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Hands-On With Apple's New $699 Blackmagic eGPU
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This has been debunked. 40Gb/s is plenty of bandwidth to not bottleneck even high-end GPUs.
Now you can spend extra to get a decent gpu on your 3000$ laptop!
Wait....
Wait....
This is a very un-Apple design; the Razer ones look far nicer.
Also, Apple is really digging themselves into a corner with their AMD-only policy. It used to be that they'd periodically switch and play the big two off of each other, jumping ship if necessary to the best of them every generation or two. Now it seems they can't go to Nvidia because they're too invested in AMD.
Also, Apple is really digging themselves into a corner with their AMD-only policy. It used to be that they'd periodically switch and play the big two off of each other, jumping ship if necessary to the best of them every generation or two. Now it seems they can't go to Nvidia because they're too invested in AMD.
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Unfortunately, the Blackmagic eGPU is not upgradeable, so you're not going to be able to swap out the included graphics card for an upgraded version in the future, which is one of the major downsides to the accessory.
ROFL. That's a total joke. Seriously. F' that. They should be mocked.
I wish they could have at least allowed an upgrade with their own proprietary GPU in the future. Even if at a premium $$$$$. It's a neat looking unit that seems to be yet another piece of waste to toss out after a few years when it becomes obsolete.
oh well...
oh well...
Reasons that won't work for me:
1) I enjoy macOS and require it for work
2) I don't want the headache of hackintosh
3) I prefer to have a single computer to reduce the need of data synchronization between machines, and obviously that would be a laptop for mobility
kinda ugly and not at all what the eGPU enthusiasts are looking for. the only good news out of this box is that blackmagic will continue to design software acceleration to work with eGPUs. Razor and Akitio equivalents are much better looking and should be able to do the same thing. eGPU.io is a good soundboard if you wanna know more.
This better not be Apple's (Blackmagic Design) solution to the Mac Pro. I'd be wary of Black Magic stuff; perhaps these days are better but all I remember is god awful tech support.
Being twice as fast is easy if the computer is being throttled! (yes sarcasm)
Being twice as fast is easy if the computer is being throttled! (yes sarcasm)
I watched this review and it's much better. I'd say that it's changed my mind only slightly. I'd recommend it for anyone looking to boost TB3 Macbook Pro GFX power quickly and without any fuss, but not anyone who'd want to get high-end GPUs and/or far more bang for his/her buck.
Having the USB 3 ports, HDMI, and TB3 ports in a box that'll actually turn a SOOPER thin Macbook Pro into a decent desktop workstation (it benched close to the iMac Pro's stock VEGA) makes the $700 ... not-so-bad.
But this thing will be a paper-weight/landfill-eyesore after two years.
In other words, I'd pick one up if the office was all Mac and didn't want to get me an iMac Pro.
Doesn't the new 2018 MBP share a single heatpipe for both the CPU and GPU? Wouldn't the GPU's heat diminish the cooling capability of the CPU, causing premature throttling? Heavy GPU usage = lots of heat = very hot heatpipe = CPU unable to cool itself = throttling.
It's not CPU or GPU, it's CPU and GPU.
I like the concept but what I really want is a box that I can plug an Nvidia 1080 into and boot camp Windows to play some games when it’s docked. I’d like to get back into doing more PC gaming but don’t want to buy or maintain a separate rig. I’m going to wait and see what the Mac Pro is all about next year and hopefully we’ll have some newer GPUs by then. Hopefully the new Mac Pro is modular enough to take an Nvidia card. Isn’t Nvidia making Mac drivers again?
I bought this out of curiosity today to pair with my 2016 MacBook Pro 13in no-touchbar (8gb of ram and 256gb SSD) and a LG 5K display. This was kind of an impulse purchase since I had to take my mac in for servicing but I had always wanted an eGPU to improve desktop performance.
The 2016 MacBook Pro is nTB is woefully underpowered for the LG 5K display - CPU load always at 80%+, slow UI for OS X and Chrome media can be unplayable whether youtube or other sources. I don't have the same sort of issues when using just the 13in display or connected to a prior gen Thunderbolt display that I use at work. I'm not a graphics professional although I do use Capture One Pro for my photography pursuits.
In my two hours of use, overall OS X UI is much more responsive (the GPU is taking most of the graphics display duties and not breaking a sweat. I tried using Chrome and the responsiveness is significantly better and youtube 4k videos are able to play more smoothly outside of those that are 4k 60 fps (seems like the CPU continues to be the bottleneck there). Capture One Pro is significantly more usable with much less of a lag during editing. Exporting pictures is a lot faster. This thing does not break a sweat and made the MacBook 2016 significantly more usable by freeing it from having to render a 5k image using the onboard GPU.
Overall the dock features are also nice and there seems to be more overall bandwidth from the Blackmagic dock vs. using the USB-c ports on the back of the LG 5K monitor.
That said, I'm not sure if I'm keeping it since I also have a Macbook Pro 2018 13in with a decent spec (i5 processor, 16gb of ram and 512gb SSD) on order with Apple and I hope it's enough to drive the LG 5K monitor. If anyone with a modest specced 13in MacBook pro 2017 or 2018 with Touch Bar and LG 5K monitor can opine on how usable it is, that would be much appreciated.
Edit: One other consideration I had before buying this was that it's only $100 more expensive to buy the 13in MacBook Pro I specced above ($2064 pre-tax) + $629 pre-tax for the eGPU than buy a stock upgraded MacBook 15in which is $2600 pre-tax with corporate or student discounts. I don't enjoy carrying a 15in computer with me all the time and only need the extra horsepower at home hence why this was tempting although a bit of an impulse purchase still.
The 2016 MacBook Pro is nTB is woefully underpowered for the LG 5K display - CPU load always at 80%+, slow UI for OS X and Chrome media can be unplayable whether youtube or other sources. I don't have the same sort of issues when using just the 13in display or connected to a prior gen Thunderbolt display that I use at work. I'm not a graphics professional although I do use Capture One Pro for my photography pursuits.
In my two hours of use, overall OS X UI is much more responsive (the GPU is taking most of the graphics display duties and not breaking a sweat. I tried using Chrome and the responsiveness is significantly better and youtube 4k videos are able to play more smoothly outside of those that are 4k 60 fps (seems like the CPU continues to be the bottleneck there). Capture One Pro is significantly more usable with much less of a lag during editing. Exporting pictures is a lot faster. This thing does not break a sweat and made the MacBook 2016 significantly more usable by freeing it from having to render a 5k image using the onboard GPU.
Overall the dock features are also nice and there seems to be more overall bandwidth from the Blackmagic dock vs. using the USB-c ports on the back of the LG 5K monitor.
That said, I'm not sure if I'm keeping it since I also have a Macbook Pro 2018 13in with a decent spec (i5 processor, 16gb of ram and 512gb SSD) on order with Apple and I hope it's enough to drive the LG 5K monitor. If anyone with a modest specced 13in MacBook pro 2017 or 2018 with Touch Bar and LG 5K monitor can opine on how usable it is, that would be much appreciated.
Edit: One other consideration I had before buying this was that it's only $100 more expensive to buy the 13in MacBook Pro I specced above ($2064 pre-tax) + $629 pre-tax for the eGPU than buy a stock upgraded MacBook 15in which is $2600 pre-tax with corporate or student discounts. I don't enjoy carrying a 15in computer with me all the time and only need the extra horsepower at home hence why this was tempting although a bit of an impulse purchase still.
Here you go, unboxing and teardown: https://egpu.io/forums/thunderbolt-...-egpu-radeon-pro-580-thunderbolt-3-enclosure/
There are more data passing through thunderbolt when you trying to put the signal back to internal display.
This isn't just only eGPU data stream anymore.
Made in collaboration with Apple. Sold exclusively at the Apple Store. Essentially an Apple product but manufactured by Blackmagic.
Apple doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about the pro market. It’s about being able to upgrade. This is just another part of their closed system. It’s a $250-300 video card that came out in 2017.
Designed and manufactured by Blackmagic Design, with input from Apple. And listed with other Blackmagic Design products on their products page.