I know this is about games, but I wanted to relay my experience using an eGPU (using the Razer enclosure and an AMD RX Vega 64) in a professional context.<p>I had a good performance boost using Photoshop and Maya. But if you're using a portable MacBook Pro that you're connecting every day, I wouldn't recommend it. The connect/disconnect experience is really flaky, and you'll probably spend a few times a week trying to figure out why the eGPU isn't connecting/disconnecting.<p>I switched to a Mac Mini at work (stock GPU build of course) with the same enclosure and graphics card, and the experience has been pretty delightful. If you're doing visual stuff, it's the budget version of a Mac Pro. It seemed to improve overall OSX responsiveness too, but perhaps that's just the new Mac Mini in action.<p>I still use the old MacBook Pro at home, but it's not my daily machine. Now I don't have to carry a bag to work, and my home laptop can cover things in a pinch. Using a desktop machine at the office for work has improved my work-life balance, and my productivity.
Loved this post. But I'd recommend to not try this at home. You'll end up spending way too much money, and wasting way too much time.<p>Just grab a PC or console for gaming. Trying to game on a Mac is just swimming upstream, without the payoff. Apple does not want you.
Gaming on Mac is okay if you have a good time manually editing files with magic strings from the internet to trick the OS into using an appropriate resolution/refresh rate, and ultimately ending up with noticable input lag.<p>I went from gaming on a $6k mac pro to gaming on a $1k Alienware and realized I'd been playing in the kids pool the whole time.
I would refrain from saying "gaming on MacBook" because it creates confusion about whether one is using Windows or macOS.<p>When playing on Windows (Bootcamp) the MacBook is just a regular Intel based hardware, the experience is no different from using any other laptop out there (aside from Windows install process).<p>Playing on macOS that's another story. Mouse acceleration can not be disabled, switching to and from fullscreen games is sometimes buggy, and not many popular names are available natively on macOS.
The sheer frustration and potential undiscovered bugs of getting gaming to work with a GPU on a Mac caused me to give up trying to game on a desktop.<p>Which is actually perfectly fine unless you need 4k60fps or 1440p144fps, which I do not. I originally started gaming on the PC a decade ago when many games and sales were PC only: the gaming market is at a place now where the game selection and prices between consoles and PCs are similar. There isn't anything on a PC/Mac I'm missing that I can't get on my PS4 Pro (or even a mobile device!).
Now if only Apple stopped crippling OpenGL in an affort to push Metal, maybe we would get better games.<p>This is Microsoft's playbook from a couple of decades ago.
I had a eGPU box with a GTX 1060 for months, but was using it for Windows 10 and a zbook 15 notebook. Unfortunately there is no Mac support for NVIDIA but some users get it working themselves - never tried it as it looked a bit to cumbersome for my taste. On Windows 10 the setup worked great. Was able to play games like PUBG or Quake Champions with decent (Medium) settings at Full HD and a reasonable framerate (I believe usually 70-90 FPS).
But in the end I decided that I wanted to switch away from Apple and also sold my Laptop to buy a Desktop PC with more horsepower. My wife still has a rather new MacBook Pro, so if I want to fire up some Final Cut Pro or Garage bend I could still do it.
Was not sure if the whole setup of eGPU was worth it for me, it surely allowed me to play those titles which were not playable without the eGPU but I believe it would have been wiser to spent the money directly on a new PC.
But of course, with switching away from the Mac my case is a bit special.
A very nice how to. For some good real world numbers I always look to <a href="https://barefeats.com/" rel="nofollow">https://barefeats.com/</a> which has been testing eGPU setups for quite some time on different Macs
I’ve yet to see an eGPU review measure latency. I’ve always been skeptical of their ability to render frames out with adding meaningful latency to the system.<p>I know it’s theoretical possible to work just fine. But it’s a long pipeline with lots of opportunity for inefficiency and connection bugs.<p>I love my 144Hz gaming monitor on my desktop. I’d be thrilled to connect my laptop to an eGPU if it can produce an identical gaming experience.<p>But my spidey sense says eGPu’s are a convoluted buggy mess. And that’s unlikely to change in the foreseeable future due to lack of users.
Can anyone chime in on WHY apple doesn't care about the gaming segment? Is it just elitism from the design/dev team or do they truly think no one wants to game on a mac? It's strange behavior for a company.
I've been using an eGPU for about 6 months now with my 2018 13in Macbook Pro and I love it. It drives my 4k monitor so much better for work tasks, and gaming is fun.<p>The only issue is the eject never seems to actually work, so I just unplug the eGPU every time rather than safely eject. It's a bit annoying to have every app reboot when unplugging. I'm hoping the next version handles it a bit better.<p>One change I've made from the article is installing Windows on an external M2 drive over USB-C (I don't believe it's Thunderbolt, just standard USB) because my Macbook was running out of space between Windows and MacOS..looking at you, Ark and your ridiculous 100GB install with another 100GB of scratch space required to update.. Everything seems to work at full speed!
This NVidia stuff is getting ridiculous. Apple basically killed off any Deep Learning enthusiasts and nobody could do any serious computing-intense stuff on their platform. A polished toy.
The writer is pretending that egpu is some sort of hidden secret that no one wants you to know about, I don’t understand why - since this is not the case - many companies are actively marketing egpu solutions.<p>It also falsely presents egpu as a silver bullet, in particular it claims that there is no latency even when using the laptop’s built-in monitor (as opposed to an external monitor plugged into the GPU) which is absolutely not true (an external monitor will perform better).<p>Many reliable sources have published independent benchmarks comparing the 3 solutions (internal gpu, external gpu over internal monitor, external gpu over external monitor) you should look at the benchmarks in case you want to make up your own mind about this topic.
Not brought up here, but the Apple Thunderbolt 2 -> Thunderbolt 3 adapter is one of the only ones that actually works in <i>reverse</i>, too. With some hacks from eGPU.io, I ran an Nvidia GTX 1060 on a Mac Mini for a while over TB2 for hashcat work.
I gamed a bit on my previous MBP, a 15" from 2012. The CPU and GPU got so hot, I suspect it reduced the lifespan of the laptop battery. Does anyone else have concerns about this for gaming on laptops? Would unloading to the EGPU mitigate this issue?
Anyone know the type of mouse being used in the photo? <a href="https://justin.searls.co/uploads/egpu/IMG_4122.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://justin.searls.co/uploads/egpu/IMG_4122.jpg</a>
I tried this with a Mac eGPU Dev Kit and a 2014 MBPr... right before they removed the ability to run it with a TB2 cable. Jerks. Anyway, the amount of hassle with trying this is high, and I say that as someone who ran Linux on all my desktops and servers from '94-'14. Installing Windows on Bootcamp to do this? That's a hard pass from me, dawg. I'm done with Windows. Even for gaming. It's all Mac-native or Playstation for me now.
What’s the easiest way to turn your desktop to a Remote Desktop for ssh (eg, to run ml models)? The dynamic ip is the only weird part. Which service or solution do people use?
Apple doesn't seem to have it's ear to the ground. Ever since windows 10, the software and design advantage Apple had over PCs has arguably narrowed down to irrelevance.<p>Windows today boasts of good design, higher security than previous versions, a Microsoft supported full blown embedded Linux (WSL) and a much larger selection of apps/tools<p>It all comes down to specs and build quality in 2019. If one is paying top of the line for Apple, they better ship decent spec-ed hardware, including GPU