away from your face.

I wont have a fan blowing on my desk if i do audio
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The price is insane, even for a higher-end card like the Vega 56.

It's really quite surprising how a full setup for a Mini, some sort of external storage solution if you can't stomach Apple's insane storage prices, and an eGPU box is supposed to make any sense unless one has money to burn.

Don't get me wrong, it's cute and modular and allows you to use whatever display you wish, but this makes no sense to me at all - just get a top of the line 27 inch iMac and call it a day.

Display that has two fans blowing in my face while i work with audio? Nah its ok

 

[KennethS]

If you want to drive a 5K monitor, Razer isn't an option.

Apologies if this has already been discussed, but why can't a Razer Core X with an appropriate GPU drive a 5K monitor? Having just bought one I am genuinely curious. Not that I have any near term intention of getting a 5K monitor...

 

[Ploki]

Apple should of re-designed the mac mini and put a Vega 20 in it. One would think after 4 years and loads of resources they could of done that.
And then, if you need a eGPU, these units should have upgradable graphics cards in them.

Should have*

And i dont think sticking Vega20 inside it would be a good idea.

Having experience with i9+560x im pretty certain it would be the worst idea.

I agree with the upgradable part tho. That’s just nonsense

 

[Toby_95]

I wouldn’t read into the delay too much, Blackmagic have never been great at delivering products on their original release dates, and when they do get released there will be very low stock available if it’s much like their camera and hardware releases

 

[ph001bi]

I am seeing a pattern with Apple now, the Air Power and now this.

This isn’t an Apple product.
Every Apple products announced this year were launched on time.
What pattern are you talking about?

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

You telling me that an eGPU with Vega 64 will not run on a 2018 Mac Mini with BlackMagic's casing? I was thinking about using the Sonnet's box with a Vega 64.

Users report that it gets hot and noisy. It’s a great card but difficult to control in some eGPU cases.

 

[Tech198]

It IS the festive season, there seems no better time.

I never really got external graphics, but I guess you must have eGPU's to fill that empty space between "professional" desktops and "limited" laptops.

 

[smirking]

Apologies if this has already been discussed, but why can't a Razer Core X with an appropriate GPU drive a 5K monitor? Having just bought one I am genuinely curious. Not that I have any near term intention of getting a 5K monitor...

I'm not technically knowledgeable enough to do the explanation justice or perhaps truly understand it myself so I'll quote an article on the eGPU.io site.

Up until the release of this eGPU (BlackMagic), no enclosure with more than one Thunderbolt 3 port was granted eGFX certification. The existing dual Thunderbolt 3 port enclosures are PCIe expansion solutions rather than eGPU solutions. Dual Thunderbolt 3 ports are a necessity so that the eGPU can accelerate the LG UltraFine Display directly... It gets more complicated than dual TB3 ports however, so we’ll look at the main board next.

In short, the LG 5K monitor has some serious pixel pushing demands that aren't being accommodated by most GPUs and eGPUs on the market.

You can read the full article here:
https://egpu.io/blackmagic-egpu-review-apples-ultrafine-curse/

If you factor in the cost of a high end enclosure and one of the fancier builds of a Vega based GPU, you get somewhere in the price range of $900. Most people are doing the math with the cheapest Vega config they can find and a basic enclosure. Yeah, in that case, it should come out in the $600 range, but good luck trying to drive a 5K monitor with that setup.

If you don't have a 5K monitor you need to drive, the BlackMagic eGPUs are a HORRIBLE value unless you really can't live without a whisper quiet eGPU or love it as a design piece. I do have to say it has a quite striking appearance. I really liked having it on my desk for the short period of time I had one.

On the other hand, if you need 5K monitor support, not only is it the only choice you have, it's not actually grossly overpriced. It's expensive to be sure and they're not doing you any favors, but you're not getting gouged.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I have no direct knowledge, so this is a serious question. Isn't the point of an external GPU (case, power, cooling, connectivity and GPU card) to support the large overhead that for a variety of practical reasons could not be implemented internally? If the answer is yes (and I suspect it is), then 'hefty PSU and cooling' shouldn't be an issue to design. What am I missing?

The Blackmagic is designed to be the quietest eGPU on the market. According to the drivers we saw in macOS betas the Vega 64 was there but changed to Vega 56 at the last moment, probably because the 64 just won’t be quiet in that design.

 

[Gorms]

Its amazing how so many products Apple introduces are not available at the original release time frame (some cases are more than a year). Its almost like Apple management has no clue what they are doing. With Jobs people were fired for missing deadlines, but now it seems its just, "Oh, well, we'll try harder next time."

Does not give one a lot of confidence in the new Apple.

I'm sure this has been pointed out to you, but this isn't an Apple product, this is a third party product.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

For an $800 premium they should very well be able to design an adequate PSU for it. Anything less than that for that kind of premium is just fraud, IMO.

You can’t put an adequate PSU but that won’t solve noise and heat issues. People are putting the Vega 64 in much larger eGPUs with bigger PSU and it is noisy.
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Wow. So how do Vega 64 GPUs function in small to medium size computer cases where they share a PSU, space, airflow, etc. with other components?

These computers you refer to are not ultra quiet like the Blackmagic design. Not even the other eGPU cases have been able to be that quiet.

 

[Gorms]

eGPU delay.
AirPower (never really interested me like many others due to inherent disadvantages).
Monitors with Face-ID and Gesture (Apple wants us to exhibit LG and similar contractors on our desks).
The missed DJI market (drones, ultra-mobile video gimbal systems).

All Lost Terrain on Apple's Consumer Electronics Sector.

Only one of those things is an Apple product. One is third party, one is a dream you had, and another is a product category Apple has never shown any interest in at all.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I just bought a Sonnet egpu enclosure and a Radeon 64. $800 bucks total. Better performance for 2/3rds the price.

Sonnet is noisier. No USB ports. The Blackmagic is also the only eGPU with Thunderbolt output to 5K displays.

The premium price on the Blackmagic is there for these professional features - virtually no noise, portability and very good I/O.

 

[mnott]

Nvidia GeForce doesn’t support 10 bit color output and they don’t support all of Metal’s latest feature set. That would result in bugs and headache for developers.

It would also help with people doing machine learning.

 

[MrBat]

I hate that monitor so much since someone pointed out it looks upside down.

Can't be unseen. It does look upside down LMAO

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

It would also help with people doing machine learning.

Machine Learning using Metal compute can be done on Radeon. There will be more to come. It’s not like eGPU, Radeons and Geforces are just going to stop development today and we should all act like OMG the world is over.

 

[AlexMaximus]

I love the eGPU concept but Apple does not really support it on a software level as many YouTubers will tell you.

It just does not really work at this point and time.

Plus, they axed the support for the Mac Pro 6.1 crowd.

 

[Trusteft]

Was this reported back in October? I don't remember reading about an upcoming pro Egpu before.

 

[smirking]

The price of course is stupid, but this is the Apple market. All the prices are stupid. What really blows my mind is why on EARTH did they not just put the Vega64 in there!?

Probably because they're not working in the world of cartoon physics and they didn't attend the world infamous Internet School of Engineering and Design. You're talking about this as if it's no more complex than making a sandwich.
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Was this reported back in October? I don't remember reading about an upcoming pro Egpu before.

Nope. It kinda came out of nowhwere, but some people were expecting a more capable version of the Radeon 560x BlackMagic eGPU to come out eventually because the enclosure seemed to be built to handle a more power hungry GPU than the Radeon 560 and designing extra capacity into a non-upgradeable enclosure would have been a very odd decision.
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I love the eGPU concept but Apple does not really support it on a software level as many YouTubers will tell you.

I had one for a week and returned it because it actually made Capture One Pro run SLOWER. I would love to dive back in sometime if various program authors support it properly, but I doubt things are going to change very fast. Do your research to make sure your use case is supported if you're going to shell out this much for an eGPU.

 

[MRrainer]

With such an eGPU, how many 4k (or 5k) displays can a 2018 MacMini address then?
One TB3 port is for connecting to the Mac itself, leaves one TB3 port for a display + the HDMI+DisplayPort.

As for the price - I believe it's the quietest eGPU on the market. Some people will pay for that.

 

[crsh1976]

Display that has two fans blowing in my face while i work with audio? Nah its ok

How is that any different than fans in the Mini, in the eGPU and (if you use it) your external storage setup ?

 

[Romeo_Nightfall]

I am seeing a pattern with Apple now, the Air Power and now this.

The pattern is replace "magic" by "delayed"

 

[Ploki]

How is that any different than fans in the Mini, in the eGPU and (if you use it) your external storage setup ?

I can stick a mini in an isolation box behind my studio desk, use bluetooth peripherals, a TB3 dock + screen.

Ergo, my desk is completely fanless.

Bigger audio studios have machine rooms and just pull cable from the machine room to control room.

that's why iMac Pro makes absolutely no sense for professional audio.