w4vz

@goalque

I think you might have found some gold here. I just tried the following and still don't really know what to make of it but I have the largest smile stuck on my face:

-Begin to Mirror displays > set optimise for the external display

-Launch the game (fullscreen mode)

Turns out I have the External GPU piping back onto the internal screen !!! This is confirmed by three things:

970 recognised in the game (elite dangerous)

Stats showing the 970 loaded; 650 is inactive

Macbook is cold; absolutely no fan AT ALL, never seen that; better than regular gaming on external monitor.

Only thing is the fps count is dramatically decreased (from 45 to 20) BUT IT DOES NOT FEEL LIKE IT. In fact there is no lag whatsoever and I would even say it feels better so I thing there is a bug in the FPS count.. Cannot triple check for now; I would have to play a lot more.

Also some graphical bugs seem to have disappeared...

If that method works with dummy plug then this is gaming EGPU perf on the go !

Better than optimus or me=disillusioned ?

Sweet power

Could be the clocking. I run an evga 970 4gb so not overclocked i think. I suspect more TB but no way to monitor the bus load under osx.

Got 1648. Still a loss comparatively to yours even :/ You have an I5 so the only thing I can see is either TB2 or Driver optimisation.

@w4vz:

Please don't mix! There are two Unigine benchmarks:

- Heaven

- Valley

For Valley ExtremeHD I had in Windows 8.1:

- internal display: 1922

- external display: 2104

- desktop computer: 2274

For Valley ExtremeHD I had in OSX 10.10:

- external display 1895

So, which OS are you referring to? Which MB model? Which GPU?

Sorry I confused heaven with valley. I'll try to benchmark valley myself and compare.

Looking at your heaven benchmark results I realised that I have a lot less. around 1200 each time on extreme. Your test shows 1819 so that is a big difference. Do you think it is all down to TB2 vs TB1 ?

@gianni Please let us know your new heaven benchmark result (extreme setting) on the external display.

I got 1213 on TB1 so Im curious of your result.

@MVC @Morv looks like 2014 macs run cooler than my 2012 macbook. Looks like Im running 10-15° hotter in general (turbo boost disabled).

Booked an apple store appointment to check inside (and finally take care of my dead pixel)

I'm running my CPU without turbo. That keeps the CPU at around 60°C at most and it keeps the fans quiet so I can't hear them. I'm using Macs Fan Control with both fans controlled by CPU temperature. They're set to start rising their rpm at 50°C and max. that shall be reached is set to 75°C.

What RPM are your fans running at under full load?

HAHA there is an APP for disabling turbo boost !!!!! SILENCE IS MINE

Turbo Boost Switcher for OS X | rugarciap.com

Enjoy ! Testing now

Edit: It improved greatly: 1000rpm less (around 3500rpm now) so fan noise is bearable now. CPU 81º. Now I can also adjust the fan speed manually with Istats so will continue to test this. Still 20% load on the cpu during gaming.

I'm running my CPU without turbo. That keeps the CPU at around 60°C at most and it keeps the fans quiet so I can't hear them. I'm using Macs Fan Control with both fans controlled by CPU temperature. They're set to start rising their rpm at 50°C and max. that shall be reached is set to 75°C. This, together with the "disabled" turbo, keeps the book more or less unhearable but I don't have any issues regarding performance for now. Once there are issues I can still enable the turbo again.

This is on Windows, though. Macs Fan Control is available on OS X, too. You may have a look if there's a way to disable the turbo on OS X as well. This should lead to the same behaviour.

Apart from this I've been playing most recent games without problems. If there's a thing that's limiting then it is my GTX 960.

Thanks a million for that ! I did not think of turbo boost

After putting it in google it seems that this would solve my fan issues like they say here

Disabling turbo boost tutorial HERE (Im on it )

Hi W4vz - Is there a chance you could give me a hint why my setup boots to black screen in win 8.1 bootcamp?

I've made the dc barrel to molex mod, powered the GPU via the same psu. However still I get a black screen after booting to to windows.

Im afraid Im useless at windows. My setup is in mac OS X.

Pleach check those threads instead:

If you have a macbook

If you have a PC

For EGPU Setup software

I totally agree with Tech Inferno Fan. Can you link that amazing TB1 cable?

Just Ebay. Look for Original thunderbolt cable. Bought mine for £20 here

I made some PC vs. eGPU Benchmarks in my first guide: http://forum.techinferno.com/implementation-guides-apple/7879-2013-13-macbook-pro-gtx970%4016gbps-tb2-akitio-thunder2-win8-1-osx10-10-%5Bdschijn.html

For gaming I strongly recommend to use Windows 8.1! Gaming performance is just amazing and OSX still doesn't have well made GPU driver for high end performance.

Your problems could be a bad Mac version of the game, TB1 and not good driver.

I would agree on that

I see on your graph that you lost about 20% performance on your windows EGPU comparatively to your desktop build. I would estimate my loss between 30% and 40% but I would need to put my card back into the desktop to benchmark first. OS X is definitely less optimised.

Would be useful to get many heaven benchmarks from different OS X configs to get a base for comparing. Comparing in one game is not very accurate too.

My biggest question right now is why I don't get a 100% load on the eGPU

As soon as some load is on the Mac for a continuous period of time, the temperatures will rise. The fan profile is adjusted to provide very quiet operation for a wide temperature range, but if you get above e.g. 70°C the fans will start spinning up pretty fast. For best CPU performance you can set the fans to 100% fix, because you without that the fan can't spin up and cool the CPU as fast as the CPUs temperature will rise. By that the temperature will win the race and the CPU has to clock down.

In windows you can also make adjustments to the CPUs vcore by reducing the voltage and by that increase long time performance of the CPU.

Setting the Fans 100% ON is counter productive for me as I am trying to get less noise.

Yes I wish I could down clock too, I7 is actually way too much for gaming lol. Istats show about 20% of use during gaming. That's also the reason why I don't get why it heats up so much with 20%..

Is the GPUs temperature getting below 60°C when one fan doesn't stop? Maybe a driver is interfering the GPUs fan profile.

Yes, internal 650 shows 43ºc, EGPU has fans off before I start the game so yes too.

CPU idle is 48ºc

Fair enough. Though can you confirm you are comparing Windows gaming performance on your desktop to OSX gaming on your Macbook? Just want to make sure you haven't Hackintoshed your desktop PC or are using a MacPro or whatno.

Yes Im comparing to my desktop PC (that I want to sell so bad, Im itching every minutes). No hackintosh here.

I'm quite sure that is fine but I thought I might ask anyway. Thinking of buying a 2m thunderbolt cable. The original ones (TB1) are much cheaper. Since I have 2012 TB1 macbook is it ok to buy the old TB1 cable version ?

I would suggest when doing your desktop vs eGPU comparison you do so on the same OS platform. OSX gaming isn't as optimized as Windows gaming.

Pls install Windows 7 or 8.1 on your Macbook, load your game and then compare to your desktop system.

Im easy on that. I can see the benefits of both in the same thread too but feel free to add it to the title if you think thats better.

On windows on my mac, sorry but that's not going to happen, I'm allergic to windows (even if I must admit win 10 is looking good) and will not install it on my macbook

Im trying to start a thread where we can organise comments specifically about gaming performances with our EGPU rather than have all that scattered around the forum

Comparing to to my desktop PC build (I5, 8go ram and gtx970) the EGPU system is definitely slower on Elite dangerous and also on other games that I can't include right now because I have not played them on this build so far. Two main comments:

- FPS is around 30-45 FPS in Elite Dangerous (almost max settings) but many times dropping around 20 so It can be a drag sometime because I had full 60 FPS on the PC build; that is quite a loss but still playable. Curiously, lowering graphic settings do not give much gain (about 10FPS more)

The MAC version of the game is still recent so I expect some software tweaks but still wondering where does the problem comes from. Maybe a TB1 bottle neck? Looking at ISTATS I can see that the GTX gets used at 70%max of its capacity; is this normal ? Could someone with OS X and GTX970 comment on that ?

- Macbook FAN Behaviour: looking at Istats, my CPU appears o be used at about 10-20% so not much but still showing above 80 degrees so the fans are kicking quite a lot (5000RPM). Any comment on that would be much appreciated too. I have ordered a laptop cooler to see I that helps.

- Another FAN issue while this one inaudible is the GTX 970 that appears to have one of its fan only running after gaming sessions. Reboot fixes the problem and the fans are off when not playing. Anyone having this issue?

I Scored 1213 on Heaven Benchmark on extreme settings, is this a normal score ?

My build is :

Thunderbolt 1

Webdrivers: 346.01.02f03

EVGA GTX 970 4go

Mid 2012 Macbook pro retina I7 2.6 Ghz

Akitio + GTX 970

OSX 10.10.3

Thanks for that but i forgot to mention im on OSX

I have Istats but it does not have a sensor for thunderbolt as far as I can see

I was looking for a way to monitor the bandwidth of my thunderbolt bus to find out if I get bottleneck effects in some games. Anyone aware of a program to do this ?

@MVC Just wanted to say thanks for you hard work on this. Also crossing fingers for the next gen of MacBooks and particularly OS X 10.11

@seefew That looks really neat ! can't wait to see the finished build

Both ways can put loads up to 150+W to one of the splits.

Imho Morvs way is even a bit better because the barrel plug can draw up to 80-90W (75W PCIe slot + 10-15W of the AKiTiO).

So one of his splits is using 80-90W on the barrel and up to 150W on the other (2*75W 6-Pin PCIe).

Your way you can create loads of 75W on one split (1x6-Pin PCIe) and 155-165W on the other (1x6-Pin PCIe = 75W and 80-90W = 75W PCIe slot + 10-15W of the AKiTiO).

Still, both ways seem to work and before you can create such high loads the DA-2 will probably die.

Here goes my thinking lol. Good to know, if mine melts i let you know

So here is the picture of my cables, still works like a charm, can't await my GTX 970 *sobbing*

[ATTACH=CONFIG]14994[/ATTACH]

Looking good. I see you used one side of the split only to power the 970. I instead spread the load by using one split from each to be "safe". Nice work.

Got everything hooked up & working great with the DA2 + (2) 6 pin PCIe splitters + Screw Terminal 2.5mm x 5.5mm barrel adapter!

Only issue I ran into was fitting all of the wires into the screw terminals. 3 wires twisted together and stuffed into each terminal seems very tight fitting with a bit of exposed wire. I know this isn't recommended....and the photo makes it look even worse :-/

[ATTACH=CONFIG]14992[/ATTACH]

I was going to use some electrical tape and see if I can clean this up a bit. Any other suggestions from you guys?

Nice but exposed wires like this can be problematic. Put some electrical tape at least to be safe try also to cut the end bit of the wires to be able to insert them more ? Last resort you can cut a few filaments from each individual wires to thin the combined result.