Thunderbolt 4 working?

[gman901]

Does anyone know if an external gpu would work with the M1 Mac using Windows on arm?

 

[deconstruct60]

Does anyone know if an external gpu would work with the M1 Mac using Windows on arm?

Highly doubtful. Windows 10 running in a virtual machine doesn't even see the M1's GPU.
Would have to hardware memory map the PCI-e path exclusively to the virtual machine. Apple's hypervisor doesn't do that.

If can't get Windows to run 'raw' on the hardware then have to traverse the virtual machine. For the immediate future, macOS 11 doesn't deal with eGPUs so that is pretty big "show stopper". [ IMHO, i don't think eGPUs will come before macOS 12 arrives. I think Apple has a huge invested interest in herding developers into optimizing for their own GPU first and foremost. So not even going to try the first year very much at all to open the door to other options. ]

The typical mechanism now on x86_64 Macs is to boot into Windows on the hardware and just use the direct windows drivers on the raw hardware.

 

[understudyhero]

eGPU works on intel BigSur Macs doesn't it? They just don't work on M1 Macs.

 

[joevt]

eGPU works on intel BigSur Macs doesn't it? They just don't work on M1 Macs.

Correct.

 

[deconstruct60]

eGPU works on intel BigSur Macs doesn't it? They just don't work on M1 Macs.

Apple really doesn't have a choice with Intel BigSur Macs since more than a few of them have discrete , 3rd party GPUs in them.

M-series era has been all iGPU and Apple GPU only. If there are no 3rd party GPU drivers it isn't just "external" that is blocked. It is internal also. If there are not internal/embedded discrete GPUs then external ones are basically blocked. Hardware without drivers isn't functional.

That has nothing to do with Thunderbolt itself. This has far more to do with Apple on path to kicking every one else out of the OS kernel and laser focused solely on iGPUs of their own design. Combine those two high priority objectives and eGPUs have major roadblocks.


[ IMHO, Apple will probably 'give' on covering the higher end discrete GPUs after picking off the low-mid range usages in several transitioned products. when they get ready to enable what is left of discrete GPU space that's when eGPU will coming back into the picture in a somewhat limited fashion. macOS 12 beta and WWDC 2021 would be better clues to that timeline. Or that Apple has gone completely rogue on the GPU front. ]