eGPU and external SSD on the other tb port

[Ovchar]

Hi Guys,

I'm thinking of setting up an egpu for my MacBook Pro 15, mid 2014. However I'm worrying about my external SSD that will be connected to the other tb port - will my external drive and egpu work simultaneously? Will there be a performance drops if so? And the last question - will I be able to install Windows 8.1 on that external drive so that it'll work with eGPU.

Thanks.

[Dschijn]

Should work! But if bootcamp can install Windows on that… google

[Ovchar]

Thanks. Will give it a try. I've read that other guys are managed to install Windows on an external USB drive. Hope TB drive will work as well.

So... this sounds like TB ports are independent from each other and do not interfere in any way, is that correct?

[Dschijn]

Even if they would be linked... I doubt that you are going for a 2000MB/sec SSD or even faster one. The bandwidth is enough

[guitargodmiles]

I have a mid 2012 Macbook pro with one thunderbolt 1 port. I would like to have an Egpu for 3d rendering/acceleration in After Effects and was wondering if this would work.

Amazon.com: Akitio Thunder2 PCIe Box: Computers & Accessories

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GUKRX6S?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_sfl_title_2&smid=A31PZHDAKM5BC7

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H33SFJU?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_sfl_title_3&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Amazon.com: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB SSC GAMING ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent Cooling Graphics Card 04G-P4-3975-KR: Computers & Accessories

I understand that thunderbolt 1 still will not have a big enough pipeline for for the full power of the card but I think it will be an improvement. I currently run all my projects off my Lacie Big 5 thunderbolt hard drive which is very fast but, I also want to know if I will be able to use this efficiently with the Egpu because Ive heard that external graphics cards take a lot of bandwidth (Daisy-chaining, if it does work, does it matter what order I put them in series?)

Ive seen many youtube videos of external graphics cards with macbook pro's but almost all of them are running on bootcamp, I also want to make sure I can run this on Mac OS.

Lastly I want to make sure that I will be able to use the external graphics card for hardware acceleration (CUDA)

Thanks for the help and advise everyone!

[Dschijn]

- eGPUs will work in OSX

- the can accelerate CUDA

- Daisychaining is no problem!

- bandwidth isn't that important for rendering

But it depends on the programs how they can use the GPUs. E.g. Octane Renderer can easily work work with multiple GPUs.

Please read my basic hardware guide: http://forum.techinferno.com/apple-egpu-discussion/10061-basic-egpu-hardware-guide-macs.html

In my 3rd build is a spoiler section with OSX benchmarks of my GTX970 and CUDA: http://forum.techinferno.com/implementation-guides-apple/9821-2014-15-mbp-iris-gtx970%4016gbps-tb2-akitio-thunder2-win8-1-osx10-10-%5Bdschijn-2%5D.html#post131966

[guitargodmiles]

Thank you for the prompt response!!!! Very helpful!!!

So is the build I have posted above recommended for my use in After Effects? I think the 970 is the best bang for buck for what I am doing in after effects on my mac. Would you be able recommend a better graphics card within a reasonable price range (Titan is way to expensive for me although I'd love to have it and 980 doesn't seem like its too much of an improvement for the price difference)

Also on the page your link sent me to you describe how risers can cause issues due to poor quality. Is there a proper cable brand or type that you would recommend of my purpose? I think the link I originally posted before was a cable with built in riser.

Thanks again

[guitargodmiles]

Also has anyone posted any benchmarks of Egpu on Mac in After Effects? I seem to only be able to find videos of people using Egpu for video games

[Dschijn]

The 970 is good in performance/price. But the 980Ti has double the performance in CUDA.... so if you can find a cheap 980Ti and you want to decide between 2x970 or 1x980Ti.

Good riser cables are made by 3M! Another good brand is Lian Li, Li Heat. In general you should try and find a shielded one to avoid electromagnetic problems! From China you can get this one: Premium Gold Plated 16x PCI-E Extension Shielded Cable Riser (19cm) - modDIY.com

[guitargodmiles]

The 970 is good in performance/price. But the 980Ti has double the performance in CUDA.... so if you can find a cheap 980Ti and you want to decide between 2x970 or 1x980Ti.

Good riser cables are made by 3M! Another good brand is Lian Li, Li Heat. In general you should try and find a shielded one to avoid electromagnetic problems! From China you can get this one: Premium Gold Plated 16x PCI-E Extension Shielded Cable Riser (19cm) - modDIY.com

Thanks for the info, I had no idea that other cables aren't shielded. I may just have to go with the 980Ti now.

[Dschijn]

Why do you want to use a riser in the first place? Are you going to build it into another case?

[guitargodmiles]

Why do you want to use a riser in the first place? Are you going to build it into another case?

I thought that the Akitio Thunder2 PCIe Box needed a riser to use a bigger card externally from the box with a bigger PSU

[Dschijn]

Yes, or you could bend the front of the AKiTiO and put the GPU directly into the slot

[guitargodmiles]

So one one has tested this in After Effects?

[Dschijn]

If you already have a Mac with a low end Nvidia GPU you can see if CUDA works in general... with an eGPU it should work than as well.

Edit:

@guitargodmiles: There is a trial version, right? I can try to test that on the weekend!

[reptilianbrain]

Oooh so good to hear it will work with eGPU!

I am using external SSD for Bootcamp now. It works great. If I don't plug in SSD my MBPr is 100% OSX, no traces of Bootcamp (messed up OSX before by trying to access Bootcamp partition from OSX etc.).

Was hoping to keep same setup for eGPU.

Installing Windows8 on this external SSD was quite a trip though (I don't even remember the details now, but took me a bit).

[pyramidgod]

Im running the eGPU set up with the Akitio Thunder2, GTX 980 Ti SC 2.0, EVGA 850w Bronze and a Late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina maxed out for that year at 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16gb RAM, 1TB SSD. I'm using this set up for Premiere and Davinci Resolve as CUDA.

When my GPU isnt being used this is the performance in CUDA-Z

Memory Copy

Host Pinned to Device: 1275.23 MiB/s

Host Pageable to Device: 1250.35 MiB/s

Device to Host Pinned: 1380.52 MiB/s

Device to Host Pageable: 1352.74 MiB/s

Device to Device: 108.852 GiB/s

GPU Core Performance

Single-precision Float: 6971.89 Gflop/s

Double-precision Float: 228.923 Gflop/s

64-bit Integer: 369.856 Giop/s

32-bit Integer: 2049.2 Giop/s

24-bit Integer: 1443.37 Giop/s

When I'm playing 4k on my timeline in premiere I'm getting this from CUDA-Z

Memory Copy

Host Pinned to Device: 759.846 MiB/s

Host Pageable to Device: 775.32 MiB/s

Device to Host Pinned: 1022.51 MiB/s

Device to Host Pageable: 666.432 MiB/s

Device to Device: 95.5938 GiB/s

GPU Core Performance

Single-precision Float: 7053.49 Gflop/s

Double-precision Float: 230.088 Gflop/s

64-bit Integer: 479.468 Giop/s

32-bit Integer: 2318.85 Giop/s

24-bit Integer: 1676.76 Giop/s

It doesn't play 4k in real time in premiere. It also only exports 4k at 14-10fps avg or lower and 1080p at real time for around 24-30fps to my RAID Thunderbolt 2 G-Drive. My CPU says its at 350% when running these processes. Is the CPU just bottlenecking everything? I saw people running setups off lesser CPUs with less powerful cards and getting better playback? HELP PLEASE ANYONE!!

[Tech Inferno Fan]

Im running the eGPU set up with the Akitio Thunder2, GTX 980 Ti SC 2.0, EVGA 850w Bronze and a Late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina maxed out for that year at 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16gb RAM, 1TB SSD. I'm using this set up for Premiere and Davinci Resolve as CUDA.

When my GPU isnt being used this is the performance in CUDA-Z

Memory Copy

Host Pinned to Device: 1275.23 MiB/s

Host Pageable to Device: 1250.35 MiB/s

Device to Host Pinned: 1380.52 MiB/s

Device to Host Pageable: 1352.74 MiB/s

Device to Device: 108.852 GiB/s

GPU Core Performance

Single-precision Float: 6971.89 Gflop/s

Double-precision Float: 228.923 Gflop/s

64-bit Integer: 369.856 Giop/s

32-bit Integer: 2049.2 Giop/s

24-bit Integer: 1443.37 Giop/s

When I'm playing 4k on my timeline in premiere I'm getting this from CUDA-Z

Memory Copy

Host Pinned to Device: 759.846 MiB/s

Host Pageable to Device: 775.32 MiB/s

Device to Host Pinned: 1022.51 MiB/s

Device to Host Pageable: 666.432 MiB/s

Device to Device: 95.5938 GiB/s

GPU Core Performance

Single-precision Float: 7053.49 Gflop/s

Double-precision Float: 230.088 Gflop/s

64-bit Integer: 479.468 Giop/s

32-bit Integer: 2318.85 Giop/s

24-bit Integer: 1676.76 Giop/s

It doesn't play 4k in real time in premiere. It also only exports 4k at 14-10fps avg or lower and 1080p at real time for around 24-30fps to my RAID Thunderbolt 2 G-Drive. My CPU says its at 350% when running these processes. Is the CPU just bottlenecking everything? I saw people running setups off lesser CPUs with less powerful cards and getting better playback? HELP PLEASE ANYONE!!

The performance issue is due to the 16Gbps-TB2 port being shared between the eGPU and RAID storage

When playing 4k on premier you are sharing the 16Gbps TB2 bandwidth with your RAID Thunderbolt 2 G-Drive causing a massive decrease in eGPU performance.

You can see this if you copy your movie to the onboard SSD storage, disconnect your G-Drive and then play the movie to the eGPU. There the full 16Gbps TB2 link will be provided to the eGPU.

The bad news is Apple do not have a current Macbook product where any TB2 ports get a full exclusive 16Gbps per port. Eg: if you upgraded to say the 15" MBP with 2x TB2 ports, those ports are shared across the same bus so will still be sharing a 16Gbps (x4 2.0) upstream bus across each port. More details at https://forum.techinferno.com/implementation-guides-apple/8585-2014-15-macbook-pro-2x-r9_280x%4016gbps-tb2-netstor-na211tb-win8-1-osx-%5Bgoalque%5D-2.html#post117339

Fixes for this shared bandwidth issue

So then what's needed is to move your storage and eGPU on separate interfaces. Is there a RAID USB 3.0 product <strike>or can you host your image on network-attached storage (NAS)</strike>? @apple, giving no LAN port is ridiculous.

Unless you require OSX you may want to look at other high performance TB2/TB3 notebooks with less hardware restrictions (ie: 100Gbps LAN, PCIe storage, optical drives) by HP/Dell/Lenovo/Acer. See candidates at https://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/4109-egpu-candidate-system-list.html#6th

[pyramidgod]

The performance issue is due to the 16Gbps-TB2 port being shared between the eGPU and RAID storage

When playing 4k on premier you are sharing the 16Gbps TB2 bandwidth with your RAID Thunderbolt 2 G-Drive causing a massive decrease in eGPU performance.

You can see this if you copy your movie to the onboard SSD storage, disconnect your G-Drive and then play the movie to the eGPU. There the full 16Gbps TB2 link will be provided to the eGPU.

The bad news is Apple do not have a current Macbook product where any TB2 ports get a full exclusive 16Gbps per port. Eg: if you upgraded to say the 15" MBP with 2x TB2 ports, those ports are shared across the same bus so will still be sharing a 16Gbps (x4 2.0) upstream bus across each port. More details at https://forum.techinferno.com/implementation-guides-apple/8585-2014-15-macbook-pro-2x-r9_280x%4016gbps-tb2-netstor-na211tb-win8-1-osx-%5Bgoalque%5D-2.html#post117339

Fixes for this shared bandwidth issue

So then what's needed is to move your storage and eGPU on separate interfaces. Is there a RAID USB 3.0 product <strike>or can you host your image on network-attached storage (NAS)</strike>? @apple, giving no LAN port is ridiculous.

Unless you require OSX you may want to look at other high performance TB2/TB3 notebooks with less hardware restrictions (ie: 100Gbps LAN, PCIe storage, optical drives) by HP/Dell/Lenovo/Acer. See candidates at https://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/4109-egpu-candidate-system-list.html#6th

THANKS FOR THE HELP! I'm going to have to drop my footage on my SSD while I edit a project for now. I recently had my maxed out late 2013 15" retina stolen and got this maxed out 13" for now until the macbook with thunderbolt 3 comes out. I also tried it on my quadcore iMac with thunderbolt 1 and it was pretty much useless lol