eGPU boxes and macOS 10.13

[imacken]

Can someone please clarify for me the situation wrt eGPU boxes and macOS 10.13?
Am I right in thinking it is only Thunderbolt 3 devices that can utilise this? Does that mean restricted to the new iMacs and recent MBPs?

 

[Synchro3]

Works also with Thunderbolt 2 devices an vice versa: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...cially-announced.2048480/page-3#post-24658446

With the bidirectional Apple Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter.

 

[imacken]

What about things like the Akitio Thunder2? Would that work ok in a late 2015 iMac?
With the nVidia Pascal drivers released in beta recently, can a 1070 or 1080 be put into that and work ok with Thunderbolt 2?
Any issues there?

 

[Synchro3]

Yes the Akitio Thunder 2 works with the RX 580 in 10.13.

Nvidia cards not yet confirmed to run natively.

However, up to macOS 10.12.x you can use Nvidia cards: https://egpu.io/setup-guide-external-graphics-card-mac/

 

[imacken]

Yes the Akitio Thunder 2 works with the RX 580 in 10.13.

Nvidia cards not yet confirmed to run natively.

However, up to macOS 10.12.x you can use Nvidia cards: https://egpu.io/setup-guide-external-graphics-card-mac/

You mean not confirmed for 10.13?
Will there be a throttling issue when using TB2?

 

[Synchro3]

You mean not confirmed for 10.13?
Will there be a throttling issue when using TB2?

Yes, afaik so far only some RX 580 work out of the box in 10.13.

And no, the difference between Thunderbolt 2 and 3 is negligible: http://barefeats.com/bandwidth.html

 

[imacken]

Yes, afaik so far only some RX 580 work out of the box in 10.13.

And no, the difference between Thunderbolt 2 and 3 is negligible: http://barefeats.com/bandwidth.html

So, I could buy a 8Gb 580 for around £310 plus a Akitio Thunder2 for £260, plug it into my late 2015 27” iMac and I’d be good to go?

 

[jcuecker]

So, I could buy a 8Gb 580 for around £310 plus a Akitio Thunder2 for £260, plug it into my late 2015 27” iMac and I’d be good to go?

asfik this only works to drive an external display, not the iMacs retina screen

 

[imacken]

Blurb for the Sonnet box (used in the Apple dev kit) says it can be for internal or external displays, although it only tends to mention notebooks, not iMac specifically.
I am however confused by something else. Look here and see that it states quite specifically that the Akitio Thunder2 is not compatible with graphics cards or Bootcamp!

[doublepost=1497775455][/doublepost]

asfik this only works to drive an external display, not the iMacs retina screen

Hmmm... maybe you're right!
http://appleinsider.com/articles/17...thing-unique-about-graphics-card-or-enclosure

 

[William_si]

Not only maybe, 100% - there is no channel back into an iMac to feed the display on TB2, TB3 also only by extending protocols (as eg. the Razer blade does seemingly, not sure for new MBPs currently).

 

[sickntired]

I have a Razer Core with a Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti card in it that I connect to my Intel NUC Skull Canyon and it works well.

My question is that could I connect the new iMac to the Razer Core to drive an external display and will it work? Will the Nvidia card be a problem?

 

[theitsage]

For internal display mode to work with an eGPU, the host computer has to have an integrate GPU. Apple disabled the iGPU in most iMacs. I've tried the 2017 iMac 4k and could not see the iGPU in neither macOS nor Windows 10 via Bootcamp. I could force the eGPU to accelerate the internal display through the use of a headless HDMI adapter. The performance loss is too much with this trick to be worth it.

https://egpu.io/forums/implementati...x980ti40gbps-tb3-akitio-node-win10-theitsage/