Thunderbolt eGPU Possibilities for Early Intel Macs?

[Amethyst1]

Just to confirm, from Arrangement I'll select the HDTV on the right-hand side and choose Mirror Displays?

Don’t mirror! That’ll kill performance.
Just drag the little white bar (that symbolises the main menu bar) over to the HDTV on the right.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Don’t mirror! That’ll kill performance.
Just drag the little white bar (that symbolises the main menu bar) over to the HDTV on the right.

Done!

That's made a huge difference.

 

[Amethyst1]

Done!
[…]

That’s much more like it.

 

[Amethyst1]

@TheShortTimer: It would be interesting to see what your 770's results are like when running the benchmark on the eGPU but displaying it on the MBP's screen: With the HDTV as the main screen, start the benchmark and drag the window over to the MBP while it's running. I wonder if a more powerful GPU takes an even bigger hit than my 660 Ti does, which is already substantial.

 

[TheShortTimer]

@TheShortTimer: It would be interesting to see what your 770's results are like when running the benchmark on the eGPU but displaying it on the MBP's screen: With the HDTV as the main screen, start the benchmark and drag the window over to the MBP while it's running. I wonder if a more powerful GPU takes an even bigger hit than my 660 Ti does, which is already substantial.

I'll try that out and post the results. A downside with purge-wrangler is the absence of hot swapping. If you want to disconnect/reconnect the eGPU then you need to shut down and reboot the computer otherwise it will freeze, crash and reset. This can become a hassle if you're in the middle of work and then have to close everything down for disconnection/reconnection.

 

[netsrot39]

I wanted to chime in since I've recently got an AMD 7950 and a Sonnet eGPU Thunderbolt 3 enclosure.

At first I had troubles getting the two devices to work with my MacBookPro9,2. The issue was that with "Purge Wrangler" the MacBook Pro would always Kernel Panic on Mojave when the GPU was attached. In High Sierra I got the setup to work but there is a big problem; the "Prefer External GPU" option isn't present on High Sierra. Upon installing "OpenCore Legacy Patcher" and setting up "Kryptonite" the setup works great on Mojave and later MacOS (although hot swap does result in a crash). Anyways I find it really awesome that with these workarounds I can make use of this eGPU on my MacBook Pro which only has a rather weak integrated graphics chip (Intel HD 4000). Can anyone suggest good games for Mac?

 

[arw]

I wanted to chime in since I've recently got an AMD 7950 and a Sonnet eGPU Thunderbolt 3 enclosure.

Do you by any chance have Photoshop?
I have the same enclosure (with an RX 570) and while even GPU benchmarks in a virtual Windows machine confirm an increased performance, moving a canvas in Photoshop is extremely choppy. Even with the only monitor connected directly to the eGPU.
I'm trying to determine if it's an issue of Photoshop, the Sonnet eGFX or Kryptonite.
The RX 570 in a 5,1 is working smoothly with the same Photoshop version.
Btw I'm using a Mac Pro 6,1.
Thanks

@TheShortTimer: It would be interesting to see what your 770's results are like when running the benchmark on the eGPU but displaying it on the MBP's screen: With the HDTV as the main screen, start the benchmark and drag the window over to the MBP while it's running. I wonder if a more powerful GPU takes an even bigger hit than my 660 Ti does, which is already substantial.

Some RX 570 testing I did with UNIGINE Heaven in a Windows VM on my D300 MP6,1:
(DX11; Medium; Disabled; x4; FullScreen; 1920x1080)
Windows 10 (VMware Fusion GPU driver 8.17.1.1 as 8.17.3.5 reduced performance by ~50%)

• screen connected to D300; testing D300: 868 pts [97% max GPU use]
• screen connected to D300; testing RX 570: 1169 pts [88% max GPU use] (+35% compared to D300)
• screen connected to RX 570; testing RX 570: 1216 pts [92% max GPU use] (+4% by connecting main screen to RX 570)

Windows 7 (VMware Fusion GPU driver 8.17.3.5)

• screen connected to D300; testing RX 570: 1252 pts [98% max GPU use] (+7% compared to Windows 10)
• screen connected to RX 570; testing RX 570: 1502 pts [98% max GPU use] (+18% by connecting main screen to RX 570; )

I did the testing to see if an eGPU would improve performance for my Windows-only CAD software.
The performance gain compared to my D300 is significantly lower (+73%) than expected when comparing plain FP32 float values (+139%) (2.176 > 5.194 TFLOPS).
So the question is, if a.e. an 5700 XT (9.754 TFLOPS) in an eGFX enclosure would finally result in that expected performance gain.
Connecting the main screen to the eGPU is necessary for the best performance (+18%) but Photoshop CC 2022 is barely usable then although it is officially eGPU compatible.

 

[Amethyst1]

Upon installing "OpenCore Legacy Patcher" and setting up "Kryptonite" the setup works great on Mojave and later MacOS […]

Is performance as expected? You could check with the Unigine Heaven or Valley benchmarks.

Anyways I find it really awesome that with these workarounds I can make use of this eGPU on my MacBook Pro which only has a rather weak integrated graphics chip (Intel HD 4000).

It’s amazing what that tiny Thunderbolt port enables you to do, right?

 

[ToniCH]

@TheShortTimer @Amethyst1

Hi guys, I am soon dipping my toes to eGPUs and I was wondering if there has been any development on this sector regarding OCLP unsupported installations? The OCLP-installations are getting more and more popular so I hope its doable. I see Kryptonite has not been updated since 2021 when you said it does not support unsupported OS installations. But has there been any development on OCLP side to change this?

My eGPU candidates are (none is TB3):
1. MBP 15" late 2012 (OCLP + Sonoma) + other partition on same disk with Catalina
2. iMac 27" 2011 (OCLP + Monterey)
3. MBP 15" mid 2014 - Big Sur
4. Mac Mini late 2012 - Catalina

I guess the Mac Mini and MBP 2012 would benefit the most from eGPU.

 

[TheShortTimer]

@TheShortTimer @Amethyst1

Hi guys, I am soon dipping my toes to eGPU and I was wondering if there has been any development on this sector regarding OCLP unsupported installations? The OCLP-installations are getting more and more popular so I hope its doable. I see Kryptonite has not been updated since 2021 when you said it does not support unsupported OS installations. But has there been any development on OCLP side to change this?

My eGPU candidates are (none is TB3):
1. MBP 15" late 2012 (OCLP + Sonoma) + other partition on same disk with Catalina
2. iMac 27" 2011 (OCLP + Monterey)
3. MBP 15" mid 2014 - Big Sur
4. Mac Mini late 2012 - Catalina

I guess the Mac Mini and MBP 2012 would benefit the most from eGPU.

Unfortunately @Amethyst1 hasn't been active for a while on here (and is missed) but I'd be very surprised if there haven't been any developments on the OCLP front. I'll have a look and see what info I can come up with and my 13" 2012 MBP was purchased in large part to serve as a testing ground for this very topic, so I'll also check how my eGPU's fare with OCLP Ventura.

 

[ToniCH]

Unfortunately @Amethyst1 hasn't been active for a while on here (and is missed) but I'd be very surprised if there haven't been any developments on the OCLP front. I'll have a look and see what info I can come up with and my 13" 2012 MBP was purchased in large part to serve as a testing ground for this very topic, so I'll also check how my eGPU's fare with OCLP Ventura.

Oh, too bad. I hope he is ok and just busy elsewhere. I've learned from his posts on many fronts.

Oh, yes - I do have a MBP 13" i7 2012 too. Forgot that one as its rarely used. Cannot remember what os is installed, probably Mojave or Catalina. Great machine for ~100€!
------------

I was looking at my laptop pile and could not understand why my MBP mid 2010 17" has a Thunderbolt logo on one of the ports. I even test fitted TB cable and it fits?! But, 2010 does not have TB?! For a second I thought I might have a rare prototype or something. 😆 Finally I figured it out: I swapped the damaged top case recently and the one I used is 2011 which is identical except the logo on the 2010 case is for mini displayport connector and 2011 its TB. 😂

Interesting little detail I learned while investigating this: MBP 2010 MDP-connector also transfers audio, earlier ones do not.

 

[ToniCH]

but I'd be very surprised if there haven't been any developments on the OCLP front. I'll have a look and see what info I can come up with and my 13" 2012 MBP was purchased in large part to serve as a testing ground for this very topic, so I'll also check how my eGPU's fare with OCLP Ventura.

It seems like the Kryptonite is also based on Open Core. As Kryptonite is used to inject some kexts I would think it would not be difficult to incorporate such functionality to OCLP too if Kryptonite is no longer actively developed? For at least OS's older than Big Sur. Maybe BS and Monterey too?

Kryptonite Preparing your system -instructions say about existing OCLP-installation:

If you already use OpenCore, your setup process only requires you to inject the Lilu and Kryptonite kernel extension. Please keep in mind that if you use OCLP, it is possible for patches to conflict with eGPU support. Please see Compatibility for more information.

Seems easy, but how does this work with lets say Big Sur or Monterey? I read that for earlier OS's its easy to manually inject these but something is different with BS and newer? And are those injected to EFI-partitons EFI/OC/kexts-folder or the MacHD/System/Library/Extensions? Hmm...I see Lilu.kext already exists in the EFI-partition. So I suspect the correct destination is EFI/OC/kexts?

About Ventura Kryptonite compatibility-page says:

If using Ventura/macOS 13, you are most likely using OCLP. There are 2 important limitations:

1. If running on a Mac with pre-Haswell CPU, Polaris or newer AMD drivers will not load for you, so no modern AMD GPUs can work. Example, 2013 Mac Pro. More details: https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/issues/998#issuecomment-1166340370
2. Need this workaround: https://github.com/mayankk2308/kryptonite/issues/34

If you don’t want to deal with Ventura and it’s issues, just stay on Monterey.

So, be careful when trying it out with Ventura, so you don't srew up your boot up sequence.

 

[DCBassman]

I understand that an i5 Mac doesn't really fall within the category of Early Intel machines but

Oh yes it does! Because if it doesn't, only one of my Macs is 'in spec'!

 

[ToniCH]

So, today I picked up my new cheap 2nd hand eGPU (Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Puck RX560). So its the cheapest and discontinued model and these are compact devices with no easily (or at all) changeable GPU. This model comes with Radeon RX560 4GB.

Pic from Sonnets site.

First I tried it with my MBP 13" 2012 i7 Catalina, was very easy to set up. Installed Kryptonite to USB-stick. Here are the results:

Stock GPU, internal display:

And then with the eGPU and an external display:

.

That is quite a difference!

Then I tried my headless (no internal display present) MBP 2014 DG but could not figure out how to make it work.

Testing continues.

 

[ToniCH]

Next I tested MBP 15" 2012 i7 with Catalina (also OCLP+Sonoma in installed). I could not get to boot properly with Kryptonite installed to the USB-stick, there is maybe a conflict with the OCLP-installation even when booting to supported OS. It works when I install it to the OC EFI but then I lose the possibility to use the dGPU completely as its disabled. And also my Sonoma bootability breaks. I can re-enable dGPU and fix Sonoma boot also by manually replacing the config.plist and renaming kryptonite.kext to something else but that is cumbersome.

This far the egpu seems to be easy to config to supported OS-installations and quite hard to get working with OCLP-unsupported installation - as expected. I'll continue testing this with a machine with only one OS installed.

Here are some results for the MBP:

First internal display with iGPU (HD4000/GeForce GT 650M):

.

The results for external display with MBP's own GPUs were quite similar, only few points and fps difference.

And then the eGPU (RX560):

.

And one more for the laughs, Geekbench 5 compute OpenCL -score.

Didn't have patience to run the Metal-test with the GeForce dGPU as it takes ages. Metal score for the MBP + RX560 was 19051.

Again, good gains. I'll have to think what I will try next. Mac Mini Server i7 (2012) would probably benefit from eGPU greatly but I suspect the results will be similar to those above with the MBP's as they all have the HD4000 iGPU.

 

[ToniCH]

Next succesfull test with MBP 15" mid 2014 i7 2.8GHz. I didn't test the internal GPUs this time at all, I am now interested in the eGPU result differences between the tested machines. The eGPU is the same for all but this is the first machine with Thunderbolt 2, earlier ones are TB1. So, twice the bandwidth. But, I am not feeling that the eGPU is in anyway suffering from the 10Gb/s TB1 vs. 20Gb/s TB2. Result didn't get that much better so maybe we are seeing the limit of the eGPU here? 🤔

For some reason this machine, which is in many ways much faster than the 15" 2012, still got little worse results in Geekbench 5 tests?! Don't know what is going on here?

In Unigine tests it is clearly more powerful, MBP 2012 results are in the previous post. Is this because TB2, faster processor, faster memory or what - I don't know.

.

 

[ToniCH]

There is something weird going on how the Geekbench and Unigine tests work. Now I tested the Mac Mini Server i7 Late 2012.

This is GB5 GPU tests, only difference is how I connected the HDMI-cable:

So, test result is much higher if I connect the eGPU to TB-connection and monitor to computers own HDMI-connection. Ok, fine...but... its the opposite with Unigine Heaven and Valley -benchmarks.

So, here are the results when I connected the HDMI-cable to eGPU's connection. If I connect it to the computer directly the results are significantly worse (-~20fps) ie. opposite to what GeekBench -benchmark results are.

.

Ps. this is probably what made the MBP 2012 vs. 2014 GeekBench-results so weird too.

Ps2. tried to get the Kryptonite and the eGPU to work with 2011 iMac (OCLP+Monterey). The eGPU can be seen in the TB-bus and its also listed in graphics section along the iMacs Radeon GPU but it doesn't come active so it could be used to accelerate any software.

 

[ToniCH]

Ok, I'll continue this with some new comparisons:

The machine: MBP 15" mid 2014 i7 2.8GHz
Tests: Unigine Heaven & Valley 1280x720 windowed, quality medium
Stock GPUs: Intel Iris Pro / NVIDIA GF GT 750M
Tested eGPU: Blackmagic RX580
Internal display tested only (Kryptonite doesn't like the Nvidia in this machine and I didn't want to disable it to enable external displays via the eGPU).

First the stock figures:

And then with Blackmagic RX580 8GB eGPU:

And finally GeekBench 5 GPU-test results for the RX580:

The GB5 scores show huge improvements over old results I've posted above.

 

[ToniCH]

I wanted to try one more thing for today: how does the eGPU work with my MBA 2012 i5 1.8GHz 4GB RAM?

Well... I don't have time to run all the tests with the stock GPU as its just so sloooowwww.... but here is something:

And here is some GeekBench 5 -results. Guess which one is the stock one? 😫 The stock gpu metal test is missing as after 15 minutes it was only about 30% done and I could no longer take it. 😖🤮 I mean with the eGPU it just took couple of minutes or something...

I seriously recommend these egpus if you do any kind of graphical stuff with your Mac. They are now starting to be very cheap as they no longer work with silicon Macs and are not very useful with the newest Intel Mac either. So, with compatible early Intels like 2011-2015 Macs they are great! 👍

 

[Amethyst1]

Well... I don't have time to run all the tests with the stock GPU as its just so sloooowwww.... but here is something:

Still better than a 2011 MBA with the HD 3000

I seriously recommend these egpus if you do any kind of graphical stuff with your Mac. They are now starting to be very cheap […]

The Blackmagic RX 580 and Sonnet Breakaway Puck RX 5500/5700 are still somewhat expensive (200…250 euros at least in Germany) — maybe due to being the only eGPUs that have Thunderbolt video output?

 

[TheShortTimer]

Still better than a 2011 MBA with the HD 3000

Thanks, rub it in.

 

[Amethyst1]

Thanks, rub it in.

If I didn’t already own a 2011 MBP, I’d probably be in the market for a 2011 MBA again because it’s the least powerful Mac with a certain interface and the only one with Eagle Ridge.

 

[TheShortTimer]

If I didn’t already own a 2011 MBP, I’d probably be in the market for a 2011 MBA again because it’s the least powerful Mac with a certain interface and the only one with Eagle Ridge.

Oh. Very well.

I'll stand down.

 

[ToniCH]

The Blackmagic RX 580 and Sonnet Breakaway Puck RX 5500/5700 are still somewhat expensive (200…250 euros at least in Germany) — maybe due to being the only eGPUs that have Thunderbolt video output?

These were quite expensive when new. Not worth it at the time IMHO. But, now few years later and second hand the story is different - if one is patient and looks for a good deal.

I think I paid 120€ or something like that for the Sonnet Breakaway Puck RX560 a year ago. And now I paid less than 200€ for the Blackmagic RX580. Not bad at all considering that they transform old machines quite nicely when doing anything graphical. And they are not tied to any one machine, you can install the drivers to any compatible machine and boot with them and just plug the eGPU in when needed.

Ps. forgot to mention but with the MBA the results are for external display routed via eGPU. No problem as the MBA does not have a Nvidia dGPU that might be non compatible with the Kryptonite. Note that not all Nvidias are non compatible but only some series.

 

[Amethyst1]

I think I paid 120€ or something like that for the Sonnet Breakaway Puck RX560 a year ago.

That’s nice, I like how small the Puck is (what about heat though?) and that it exposes three DisplayPorts (I had to search for a while until I found an RX 460 card that does). It still doesn’t allow more than four screens on macOS but it’s a start.

And now I paid less than 200€ for the Blackmagic RX580.

That’s quite a bit for a GPU introduced in 2017 but the going prices for empty TB3 eGPU boxes alone somewhat put it into perspective.

1. I have a 2011 27" iMac12,2. Its otherwise stock but added RAM + SSD.

So, yesterday I was trying to get an AMD eGPU to work with the machine. It can be seen in the About this mac - more info. But it doesn't come active, so I need Kryptonite.

The quotes are from another thread but @TheShortTimer and me had major issues with Kryptonite on High Sierra on a 2011 13inch MBP with Light Ridge, which that iMac also has. So I’d be interested in hearing if the iMac also has issues with Kryptonite, but it might be easier to use an unpatched version of macOS for that. Basically, I wonder if the issues are isolated to the 2011 MBP or not.

@TheShortTimer — have you tested Kryptonite on your 2011 MBA?