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MBP 15" 2013 Retina, Akitio Thunder2, GTX1060, Win10, no device or boot hangs


orkus

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15 hours ago, ibanez_bass said:

I was having very similar issues to you. No boot when thunderbolt was connected, GPU wasn't detected most of the time, all kinds of issues. Sadly it turned out to be the Thunder2 itself, which I could not return because I had already modified the chassis. So I had to order another one, which I will be keeping the unmodified chassis in a closet just in case.

 

Hm. How did you know? I already had to return one Akitio, because the first one blew up on the first try. That was before even modifying anything. I believe it was a hardware error, a bad soldering point.

 

Remember, I had it running twice (just for a couple of seconds, but still...)!

 

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But all is good now. I have the same 750m/Iris Pro 5200/GTX 1060 setup

 

This, my friend, is a very hopeful (and helpful) answer! I was close to return the damn things. Are you using Windows 10? EFI boot? GPT or MBR?

 

Quote

Just make sure you run GPU switch integrated, disable the 750m, and reboot.

 

Whenever I do this, I end up with a black screen, circular animation freezes, HD LED still flickering. It feels like the Iris and the OS are both working, but the screen output just goes nowhere. Today I have been told to turn up the brightness to max, otherwise Windows may choose to switch the output off altogether. *sigh*

 

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Connect the thunderbolt cable at the boot loader.

 

Then everything halts. rEFInd not responsive anymore. Even if I do it early in the boot process, the startup immediately halts. If I do it after login, or "late" in the boot process, it has no effect.

 

2 hours ago, WBJ said:

Which Thunderbolt port  you are using? When I was setting up R9 Nano eGPU I met the same issue. But when I use the TB port close to the MagSafe rather than close to USB one, everything works fine!

 

Good hint, but I switched them a couple of times. That does not seem to matter. But I will stick to the one near the MagSafe, just to be sure.

 

Thank you both for your hints! Time is running out. In two days, I will travel to the Mediterranean Sea and stay there for 2 weeks. Maybe tonight I will give it a last try before my holydays.

 

 

Edited by orkus
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It worked!!

Finally!

 

Downloading and using GPU-Switch to activate the iGPU was the key. Though I had to boot a couple of times, it finally worked. I played a couple of games using Ultra settings. Wow! The internal screen mirrors the external one, and that lowers the frame rate. I don't know how to avoid this, since ther is only one screen visible in the settings.

 

And I am afraid to shut down the computer, but hey! If it worked once, it may work again!

 

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13 hours ago, orkus said:

 

Hm. How did you know? I already had to return one Akitio, because the first one blew up on the first try. That was before even modifying anything. I believe it was a hardware error, a bad soldering point.

 

Remember, I had it running twice (just for a couple of seconds, but still...)!

 

 

This, my friend, is a very hopeful (and helpful) answer! I was close to return the damn things. Are you using Windows 10? EFI boot? GPT or MBR?

 

 

Whenever I do this, I end up with a black screen, circular animation freezes, HD LED still flickering. It feels like the Iris and the OS are both working, but the screen output just goes nowhere. Today I have been told to turn up the brightness to max, otherwise Windows may choose to switch the output off altogether. *sigh*

 

 

Then everything halts. rEFInd not responsive anymore. Even if I do it early in the boot process, the startup immediately halts. If I do it after login, or "late" in the boot process, it has no effect.

 

 

Good hint, but I switched them a couple of times. That does not seem to matter. But I will stick to the one near the MagSafe, just to be sure.

 

Thank you both for your hints! Time is running out. In two days, I will travel to the Mediterranean Sea and stay there for 2 weeks. Maybe tonight I will give it a last try before my holydays.

 

 

It looks like you got it working, but I will go ahead and elaborate. I'm using Windows 10 EFI/GPT. I have the OS X Spoofing turned on in rEFInd (I still want to call it rEFIt from back in the day). As for knowing the first Thunder2 was bad... I took a chance and bought another. I was getting lockups at the boot loader just like you with the first one, now I can boot with it plugged in to my MBP. Oddly enough, my XPS 13 will still not let me boot with it plugged in... I have to wait for the screen to light up.

 

As for the mirroring/optimus, Does the display setting show [1|2] in the Windows settings? Check the nVidia control panel as well. Today, I realized that my MBP would not display any output on DisplayPort but HDMI worked fine. On my iMac, DisplayPort worked fine. So, you might try different ports as well.

 

Do note that I observed a significant performance decrease using optimus. With a +200/+250 overclock, non-optimus FireStrike was 11500 on the Graphics (not bad considering I saw a 980 non-egpu with a score just over 12K). With optimus, the score dropped down below 10000. That equated to non-optimus Heaven 4.0 ~53 fps and optimus ~42-45 fps (can't remember exactly off the top of my head) at Custom Extreme 1080p, 8x MSAA, Extreme Tesselation. 

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6 hours ago, ibanez_bass said:

 

 

It looks like you got it working, but I will go ahead and elaborate. I'm using Windows 10 EFI/GPT. I have the OS X Spoofing turned on in rEFInd (I still want to call it rEFIt from back in the day). As for knowing the first Thunder2 was bad... I took a chance and bought another. I was getting lockups at the boot loader just like you with the first one, now I can boot with it plugged in to my MBP. Oddly enough, my XPS 13 will still not let me boot with it plugged in... I have to wait for the screen to light up.

 

As for the mirroring/optimus, Does the display setting show [1|2] in the Windows settings? Check the nVidia control panel as well. Today, I realized that my MBP would not display any output on DisplayPort but HDMI worked fine. On my iMac, DisplayPort worked fine. So, you might try different ports as well.

 

Do note that I observed a significant performance decrease using optimus. With a +200/+250 overclock, non-optimus FireStrike was 11500 on the Graphics (not bad considering I saw a 980 non-egpu with a score just over 12K). With optimus, the score dropped down below 10000. That equated to non-optimus Heaven 4.0 ~53 fps and optimus ~42-45 fps (can't remember exactly off the top of my head) at Custom Extreme 1080p, 8x MSAA, Extreme Tesselation. 

 

Hm. Since I played several games for a couple of hours without any crash or freeze, I think the Thunder2 works. The boot problems are annoying, but if I can make it work again, I think I will keep the box.

 

Both, Windows and nVidia settings show only one display!. I was looking for a "sync displays" switch to turn off, but couldn't find any. Maybe it's hidden in expert setting or so, I will have to look harder next time.

 

I do not connect my HDMI to the MBP, but directly to the 1060. Are you talking about different ports of the Geforce? I do not have any other cabling, so I can't try for now.

 

You observed a performance decrease using Optimus?! That sounds strange. I thought, Optimus would just switch GPUs on the fly. I will have to read a little more about this.

 

Until then I will try to enjoy my holidays. Dreaming about this wonderful gaming night (see screenshots of Assassin's Creed Syndicate)...

 

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/1621679306981925479/869722C8A5D9C2DAAB22E7FB5A04C996B2F02A28/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/1621679306981925292/340AE493FE28253EC61425DBE81900629D2BE132/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/1621679306981925680/ECF8D4A8210242550E6F1C7EA64B3C782BB57F6E/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/1621679306981924808/CD88220B8C5283947F0B2A54544B84840AE1CEA0/

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I reinstalled the NVIDIA driver, and made the 1060 work again. Several times. Surrounded by lot of unsuccessful boots. Since now I have two displays visible in the display settings, I was able to switch off the internal display, but that didn't seem to have any influence on the frame rate. I believe, Optimus works, as well, since I am able to select the GPUs both, manually and automatically. I don't know if or how I can switch off Optimus to avoid a possible performance decrease from it.

 

When Windows wakes up from sleep mode, the eGPU will not wake up and I will have to do reboots (completely switching off the computer every time) until it works again.. What a mediocre OS.

 

And here is what I believe is necessary for the late 2013 MacBook Pro Retina:

- Install rEFInd

- Install apple_set_os and run it every time before booting Windows 

- Install and run the switch GPU scripts for Windows to switch to the internal GPU (Intel Iris), reboot.

- In the Windows device manager uninstall (not just disable) the dGPU (Geforce 750m).

- Connect eGPU.

- Keep rebooting until successful, reinstall and update the NVIDIA driver

- In the Windows device manager AGAIN uninstall the eGPU

- Keep rebooting until successful.

- This is the point when I start to get output from the eGPU.

 

Hot (or "warm") plugging does not work for me, the eGPU has to be present at power-on time. It seems, this is the best I can get. If I find out anything more, I will post it here. As soon as NVIDIA adds support for the Pascal cards to their Mac drivers, I will test that as well.

 

Thank you all for the basic research and for helping me!

 

 

PS: I played "Assassin's Creed: Unity" on Ultra settings in Full HD and got around 30 fps. While the game looked absolutely gorgeous and was playable, this seems a little low.

 

Screenshots including fps in the top left:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/273978479675043496/E9EDAA852A639015290A69645A157C3B73455357/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/273978479675044028/33D33E2EEFB830327EE6595319519A7A75353C12/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/273978479675043777/96AAC4486BB08982966E42E06186E1AA601041C8/

Edited by orkus
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  • 2 weeks later...

One addition: It may be random, but in my case using the Thunderbolt port next to the USB port seems to increase the chance of successful boots!

And here is a screenshot of the Performance Test of Assetto Corsa: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/263846487436095582/4362CA876A3A056A911FE4E88247F6BE452D0F5E/

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