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This limitation really stings, because outside of professional and creative applications, most people who want eGPUs want them to play modern games on Apple hardware, and that experience is often best under Windows. Unfortunately, Boot Camp does not currently include support for eGPUs in Windows.
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There’s no support in Boot CampĪpple's Boot Camp software makes installing and running Windows relatively painless it provides the latest video drivers and more for your Mac in Microsoft's operating system. The eGPU enthusiast community has also developed some hack-y solutions for this, but again, that's far from ideal. Neither Apple nor Nvidia offer official video drivers for recent Nvidia cards. Some earlier models, like the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro, used Nvidia graphics and are still supported by Apple, but they also don't have Thunderbolt 3, so eGPUs are not an option for them. While we're not happy about this, we're also not surprised: every current Mac that has a GPU solution other than Intel's integrated graphics uses AMD. This is disappointing, as many users deem Nvidia GPUs to be preferable for games-although much of that is because of Nvidia's strong Windows drivers, which doesn't apply here. Only AMD graphics cards are supported, so if you have an Nvidia GPU, you're out of luck without going through some unsupported hoops. Plus, Thunderbolt 1 and 2 are arguably just not fast enough to provide you with satisfactory performance benefits. You just need to get your feet (very) wet to make it happen, and since it's not supported, an ideal experience is far from guaranteed. The eGPU community has produced scripts that re-enable this. Apple might have deemed Thunderbolt 2 insufficient for smooth performance. Thunderbolt 2 has a max throughput of 20Gbps that's half what you get with Thunderbolt 3. This is disappointing, but perhaps unavoidable if we're being realistic about it. In other words, only the most recent Apple hardware supports eGPUs. That limits eGPU support to MacBook Pros from October 2016 forward, the iMac Pro, and iMacs from June 2017 and later. Then you plug the enclosure into the wall, connect the Mac to the enclosure with a Thunderbolt 3 cable, connect the enclosure to your external display with the cable of your choice, and turn it all on. Once you have an external enclosure and a desktop graphics card, you just slot the card into the PCI-e slot in the enclosure just like you would on a desktop computer's motherboard. Unfortunately, we also found limitations and software support inconsistencies that prevent the Mac eGPU dream from being fully realized at this time. We tested an eGPU enclosure with a Thunderbolt 3-equipped MacBook Pro, and found that, in most applications, performance didn't disappoint. With the new official support in macOS 10.13.4, Apple is finally helping consumers try eGPUs out. That's a big improvement over the previous interface, and it's arguably finally fast enough to finally make eGPUs viable without dramatic performance disadvantages compared to traditional PCI-e interfaces.Īll that is to say that the time is ripe for eGPUs to come to the Mac. There's pent-up demand for better graphics performance on Macs, and eGPUs offer some hope.Īnd Apple and Intel's Thunderbolt 3 interface (found in the highest-end Macs from 20, so far) offers theoretical speeds of up to 40Gbps.
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Mac gamers have long dealt with GPUs that don't keep the pace with demands from the latest PC games, so eGPU enthusiast communities have popped up around the Web in places like the MacRumors forums and eGPU.io. Survios only supports the iMac Pro's built-in GPU.
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When we talked with Survios, a studio that has developed VR software for the Mac platform, we learned that slow progress in the MacBook Pro and standard iMac integrated and discrete GPUs is holding back most Macs from supporting VR.
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That could solve many of the frustrations some users have with the Mac platform, like the lack of an upgrade path for professional-use machines that depend on graphics power and lackluster gaming performance in the latest games.Īt Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) last year (and when the company unveiled the iMac Pro in December), it claimed that eGPUs would be a good way to add multiple GPUs for demanding work for which just one is not sufficient or to upgrade performance as the iMac Pro's included GPU ages. Further Reading The external graphics dream is real: Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box reviewed
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