Slovedon

Isn't that roughly the performance loss for Thunderbolt 2? I thought TB2 was ~15% for external monitor, but I could be wrong

Thanks for the heads up. I never got that memo :/ Good to know, I'll give it a try if I have any driver problems in the future. I did a clean install of the desktop drivers, so hopefully that removed the original drivers completely

Success! My Akitio Thunder2 + 980 setup is working fine (so far) with the 592G's Thunderbolt 3 connection and Akitio T3T adapter. Now I'm just waiting on Akitio to release the Node for full Thunderbolt 3 speeds Windows 10 will get confused with the 960M/980 combo and install the notebook and desktop Nvidia drivers repeatedly, so you have to disable device driver updates. The 980 showed in device manager after installing all the Acer driver & firmware updates from their website (most importantly the TB3 firmware) which let me install the desktop Nvidia drivers. After reboot, device manager gave a "OS could not find enough resources" error for the 980 (not uncommon when setting up eGPUs) but disabling, reenabling, and another reboot fixed it. Now the 960M and 980 are working perfectly for 10+ reboots, with and without eGPU connected. The eGPU compatibility section isn't showing for me, but like @bloodhawk said, that "no" is meaningless anyways

I have the 15" version of this system ordered (Aspire V15 Nitro Black Edition aka Aspire VN7-592G) along with a Akitio T3T Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter. Assuming that the T3T adapter works perfectly, I'll be able to test the 592G/792G's eGPU combatibility with my Akitio Thunder2 + GTX 980 setup

I would much rather have them focus on making the simplest, most reliable, and most inexpensive TB3 graphics solution possible. Adding ports just adds more potential complications for the user and more potential scenarios for Akitio to test, no matter if those ports cause performance problems or not. It just doesn't seem worth it, especially when you can just use another hub to add more ports.

Edit: Didn't see this thread. Hopefully this works!

Every powered riser I've used for my eGPU setup has had the following pin layout- But the one I just received looks like this, with the black and yellow right next to each other- Will this be an issue? I'm not sure if this changes how much power it can provide or not, so I thought I'd ask the experts before testing (don't want to risk damage, even though it probably wouldn't cause damage)

I'm actually looking to use a TB2 port as an input, so that I don't lose performance (which, as you say, happens with Optimus) when I'm using the internal LCD. Yes, but we lose performance when using Optimus. If I can use Thunderbolt2 as an input, I can use the internal LCD with eGPU without the Optimus performance loss

My 16x - 16x powered riser (for my Akitio Thunder2 + 980 setup) went bad, and I'm hoping to replace it ASAP. Price doesn't matter. Is there anywhere that sells these with overnight shipping to the U.S (midwest)?

Is there any product out there that would allow us to use the second Thunderbolt 2 port on our Macbook Pro's as a video input? This would be a really nice boost to performance compared to using Optimus on the internal LCD. Even if there is minor input delay, I think it would still be worth it, considering the overall gaming experience is so much better when using an external monitor directly from GPU vs. using Optimus.

Awesome. I'm glad to see more laptops getting Thunderbolt 2.

I've been using the 1 ft Thunderbolt cable that came with the Akitio Thunder2, but I'm looking to buy a longer one. My question is: Is it possible that the much longer 9 foot cable affect eGPU performance at all? (overall performance/latency)

I just completed this setup with the same 15" rMBP Iris Pro (i7-4750HQ) and Zotac 970 with the help of your guide. Thanks for posting. I'm actually glad my previously planned Asus G46vw Thunderbolt mobo upgrade didn't work out, because it let me find Apple's awesome refurbished offer, plus no more TB1. This is a helluva machine, and the ultimate eGPU system with 2xThunderbolt 2, and with that 1800p screen! Main downsides are non upgradeable CPU, and cooling isn't an issue (which it is for many) since we aren't using internal graphics. Hell, I may even use it with SLI eventually. How consistently does Optimus boot work for you? Are you turning it on before startup or at the boot menu? With my Zotac, I have to restart twice, and the second time occasionally fails for some reason, meaning 4x restarts to get Optimus going. tIt happens about 1 in 10 times, so not really much of a problem, but I might as well try to figure out why. I'm starting it up at the boot menu. I'm also on a standard Bootcamp setup of 8.1. Other than that, everything works perfectly fine for me, and the reference Zotac 970 gets a solid +210 core +110 memory overlock, while even boosting further past its stated limit.

The GE60 apache pro can be used with an mPCIe E-GPU? This is news to me, I didn't think it was a candidate system.

Regardless of the system I'm using, it looks like I will need to use a riser with the Akitio. As for what I actually end up using it on, rMBP's seem to be coming down to a reasonable price