As I mentioned here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ing-for-serious-advice.2129392/#post-26289115
I decided to sell my dual-core macbook pro then upgrade to 2018' version due to the constant spinning colorball and systemwide UI lags.
So I purchased three Macbook pro models:
13 inch CTO (2.7Ghz quad-core i7, 16GB LPDDR3 RAM, 512GB SSD);
15 inch Stock (2.6Ghz hex-core i7, Radeon pro 560X, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 512 GB SSD);
15 inch CTO (2.2Ghz hex-core i7, Radeon pro 560X, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 512 GB SSD);
along with Blackmagic eGPU, to see which combination is the best, then return the others within 14 days return window.
Now my desktop looks like this:
If you care about benchmark scores about eGPU (tested with my old mac and other three new macs), I've run Geekbench 4 many times and here are the scores:
If you care about cpu performance about new 13' and 15' I've got, here are some Geekbench4 results (I know there are already tons of test results, but more info is always better I suppose):
There is no power button on eGPU, you can only tell if it is ON by looking at the indicator light at the bottom. However, I have found that the Blackmagic eGPU actually has three power mode:
Powered off: the status when power cord is not connected to the eGPU;
Standby: when power cord is plugged in, but not connected to any mac ;
Powered on: working as it should be.
I believe it has a standby mode because even when eGPU is disconnected from Mac, the external HDDs are still running (indicators on HDD's case is on) and you can feel a very gentle wind blowing out form the top of eGPU's enclosure.
Im gonna talk about how I use Blackmagic eGPU.
I know the eGPU is expensive and the way Im using it may sound silly to you because the reason I decided to keep the eGPU sounds stupid. But people value things differently right? I hope this could help you if you are now making decision of whether purchasing this powerful box or not.
Reason one, A very good docking station:
Had to mention this feature first. I know no one purchases a eGPU just for its expansion ability. But after few days of actual using, I feel that it is a very handy 'nice to have' feature. With Blackmagic eGPU, I can use single thunderbolt 3 cable to do everything. From charging my mac, to hooking up everything I needed, without any unnecessary wires.
I use a 1Gbps ethernet-USB cable plugged into eGPU and my Time Capsule. Now I can get a very stable 20mb/s internet download/upload speed, along with the Time Machine disk reading speed now up to a stable 60mb/s. The Time Machine backup now is much faster than before (about 3X faster). Before eGPU, I have to plug this dongle to another thunderbolt port.
I connected all of my hard disk to eGPU, now when I connect the eGPU to my Mac, everything shows up immediately. I have two USB-A 3.1 HDD and a thunderbolt 3 SSD. The SSD can reach 550mb/s read speed though thunderbolt 3 port. I installed a backup macOS on the SSD so if anything goes wrong, I can immediately boot up from there then get my work done, then do a system recovery.
The SSD takes up the thunderbolt port. But since I don't have a LG 5K display so that's fine. My LG 4k monitor (actually it's a WebOS TV) hooked up via HDMI on the eGPU and can up tp 4k 60Hz. If you use LG 5K display you can connect your fast SSD to the display so that won't be a problem either.
(BTW when I connect my mac to the TV through a HDMI-thunderbolt converter the TV can't tell what kind of device it is, but when connecting to eGPU it can tell it's a PC.)
Now I have one USB port left. I connected my Apple wireless keyboard through a USB-Lightning cable. So I can charge my Keyboard while using it.
Some might think this is a very expensive eGPU, and the worst is the graphic card can not be swapped. But think of it this way: Most of the 3rd party gpus doesn't have so many extension ports. Even if they have, they are very limited in many ways.
With Blackmagic eGPU, you get four high quality full-speed usb3.1 gen1 ports (up to 10Gb/s I think) and one thunderbolt 3 port (up to 40Gb/s according to Blackmagic Design's website). With one cable you can charge your mac, connect to ethernet (with a dongle, but the good thing is it's hidden behind the eGPU), connect to your external HDDs.
So you can put the power brick into your bag incase you need to use it outdoors (you don't have to buy one). You can save some money for a USB hub (a good quality dock with 4 USB-3.1 and a thunderbolt 3 is not cheap).
And let me say it one more time: One cable for everything is so elegant! Considering all of these hassle you can save, along with saving you least 120$ for unnecessary accessories, it's not that unacceptable.
Reason two, the performance:
The graphic chip inside the Blackmagic eGPU is Radeon Pro 580 (8Giga vRAM), which is a mid-ranged graphic which has half of the performance as Radeon Pro vx 640. But it will give you a decent performance boost.
If you care about scores, there are already plenty of articles/reviews to tell you that. But what all I care about is the everyday feel and the actual performance when using some Graphic intensive softwares.
My previous Macbook pro has a very weak integrated GPU so when I hook up it to my 4K TV it lags as hell. It can't even open a Launchpad folder smoothly, let alone other heavy tasks. When I play 4K on youtube the CPU takes up to 90% usage, with constant frame drops. I know it is a CPU issue, which was the reason I decide to switch to at least quad-core CPU.
But I think GPU definitely plays a part here. I'm no pro about computer, but as far as I know if GPU don't have hardware video decoding ability it will hand it over to CPU, which CPU is not good at (please correct me if I was wrong about this concept).
So I have done some test here (everything is done on macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra):
Disconnect the mac from eGPU then play a 4K 60fps video (H.265) on Mac's internal display . Monitoring the performance through System Monitor long enough till it becomes stable. The GPU usage is around 10-15% (no matter 13' or 15'), and the CPU usage is about 50% (13', 2.7Ghz) and 30-35% (15', Radeon pro 560X).
Then I connected the mac to eGPU, then did the same playback. The results are stunning: eGPU's usage can jump to 100%, then stay at 80%, but both quad-core and hex-core CPUs look like idle, with 2-5% system
and 5-8% User.
I did the same test of VP9 Youtube 4k playback, but the eGPU's usage keeps at 100% while CPUs are still high. I guess Mac doesn't support VP9 well.
Some known issues:
Sometimes the Mac won't restart when connected to eGPU:
If you restart you mac, there is a 50-50 chance that your mac won't boot (after you press restart it just powered off). I did some close observation and I believe the reason might be like this:
If you want to use your mac with lid closed (clamshell mode). you have to plug your mac to an external monitor and plug in your power cable, otherwise it won't turn on.
Because the Blackmagic eGPU doesn't have a power switch, it will automatically turn off if no Mac is connected. So during the restart, there is a short moment when Mac doesn't output data to eGPU, so the eGPU will power itself off. And Mac will think the external monitor is disconnected. Since it is on clamshell mode (lid closed), it will not boot.
I don't know if this is a bug and if it can be fixed by software patches. But because Macbook pro 2018's model can be powered on by pressing any keys (or even trackpad). I assumed that if a Mac is at clamshell mode, you can solve it by press the key on an external keyboard.
Thunderbolt 3 may not have enough bandwidth for another SSD:
If you use eGPU as it supposed to be used, it will be fine. But as I mentioned I hooked up a SSD with macOS on it. When I boot up my mac from SSD, the system feels really slow. But if I connect the SSD directly to my mac everything is fine.This is because eGPU have to transmit data from SSD back to Mac.
15' may have problem identifying eGPU:
The new 13' works totally fine. You plug eGPU on it, it will immediately show up. But two 15' has the same issue. When you plugged it on eGPU the icon on menubar will show up but it says 'no external gpus', only drivers attached on eGPU being mounted. You have to reboot mac with eGPU connected. I think is a thunderbolt driver issue or something to do with two graphic cards in 15'? Hope Apple will fix it soon.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ing-for-serious-advice.2129392/#post-26289115
I decided to sell my dual-core macbook pro then upgrade to 2018' version due to the constant spinning colorball and systemwide UI lags.
So I purchased three Macbook pro models:
13 inch CTO (2.7Ghz quad-core i7, 16GB LPDDR3 RAM, 512GB SSD);
15 inch Stock (2.6Ghz hex-core i7, Radeon pro 560X, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 512 GB SSD);
15 inch CTO (2.2Ghz hex-core i7, Radeon pro 560X, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 512 GB SSD);
along with Blackmagic eGPU, to see which combination is the best, then return the others within 14 days return window.
Now my desktop looks like this:
If you care about benchmark scores about eGPU (tested with my old mac and other three new macs), I've run Geekbench 4 many times and here are the scores:
If you care about cpu performance about new 13' and 15' I've got, here are some Geekbench4 results (I know there are already tons of test results, but more info is always better I suppose):
There is no power button on eGPU, you can only tell if it is ON by looking at the indicator light at the bottom. However, I have found that the Blackmagic eGPU actually has three power mode:
Powered off: the status when power cord is not connected to the eGPU;
Standby: when power cord is plugged in, but not connected to any mac ;
Powered on: working as it should be.
I believe it has a standby mode because even when eGPU is disconnected from Mac, the external HDDs are still running (indicators on HDD's case is on) and you can feel a very gentle wind blowing out form the top of eGPU's enclosure.
Im gonna talk about how I use Blackmagic eGPU.
I know the eGPU is expensive and the way Im using it may sound silly to you because the reason I decided to keep the eGPU sounds stupid. But people value things differently right? I hope this could help you if you are now making decision of whether purchasing this powerful box or not.
Reason one, A very good docking station:
Had to mention this feature first. I know no one purchases a eGPU just for its expansion ability. But after few days of actual using, I feel that it is a very handy 'nice to have' feature. With Blackmagic eGPU, I can use single thunderbolt 3 cable to do everything. From charging my mac, to hooking up everything I needed, without any unnecessary wires.
I use a 1Gbps ethernet-USB cable plugged into eGPU and my Time Capsule. Now I can get a very stable 20mb/s internet download/upload speed, along with the Time Machine disk reading speed now up to a stable 60mb/s. The Time Machine backup now is much faster than before (about 3X faster). Before eGPU, I have to plug this dongle to another thunderbolt port.
I connected all of my hard disk to eGPU, now when I connect the eGPU to my Mac, everything shows up immediately. I have two USB-A 3.1 HDD and a thunderbolt 3 SSD. The SSD can reach 550mb/s read speed though thunderbolt 3 port. I installed a backup macOS on the SSD so if anything goes wrong, I can immediately boot up from there then get my work done, then do a system recovery.
The SSD takes up the thunderbolt port. But since I don't have a LG 5K display so that's fine. My LG 4k monitor (actually it's a WebOS TV) hooked up via HDMI on the eGPU and can up tp 4k 60Hz. If you use LG 5K display you can connect your fast SSD to the display so that won't be a problem either.
(BTW when I connect my mac to the TV through a HDMI-thunderbolt converter the TV can't tell what kind of device it is, but when connecting to eGPU it can tell it's a PC.)
Now I have one USB port left. I connected my Apple wireless keyboard through a USB-Lightning cable. So I can charge my Keyboard while using it.
Some might think this is a very expensive eGPU, and the worst is the graphic card can not be swapped. But think of it this way: Most of the 3rd party gpus doesn't have so many extension ports. Even if they have, they are very limited in many ways.
With Blackmagic eGPU, you get four high quality full-speed usb3.1 gen1 ports (up to 10Gb/s I think) and one thunderbolt 3 port (up to 40Gb/s according to Blackmagic Design's website). With one cable you can charge your mac, connect to ethernet (with a dongle, but the good thing is it's hidden behind the eGPU), connect to your external HDDs.
So you can put the power brick into your bag incase you need to use it outdoors (you don't have to buy one). You can save some money for a USB hub (a good quality dock with 4 USB-3.1 and a thunderbolt 3 is not cheap).
And let me say it one more time: One cable for everything is so elegant! Considering all of these hassle you can save, along with saving you least 120$ for unnecessary accessories, it's not that unacceptable.
Reason two, the performance:
The graphic chip inside the Blackmagic eGPU is Radeon Pro 580 (8Giga vRAM), which is a mid-ranged graphic which has half of the performance as Radeon Pro vx 640. But it will give you a decent performance boost.
If you care about scores, there are already plenty of articles/reviews to tell you that. But what all I care about is the everyday feel and the actual performance when using some Graphic intensive softwares.
My previous Macbook pro has a very weak integrated GPU so when I hook up it to my 4K TV it lags as hell. It can't even open a Launchpad folder smoothly, let alone other heavy tasks. When I play 4K on youtube the CPU takes up to 90% usage, with constant frame drops. I know it is a CPU issue, which was the reason I decide to switch to at least quad-core CPU.
But I think GPU definitely plays a part here. I'm no pro about computer, but as far as I know if GPU don't have hardware video decoding ability it will hand it over to CPU, which CPU is not good at (please correct me if I was wrong about this concept).
So I have done some test here (everything is done on macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra):
Disconnect the mac from eGPU then play a 4K 60fps video (H.265) on Mac's internal display . Monitoring the performance through System Monitor long enough till it becomes stable. The GPU usage is around 10-15% (no matter 13' or 15'), and the CPU usage is about 50% (13', 2.7Ghz) and 30-35% (15', Radeon pro 560X).
Then I connected the mac to eGPU, then did the same playback. The results are stunning: eGPU's usage can jump to 100%, then stay at 80%, but both quad-core and hex-core CPUs look like idle, with 2-5% system
and 5-8% User.
I did the same test of VP9 Youtube 4k playback, but the eGPU's usage keeps at 100% while CPUs are still high. I guess Mac doesn't support VP9 well.
Some known issues:
Sometimes the Mac won't restart when connected to eGPU:
If you restart you mac, there is a 50-50 chance that your mac won't boot (after you press restart it just powered off). I did some close observation and I believe the reason might be like this:
If you want to use your mac with lid closed (clamshell mode). you have to plug your mac to an external monitor and plug in your power cable, otherwise it won't turn on.
Because the Blackmagic eGPU doesn't have a power switch, it will automatically turn off if no Mac is connected. So during the restart, there is a short moment when Mac doesn't output data to eGPU, so the eGPU will power itself off. And Mac will think the external monitor is disconnected. Since it is on clamshell mode (lid closed), it will not boot.
I don't know if this is a bug and if it can be fixed by software patches. But because Macbook pro 2018's model can be powered on by pressing any keys (or even trackpad). I assumed that if a Mac is at clamshell mode, you can solve it by press the key on an external keyboard.
Thunderbolt 3 may not have enough bandwidth for another SSD:
If you use eGPU as it supposed to be used, it will be fine. But as I mentioned I hooked up a SSD with macOS on it. When I boot up my mac from SSD, the system feels really slow. But if I connect the SSD directly to my mac everything is fine.This is because eGPU have to transmit data from SSD back to Mac.
15' may have problem identifying eGPU:
The new 13' works totally fine. You plug eGPU on it, it will immediately show up. But two 15' has the same issue. When you plugged it on eGPU the icon on menubar will show up but it says 'no external gpus', only drivers attached on eGPU being mounted. You have to reboot mac with eGPU connected. I think is a thunderbolt driver issue or something to do with two graphic cards in 15'? Hope Apple will fix it soon.
