[SCRIPT] Automating the installation of eGPU on OS X (inc display output)

[Misha]

I can not get 3840x2160 via DP on my eGPU. What is the reason? Unfortunately my additional monitor supports 3840x2160@60 only via DP. DP on my eGPU works, but only at a lower resolution.

When I connect an additional monitor directly to the macbook (Tb-DP), sound jack on additional monitor is working and I can connect speakers to it. It is very. convenient for my work. If I use eGPU and connect additional monitor via DP (with a resolution lower than 4K) - audio jack is not working. Can I change this?

- Macbook pro (retina 15-inch, mid 2014)

- Benq 3201PT as secondary display

- Akitio Thuder 2

- Nvidia GTX970

- PSU Crosair CX500M

- and 0.9.5 Script

Thank you.

[euqlaog]

@Misha:

I sent you PM, let me know if you can send the registry of your system. Currently the script doesn’t support HDMI/DP audio through eGPU.

[Mark]

Oh dear, I've ran into a problem again. I'm now on El Capitan and my computer just beach balled while taking someone's call (i.e. my phone just launched the FaceTime app via continuity). The music was still playing but the screen froze, and I had to force shut down my computer via the power button.

Well, what happened after was I cannot get DP output on my eGPU again. I still managed to get HDMI output on the same monitor, but I cannot get DP to work again, even by doing what I posted earlier. I do not want to try and wipe everything in my hard drive to solve this issue but I may have to.

[euqlaog]

Oh dear, I've ran into a problem again. I'm now on El Capitan and my computer just beach balled while taking someone's call (i.e. my phone just launched the FaceTime app via continuity). The music was still playing but the screen froze, and I had to force shut down my computer via the power button.

Well, what happened after was I cannot get DP output on my eGPU again. I still managed to get HDMI output on the same monitor, but I cannot get DP to work again, even by doing what I posted earlier. I do not want to try and wipe everything in my hard drive to solve this issue but I may have to.

Restoring data from a Time Machine backup would be beneficial if -uninstall didn’t help. Please use v0.9.6 since you have an Nvidia dGPU:

http://forum.techinferno.com/mac-os-x-discussion/10289-script-automating-installation-egpu-os-x-inc-display-output-24.html#post145834

[level5wizard]

I ran the script, and I am getting this.

nvram: Error getting variable - 'csr-active-config': (iokit/common) data was not found

Boot into recovery partition and type: csrutil disable

- - - Updated - - -

I am at the very begining of the process. I have:

- Macbook pro (retina 15-inch, mid 2014)

- Benq 3201PT as secondary display

- Akitio Thuder 2

- Nvidia GTX 780 ti

- PSU Corsair rm 450

- and 0.9.6 Script

I did this:

1) Download the script on your desktop

Code:

curl -o ~/Desktop/automate-eGPU.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/goalque/automate-eGPU/master/automate-eGPU.sh

2) chmod +x ~/Desktop/automate-eGPU.sh

3) cd ~/Desktop

4) sudo ./automate-eGPU.sh

and then terminal gave me this:

nvram: Error getting variable - 'csr-active-config': (iokit/common) data was not found

Boot into recovery partition and type: csrutil disable

Any help would be great.

[euqlaog]

The script output could be clearer. See the previous page of this thread.

Your setup is almost identical to Misha's so you may have the same monitor problem.

[Misha]

@Misha:

I sent you PM, let me know if you can send the registry of your system. Currently the script doesn’t support HDMI/DP audio through eGPU.

Thank you for PM and thanks very much for your script. Now it seems everything is working properly! I forgot that my monitor have miniDP. I tried to connect through it my eGPU (DP-mimiDP) so I got 3840х2160 with 60Hz. I do not know why it did not work before (DP-DP)

[Dschijn]

Propper 4k@60Hz needs really good DP cables! Most of the current DP cables are limited and can only display 4k@30Hz. Best to read reviews at Amazon to check if the cable can handle 4k@60Hz!

[level5wizard]

goalie,

I'm thinking that I am missing a step in this process. I could really careless if I have and 2nd monitor. I just want the 780 ti to work via through thunderbolt. so the system need to see the card. I do 3d animation and a lot of rendering. I use Octane Render for my rendering needs. I don't do bootcamp or run windows.

[yama84]

First at all I want really to thank you goalque for the automatic script.

Before I was using Yosemite 10.10.5 and it was working absolutely fine.

Now after updating to Capitan 10.11 release version I got one little problem with it: All windows animations in Finder produce too much lag. It like no acceleration when I try to minimize the windows (alladin effect for example) or to restore.

However I have tested Unigine benchmarks and the performance has increased vs Yosemite. Also another accelerated applications in Full Window Mode work fine.

What I've done so far:

1)Complete uninstall script via -uninstall command and full wipe nvidia drivers via nvidia uninstaller and reinstallation step by step.

2)Fresh install of operating system 10.11 El capitan

My configuration:

Macbook Pro 15 Retina Late 2013 with Nvidia 750M

Akitio2 BOX

GTX970 Gigabyte

Power Supply Corsair RM450

Monitor DELL UP2715K

I hope I've explained myself correctly,

Should I try install it in -m mode?

Thank you.

[euqlaog]

@level5wizard: Here's the post from the previous page: http://forum.techinferno.com/apple-egpu-discussion/10289-script-automating-installation-egpu-os-x-inc-display-output-25.html#post146186

After SIP (System Integrity Protection) is disabled, installation process should go well.

[euqlaog]

First at all I want really to thank you goalque for the automatic script.

Before I was using Yosemite 10.10.5 and it was working absolutely fine.

Now after updating to Capitan 10.11 release version I got one little problem with it: All windows animations in Finder produce too much lag. It like no acceleration when I try to minimize the windows (alladin effect for example) or to restore.

However I have tested Unigine benchmarks and the performance has increased vs Yosemite. Also another accelerated applications in Full Window Mode work fine.

What I've done so far:

1)Complete uninstall script via -uninstall command and full wipe nvidia drivers via nvidia uninstaller and reinstallation step by step.

2)Fresh install of operating system 10.11 El capitan

My configuration:

Macbook Pro 15 Retina Late 2013 with Nvidia 750M

Akitio2 BOX

GTX970 Gigabyte

Power Supply Corsair RM450

Monitor DELL UP2715K

I hope I've explained myself correctly,

Should I try install it in -m mode?

Thank you.

The -a mode is meant primarily for multi-slot enclosures, -m just switches back to original manual mode.

The v0.9.7 is not compatible with 750M equipped MBP, but I guess you’re using v0.9.6 since Unigine benchmark works. UI sluggishness that you observed, may be due to missing Quartz Extreme acceleration. The core OS X windowing system (Core Animation & Core Graphics) - if not yet fully implemented - will be built natively on top of Metal on OS X 10.11, resulting in up to 50% faster rendering performance as mentioned in WWDC 2015. This technology is not just for game developers, it’s for all kind of OS X apps in the future. For instance, Adobe has already demonstrated After Effects and Illustrator on Metal. Amazing improvements.

It’s now clear that Apple has chosen AMD as their partner. Earlier this year I saw at Khronos.org that AMD’s core software team looked for software engineers for both kernel level and OpenCL development on OS X. We don’t know how well Nvidia can support Metal on OS X if Quartz Extreme, which uses OpenGL, is going to be replaced with thin Metal layer. But I’ll continue supporting both the AMD and Nvidia the best I can, and as long as I find time. Thus far, only AMD TB3 eGPUs have been demoed on Windows platform, not officially a single word about OS X or Nvidia eGPUs from Intel.

[yama84]

The -a mode is meant primarily for multi-slot enclosures, -m just switches back to original manual mode.

The v0.9.7 is not compatible with 750M equipped MBP, but I guess you’re using v0.9.6 since Unigine benchmark works. UI sluggishness that you observed, may be due to missing Quartz Extreme acceleration. The core OS X windowing system (Core Animation & Core Graphics) - if not yet fully implemented - will be built natively on top of Metal on OS X 10.11, resulting in up to 50% faster rendering performance as mentioned in WWDC 2015. This technology is not just for game developers, it’s for all kind of OS X apps in the future. For instance, Adobe has already demonstrated After Effects and Illustrator on Metal. Amazing improvements.

It’s now clear that Apple has chosen AMD as their partner. Earlier this year I saw at Khronos.org that AMD’s core software team looked for software engineers for both kernel level and OpenCL development on OS X. We don’t know how well Nvidia can support Metal on OS X if Quartz Extreme, which uses OpenGL, is going to be replaced with thin Metal layer. But I’ll continue supporting both the AMD and Nvidia the best I can, and as long as I find time. Thus far, only AMD TB3 eGPUs have been demoed on Windows platform, not officially a single word about OS X or Nvidia eGPUs from Intel.

Thanks for so fast replay,

So basically I have 2 choices:

1)KEEP Praying about Quartz Extreme acceleration for Nvidia

2)Swap the card to AMD

So far I've read in the forum the best compatible device for R9 AMD is NetStor NA211TB. Wouldn't it work with Akitio2 BOX?

Thank you for the information!

[Mark]

Restoring data from a Time Machine backup would be beneficial if -uninstall didn’t help. Please use v0.9.6 since you have an Nvidia dGPU:

http://forum.techinferno.com/mac-os-x-discussion/10289-script-automating-installation-egpu-os-x-inc-display-output-24.html#post145834

Sorry I forgot to mention that I have been using 0.9.6 all along. Also, I managed to sort it out by "resetting" my monitor (i.e. the holding down the power button for 15 seconds while completely unplugged ritual)

[euqlaog]

Thanks for so fast replay,

So basically I have 2 choices:

1)KEEP Praying about Quartz Extreme acceleration for Nvidia

2)Swap the card to AMD

So far I've read in the forum the best compatible device for R9 AMD is NetStor NA211TB. Wouldn't it work with Akitio2 BOX?

Thank you for the information!

I haven’t much investigated Metal at lower level, but Apple said very clearly about core graphics changes in Metal for Mac. Currently the script includes only OpenCL performance tool, but could be possible to make a tool for testing UI element rendering speed. Nvidia has done impressive job by providing those web drivers so quickly so we can expect improvements and compatibility with the 750M (which is currently beta).

You can swap the card to AMD HD series - they are stable with AKiTiO, but R9s are not. NA211TB is a certain choice, but it is my understanding that R9 AMDs are stable with the Sonnet III-D and maybe other multi-slot enclosures as well. When I now recall a Sonnet SEL which was my first eGPU a long time ago, it was unstable with R9. So it might be something do with the single-slot PCIe link. No one knows the reason.

The future TB3 eGPUs seems to come as mobile and desktop versions as demonstrated in videos by Intel, interesting to see how they work in OS X.

[AgentSoap]

Hello,

I stumbled upon this thread a few days ago and decided to pick up a GTX 980 ti, an Akitio, and give it a go. The script goes off fine (running it from ~/Desktop/). Successfully detects the eGPU, Current OS X: 10.11 15A284, Web driver installed, IOPCITTunnel mod valid, "Your system is eGPU enabled and Nvidia web driver is up to date.". After restarting multiple times though, still no luck with GPU showing up in Sys Report, or anything showing up on an external display.

I then gave an attempt on Bootcamped Windows 10. Worked fine there with the auto install. No issues and I tested a few games on Steam.

I'm on a 15' MBP mid 2014 w/ GT 750M... SIP and Firevault are off. Uninstalled the script and tried again (and with -a) just to see if it would help. No luck there either. Any suggestions on what to try next? Your notes say tested on dev 10.11, so maybe theres just no support for public 10.11 yet? Any pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks!

EDIT: I'm wondering if should just wipe the partition and reinstall 10.10. Thoughts?

[level5wizard]

goalque

Success! It works with and with out the additional monitor. I did state the I use Octane Render, it is a GPU based render engine for most major 3d applications. It seems a bit slow. I was expecting a better response, than my ability to local network render. I have the Geforce 780 ti attached to the Akitio2 BOX. I did not Turn off the SIP. Should I? the installation went without a flaw. I used 9.6.

[Dschijn]

@level5wizard: What are you OctaneBench results since you say it's slow?

[euqlaog]

Hello,

I stumbled upon this thread a few days ago and decided to pick up a GTX 980 ti, an Akitio, and give it a go. The script goes off fine (running it from ~/Desktop/). Successfully detects the eGPU, Current OS X: 10.11 15A284, Web driver installed, IOPCITTunnel mod valid, "Your system is eGPU enabled and Nvidia web driver is up to date.". After restarting multiple times though, still no luck with GPU showing up in Sys Report, or anything showing up on an external display.

I then gave an attempt on Bootcamped Windows 10. Worked fine there with the auto install. No issues and I tested a few games on Steam.

I'm on a 15' MBP mid 2014 w/ GT 750M... SIP and Firevault are off. Uninstalled the script and tried again (and with -a) just to see if it would help. No luck there either. Any suggestions on what to try next? Your notes say tested on dev 10.11, so maybe theres just no support for public 10.11 yet? Any pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks!

EDIT: I'm wondering if should just wipe the partition and reinstall 10.10. Thoughts?

First confirm that the script version is 0.9.6. ”Your system is eGPU enabled and Nvidia web driver is up to date" signifies that you have previously installed Nvidia web driver, which is the same as the script is about to download. Please don’t install web drivers manually, let the script do all the job. If message is taken from the reinstall attempt and you installed the driver by the script initially, you may have file permission issues or conflicting nvram settings. If -uninstall, Nvidia driver manager uninstall, NVRAM reset, and running the script again won’t help, the last thing you can try is reinstall of OS X. And the very last, erase + install.

[AgentSoap]

To confirm:

- I am using version 0.9.7.

- ”Your system is eGPU enabled and Nvidia web driver is up to date" appeared when running the script a 2nd time. I did this after running the script once (which appeared to be successfully), restarting, and getting no 980 ti in Sys Report or any video in my external monitor.

- I have never installed an Nvidia web driver manually. I let the script handle the installation.

- I have tried -uninstall. No luck there.

- My install of 10.11 is only a few days old. Just fyi, the only changes made to the system are the addition of Homebrew w/ Mongodb package, Nodejs, Atom IDE, and Xcode. (Maybe that info will be useful to you at some point???)

- I will attempt -uninstall > NVRAM reset > install. If that doesn't work i'll reformat w/ 10.11; then try reformatting w/ 10.10 if still no luck, and report back.

[AgentSoap]

-I performed an uninstall > NVRAM reset > install;

Still not successfully but a 3rd entry does appear under Graphics/Displays. It only says 'NVIDIA Chip Model' though. In the details there are:

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

PCIe Lane Width: x1

Vendor:NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x17c8

Revision ID: 0x00a1

ROM Revision: preset 1.0.0

gMux Version: 4.0.8 [3.2.8]

Kernel Extension Info: No Kext Loaded

Not sure if this is helpful at all. I'm going to continue on and reformat w/ 10.11.

[euqlaog]

To confirm:

- I am using version 0.9.7.

That's the problem. See issues at GitHub. Browse this thread back to find a link to v0.9.6.

[level5wizard]

@Dschijn It scored a 103.95

Here is a OctaneBench breakdown.

Octane version:

2.17

Operating system:

Mac OS X 10.11.0 64-bit

Devices:

GeForce GTX 780 Ti

Scene, Kernel, Ms/s, GTX980 Ms/s, Ratio, Weight, Score

Idea (by Julio Cayetaño), info channels, 94.455060, 81.25, 1.163, 10, 3.875079

Idea (by Julio Cayetaño), direct lighting, 19.424244, 18.64, 1.042, 35, 12.157521

Idea (by Julio Cayetaño), path tracing, 16.717339, 15.99, 1.045, 35, 12.197350

Idea (by Julio Cayetaño), PMC, 2.550243, 2.88, 0.886, 20, 5.903341

ATV (by Jürgen Aleksejev), info channels, 37.052786, 32.48, 1.141, 10, 3.802626

ATV (by Jürgen Aleksejev), direct lighting, 12.861908, 12.40, 1.037, 35, 12.101257

ATV (by Jürgen Aleksejev), path tracing, 10.509002, 10.02, 1.049, 35, 12.236030

ATV (by Jürgen Aleksejev), PMC, 3.678545, 3.77, 0.976, 20, 6.504942

Box (by Enrico Cerica), info channels, 66.168428, 59.18, 1.118, 10, 3.726959

Box (by Enrico Cerica), direct lighting, 12.667430, 11.76, 1.077, 35, 12.566895

Box (by Enrico Cerica), path tracing, 12.652043, 11.74, 1.078, 35, 12.573013

Box (by Enrico Cerica), PMC, 3.625009, 3.83, 0.946, 20, 6.309851

Total score

103.954863

[AgentSoap]

That's the problem. See issues at GitHub. Browse this thread back to find a link to v0.9.6.

Worked like a charm! Thank you so much!

[level5wizard]

I figured out what was going on. It was underpowered. I put a 800w PSU and it is running great.