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Steve Jobs always said. We release products when they are ready. Sticking to a schedule was not his way. Cook veered away from that some in the beginning but after the Maps fiasco he transitioned back to the release it when it done philosophy.

At some point though, a project needs to be finished. That is the purpose of a deadline.


Not sure, nVidia is great for games and some CAD soft optimized for it, but I always prefered ATI, better results for my CAD soft, nVidia had a bad tendency to cut corner in name of speed. Also hate the lack of OpenCL (cuda single hardware no thanks).

You must also hate the fact that Apple has deprecated OpenCL.
 
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.
It's the self-imposed "heartbeat" of new-release times. Apple of yore would pretty much just not say ANYTHING about a product until it was DONE, and THEN organize an event to introduce it.

Over the years, that has gradually morphed into a fairly-regular (and yearly!) schedule of "updates"; so regular that when things seem to be "late" even by a few weeks (like the most recent iPad/Mac event on 10/30/18), the natives start to get nervous.

This forces Apple's ENTIRE product-development cycle to ALSO adopt these arbitrary deadlines, and the result is what you see: More products that aren't QUITE ready for prime-time when the announced (projected) release date hits.

FORTUNATELY, Apple has elected to take the LITTLE "beating" that comes from blowing a deadline by (usually) a short period, rather than the HUGE beating that comes from releasing a product/update that has major issues.
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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.
As long as the Sonnet eGPU box has sufficient Power Supply, I would think that it would work just fine. The Mac mini has no idea how much power the eGPU is requiring; nor should it.
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The price is just comical. They couldn’t even put a Vega 64 card in? I get eGPUs are expensive but this is silly. I hope no one buys it to send the message this is not reasonable. Go with another company like Razer.
The going price for a Vega 64 card with 8 GB of HBM2 memory is around $500 FOR THE CARD ITSELF!

https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?N=100007709 601301447&IsNodeId=1&Submit=ENE

Now, we have to add a power supply, case, packaging, agency-approvals times howevermany countries, etc, etc.

So, no, the price is high; but it IS actually justified.
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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.
Likely came down to power supply and/or cooling limitations in the mini.

I do hope, however, that they figure a way to update the mini to include an Intel/Vega CPU/GPU SoC.
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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!? They stop just short of the top end model with the Vega56. I mean REALLY?! FOR THE PRO VERSION?

Good God Blackmagic. Fire your “board.”
They ran out of power supply and/or cooling, I would imagine.
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So right you are. I still buy Apple because of the ecosystem, but I keep waiting for MS or Google to provide a 'viable' alternative.
They've had over 40 years to do so...
 
I'd somehow missed that detail. I would have assumed it would have been upgradeable, especially for that much. Wow.

If these were upgradeable, I don't think there'd be anything to complain about pricing-wise because they are VERY NICE enclosures. I made the determination to buy one of these (before returning it) because I came to the conclusion that the likelihood of me upgrading my graphics card before the enclosure reached the end of its lifespan was low.
 
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The going price for a Vega 64 card with 8 GB of HBM2 memory is around $500 FOR THE CARD ITSELF!

https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?N=100007709 601301447&IsNodeId=1&Submit=ENE

Now, we have to add a power supply, case, packaging, agency-approvals times howevermany countries, etc, etc.

So, no, the price is high; but it IS actually justified.

The parts you listed are in no way $600-$700. Not even $300. It’s overpriced. Other companies have made the same setup for hundreds less. Also the box does not have a Vega 64 it’s a Vega 56 so all the more reason the pricing is not justified at all.
 
The only way the price is justified is mainly for the quietness, it's designed to be extremely quiet, near silent with normal usage.
 
Only because people started writing in CUDA, and now that AMD has some pretty spiffy GPUs themselves, there is still a dearth of ready-to-use AI libraries for OpenCL.
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The parts you listed are in no way $600-$700. Not even $300. It’s overpriced. Other companies have made the same setup for hundreds less. Also the box does not have a Vega 64 it’s a Vega 56 so all the more reason the pricing is not justified at all.
The pricing for Vega cards seems to approach noise in its randomness.

Others have agreed that the BlackMagic eGPU Pro is high, but not egregiously so; considering it is the ONLY eGPU enclosure that will let you drive that LG 5k display with Thunderbolt.
 
That GPU costs $400-500. How they hell did they manage to make a $700+ enclosure? Also, why do Apple consumers consistently allow themselves to get ripped off like this?

Fer Ged's Sake people stop missing the obvious:

-Custom GPU not off the shelf GPU. This has been tailored to run quietly.
-Industry leading design and portability
-Literally almost silent. Everyone using off the shelf cards in eGPU boxes have a noisy experience.
-Has 4 full speed USB ports and a Thunderbolt port to drive a 5K display. No other eGPU chassis has this.

Yes it is expensive but pros make money and they don't want a noisy box when they are trying to listen to the audio tracks in editing apps.

If you just want eGPU for gaming then you can get the cheaper noisy options because gamers always used to the noise of hot GPUs.
 
Although, I would normally agree and still do somewhat, the cost is not as unreasonable as you may think. My opinion, is that many don't factor in the firmware development for the specific graphics card in the eGPU for macOS compatibility, the included hub, and the most important factor which I've not seen with other eGPU solutions is 85W PD. Also, this eGPU design claims better thermal solutions and noise reduction in comparison to similar setups. I'll digress from the positives to give my opposing stance that I would prefer the Vega 64 over 56 and an additional TB3/USB-C port for connecting another hub or dock at this or very close price.

Update. Just a quick addition because I thought to agree with others. I feel they would have increased their demand tremendously by designing a solution that the buyer could at least have the option to choose between an AMD or NVIDIA GPU. I don't believe that would have cost them that much more in R&D, production, etc. Of course, they may have considered it but marketing this product as specifically for Apple probably came down to if Apple themselves chose to offer this solution to buyers. Since they don't, then BlackMagic wouldn't.

Apple writes the device driver stack for AMD GPGPUs in macOS. Nvidia designs that people are whining about have never produced better results for Apple. Heating issues have been a constant with Nvidia cards, not to mention pricing is even worse. No, Apple has ZERO interest in CUDA and extending Nvidia's tax to the world on its hardware.

The Blackmagic Polaris product most likely will see the 590 be the standard as it's a good 15-20% improvement over the RX 580.

The first cards that will have a much tighter heat envelope will be on the 7nm fab, and post Polaris and Vega, ala NAVI and Vega yet announced successor.

People should really wait for the Consumer Electronics Show to see what AMD is announcing for upcoming GPU architectures.
 
Apple writes the device driver stack for AMD GPGPUs in macOS. Nvidia designs that people are whining about have never produced better results for Apple. Heating issues have been a constant with Nvidia cards, not to mention pricing is even worse. No, Apple has ZERO interest in CUDA and extending Nvidia's tax to the world on its hardware.

The Blackmagic Polaris product most likely will see the 590 be the standard as it's a good 15-20% improvement over the RX 580.

The first cards that will have a much tighter heat envelope will be on the 7nm fab, and post Polaris and Vega, ala NAVI and Vega yet announced successor.

People should really wait for the Consumer Electronics Show to see what AMD is announcing for upcoming GPU architectures.

Navi 7nm will be great. I sound like I'm an AMD fan boy but reality is I sold my AMD shares and I have Nvidia shares but I always tell the truth. Nvidia's web drivers for Mac are craptacular and so is their lack of 10 bit color.
 
That GPU costs $400-500. How they hell did they manage to make a $700+ enclosure? Also, why do Apple consumers consistently allow themselves to get ripped off like this?

That eGPU is a custom ASIC from AMD for BlackMagic Design. The back ports alone should wake you up to that fact. The cooling system is their design. The casing and included power with Thunderbolt 3 ports also adds cost and all those are custom small footprint stamp outs by manufacturers who will bump up the cost.

They aren't slapping a Sapphire stock RX Vega 56 or Polaris into the box, bootstrapping a cheap venting system, a daughter card with TB3 ports and additional 85W dedicated power for computer charging and calling it a day.

Wake me when generic companies replicate that set up. I guarantee you it won't be $500.

Sapphire's boneheaded enclosure that will be a loud box that looks like a cheese grader brick w/ half the USB ports, no 85W power to charge the laptop/mac mini and relying solely on a stock GPGPU sells just for the box over $300 retail.

Oh look! Sapphire 56 from Newegg.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAGBA8412714

$723.90

Combined it's around $1100 and is an inferior product.
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Navi 7nm will be great. I sound like I'm an AMD fan boy but reality is I sold my AMD shares and I have Nvidia shares but I always tell the truth. Nvidia's web drivers for Mac are craptacular and so is their lack of 10 bit color.

I'm long on AMD shares. Bought in at $2.36/share. Have around 3k shares so far.
 
MacOS is just not worth it, not only the hardware is expensive my understanding is the performance of the cheaper product is always far better on the PC side. Apple became like a fashion brand name... its expensive just because it carries the Apple name not of any extra value

The price is just comical. I hope no one buys it to send the message this is not reasonable. Go with another company like Razer or sonnet.

If you do that then this is what Tim Cook understands: No one is buying powerful hardware, then that means there is no market for high performance, cancel eGPU capabilities in all MacOS and install iphone CPUs in Mac Pros. This is what the customer wants!
 
Apple writes the device driver stack for AMD GPGPUs in macOS. Nvidia designs that people are whining about have never produced better results for Apple. Heating issues have been a constant with Nvidia cards, not to mention pricing is even worse. No, Apple has ZERO interest in CUDA and extending Nvidia's tax to the world on its hardware.

The Blackmagic Polaris product most likely will see the 590 be the standard as it's a good 15-20% improvement over the RX 580.

The first cards that will have a much tighter heat envelope will be on the 7nm fab, and post Polaris and Vega, ala NAVI and Vega yet announced successor.

People should really wait for the Consumer Electronics Show to see what AMD is announcing for upcoming GPU architectures.
Yep, I know already. I was talking about diversity in their product line support. Considering that Apple removed code for CUDA support, then it wouldn't have taken much in further development for adding support for these eGPUs. However, just because they removed code doesn't necessitate that development hasn't continued or interest in reviving that development for these products won't come in the future. I'm indifferent about the subject and for what I use a PC for, then I don't argue for either one because each will serve my purpose. You would be surprised that a tactic to influence buying decisions with acquiring new customers comes at times for support of products which they never had interest in using or promoting. How many users would switch back to a Mac Pro if there were offerings for support of eGPUs with NVIDIA chips, even though, the Apple product itself may use AMD. I for one wouldn't mind a 5K iMac-like display with a replaceable/upgradeable GPU, as opposed to the eGPU solution. Hence, a MP, Mini, MBP being able to connect to the display which essentially is connecting to an eGPU in the display housing all the while being supplied PD. Especially, if the new MBP or MP with AMD graphics could crossfire with the displays built-in AMD GPU for added performance.
 
The Vega 56 was supposed to have an MSRP of $399...don’t know if it ever reached that but damn, $1200 for an eGPU is absurd...

For that cash you could buy an RTX 2080 and throw it in a number of different enclosures for a similar price.
 
The Vega 56 was supposed to have an MSRP of $399...don’t know if it ever reached that but damn, $1200 for an eGPU is absurd...

You ought to read a bit of the thread before replying. Not every Vega is the same. You probably did a search on NewEgg and looked for the lowest price that came up and BINGO that's what you should be paying. If you look further down the page, you'll see that there are much more expensive configurations. The costliest version of a Vega is $724.

I don't know enough about this stuff to say exactly how much that BlackMagic eGPU Vega 56 should be, but based on all the features, it's certainly a lot closer to the $724 end than the $399 end. It's expensive, but you're not getting gouged.

For that cash you could buy an RTX 2080 and throw it in a number of different enclosures for a similar price.

And none of them would do exactly what the BlackMagic eGPU does. Those other enclosures would certainly be a better buy if you didn't need what the BlackMagic specifically has to offer, but it's not an apples to apples comparison.
 
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You ought to read a bit of the thread before replying. Not every Vega is the same. You probably did a search on NewEgg and looked for the lowest price that came up and BINGO that's what you should be paying. If you look further down the page, you'll see that there are much more expensive configurations. The costliest version of a Vega is $724.

I don't know enough about this stuff to say exactly how much that BlackMagic eGPU Vega 56 should be, but based on all the features, it's certainly a lot closer to the $724 end than the $399 end. It's expensive, but you're not getting gouged.



And none of them would do exactly what the BlackMagic eGPU does. Those other enclosures would certainly be a better buy if you didn't need what the BlackMagic specifically has to offer, but it's not an apples to apples comparison.

Yeah, no. MSRP was supposed to be $399. This was stated in reviews back when the card was released. Prices got inflated due to the crypto craze. AIB cards are usually not 2x MSRP. And I don’t shop on Newegg. Cheers :)
 
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Yeah, no. MSRP was supposed to be $399. This was stated in reviews back when the card was released. Prices got inflated due to the crypto craze. AIB cards are usually not 2x MSRP. And I don’t shop on Newegg. Cheers :)

MSRP is supposed to be $399 for a specific version of the GPU. That's akin to saying the Macbook Pro should be priced the same as the Macbook because they're both Macbooks.
 
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I am seeing a pattern with Apple now, the Air Power and now this.
Yeah, two products that pretty much no one is clamoring for. But of course, techie boyz are 99% of Apple's market, so yeah, this is the worst-run company ever.
 
Fer Ged's Sake people stop missing the obvious:

-Custom GPU not off the shelf GPU. This has been tailored to run quietly.
.
I love this quote "This has been tailored to run quietly" hey Apple can you put the latest GPUs your machines? No? could you put them in a GPU enclosure? No? I see, could you cripple them to run in an enclosure? yes?, we good to go
 
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