How many of you are using eGPU? Are you happy with it?

[hajime]

Hello, I am considering to upgrade my MBP 2010 17" to a MBP 2017 15" (used rMBP 2012 and 2015 15" from school before). I am thinking of getting an eGPU for applications that use CUDA and also SolidWorks. How many of you are using eGPU? Are you happy with your investment? What eGPU and enclosure are you using? Do they work well under both Mac OS and Windows? If so, which Windows version do you recommend?

 

[JustSoWicked1]

I went for it bought the enclosure and a graphics card to work through the setup about a year ago or so. Once I put it together I realized that the PCIe to thunderbolt board limited the graphics card performance to 4x throughput speeds rather then the 16x speeds of most modern day cards. Honestly once I learned that I returned both the enclosure and graphics card and gave up on it, price for performance wasn't worth it for me.

However I will wait and see whats happing with the latest talks about the eGPU moving forward with Thunderbolt 3 that was talked about at WWDC this year.

 

[flr]

I've done a DIY build a couple of years ago with a Thuderbolt 2 interface. It works fine on OS X and Windows but I rarely use it. It's quite annoying to connect the cables and restart. It was also way too expensive. But maybe the price has dropped enough with commercial eGPU's.

 

[hajime]

According to this video, it looks like eGPU works OK under Mac OS but quite well under Windows. Perhaps there have been changes since you guys tried the products you bought?

https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/19/akitio-node-gtx-1080-ti-gpu-macbook-pro-gaming-egpu/