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eGPU Advice Please

J

Jay7676

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 26, 2021
22
1
Looking for some advice.

So I am new to the world of Mac's, having used PC's for 20 odd years I have now got a late 2015 21.5" imac. However I did want to play a couple of games the iris pro is painfully slow. So I bought an external egpu enclosure, due to be delivered soon, however I think I may have bought the wrong thing.

So firstly I am using Big Sur. The enclosure I got was a Akitio Node. But I just read the documentation which says its a windows only unit and doesn't support the MacOS. Has anyone any knowledge of this? Is that true?

Secondly assuming it does work I am using a Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter, will that cause any issues? I currently have a nvidia GTX1080 from my PC, while I know its not officially supported, will it work? Or can it be made to work rather? If not is there a recommended amd card that can be used? Probably lower end as I know prices are high.

Probably have more questions but thats it for now, thanks.
 
I have now got a RX 570, just waiting for the cables for the enclosure.

Will it accelerate the internal display using an eGPU or do you need to use an external monitor?
 
You will need this patch to enable eGPUs via Thunderbolt 2 (because they're not officially supported by Apple).

github.com

GitHub - mayankk2308/purge-wrangler: AMD & NVIDIA eGPUs for all Thunderbolt Macs.

AMD & NVIDIA eGPUs for all Thunderbolt Macs. Contribute to mayankk2308/purge-wrangler development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

And while you can sort of accelerate the internal display there'll be a performance hit - if you want maximum performance you need an external monitor.

How To: eGPU-Accelerated Internal Display in macOS | eGPU.io

egpu.io egpu.io

As for the GTX 1080 - no way to use it with Big Sur.
 
I have an RX 580 in a Sonnet EGPU breakaway box 550w. Most apps will not utilize it if it is just the monitor on the laptop. Really need to use it with an external monitor. A few apps have the option to switch GPU from internal to the external when running on internal monitor but most do not.

I notice that Mac OS seems to give the eGPU some things to do with Safari and the internal gpu as well.

But I'd highly recommend external monitor with eGPU.
 
Ok many thanks for the advice. Hopefully cables will come tomorrow and can make it work :)

I really just wanted to play one game which was company of heroes 2, tried it with the internal graphics and with everything on low I managed 18fps. Moving from a gaming pc to the mac it was quite depressing, I don't really want another external monitor setup again as I like the imac so was hoping the egpu would be a god send but seems I might still need an external monitor after all :/

For my other games I am using geforce now which is hit and miss but at least it works (for the most part)
 
1920x1080 gave about 11fps
1280x720 was about 26fps but quite frankly looked awful

And there was one in between the two.
 
I bought the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition 12GB Graphics Card this past Thursday. Would I be able t use it with my MacBook Pro 16" in an external GPU enclosure?
 
On macOS, Radeon is the way to go as there are no Nvidia drivers for modern macOS anymore. The last was 10.13 if I remember correctly and even then, I doubt the 3080 would run with all the bells and whistles using such an old version. Another issue is that 10.13 might be too old for the 16" as that came out late 2019 if memory serves right.

The good news is, if you bought the 3080 exclusively for eGPU and can't use it now, you can probably still sell it, make a profit and grab a Radeon card to pair with the MBP.
 
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Coleman2010 said:
I bought the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition 12GB Graphics Card this past Thursday. Would I be able t use it with my MacBook Pro 16" in an external GPU enclosure?
Click to expand...
No. There are no drivers for this card on macOS. The 10x0 series is the last to be supported. And if there were drivers, they would only work on High Sierra (10.13.x). Forgive me for asking, but why did you buy this card in the first place?
 
Last edited:
GrumpyCoder said:
On macOS, Radeon is the way to go as there are no Nvidia drivers for modern macOS anymore. The last was 10.13 if I remember correctly and even then, I doubt the 3080 would run with all the bells and whistles using such an old version. Another issue is that 10.13 might be too old for the 16" as that came out late 2019 if memory serves right.

The good news is, if you bought the 3080 exclusively for eGPU and can't use it now, you can probably still sell it, make a profit and grab a Radeon card to pair with the MBP.
Click to expand...
That’s exactly what I did. I sold it last night.
 
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