Simurgh5

Both.

Should work as far as I can see. I'd not care about the fans because the Akitio Fans alone are enough to wake a sleeping cat. ;-) It looks quite high, this fanless card - but I guess you checked the size.

I am very sure that you need to get another chard if you want this to run without additional power supply modding. I have the same setup (though 2014 MBPr) with this 750 Ti https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00IKF9F6C/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1. Has been working completely stable for days...

@goalque, yes, there's something wrong, I'm trying to resolve it. I'd love to test such a version. Thanks! My eGPU is still the 750Ti – is this sufficient? And does the Sonnett Echo SE ii somehow stand in the way?

Hey Goalque, as always I cannot appreciate your work enough. I'm gonna try it and I think I got the basic procedure but can you please elaborate a little bit on what exactly this ROM is and where I can get it.

Can confirm this for the very same MBA, Windows 8.1 :-)

There is an Option within the Settings of the Adobe apps - Check that this is correct. With my Setup and the Script Adobe Apps are able to utilize it via OpenGL - otherwise maybe one could try CUDA?

That would be awesome - maybe this solves the issues with the backlight when the dGPU is activated and maybe even the battery life issue.

For me Pizzacats link did not work - I just googled the current beta myself and entered that link.

@Philipp_Riedl: If support in German would help you, e.g. clarifying the steps - just send me PN.

@goalque: I was finally able to test Version 0.9.5 on both devices. On the MBA where the -a mode is not required, it works perfectly well. However, on the rMBP (2014, GT750m) it's a step back – I'm back to manually plugging in the eGPU during the Apple Logo. Otherwise I end up with black screen boots again.

Try starting the Macbook, immediately closing it after pressing the power button. My configuration shows the following behavior: the background light is activated and stays turned on, however the internal screen is not rendered. Neither does it show anything (staying in Apple Logo) nor does it appear in the system profiler / monitor settings. So I conclude that (though the display light is activated) that I can use something like a clamshell mode.

@goalque: If I don't change any part of the configuration (starting Windows/changing from HDMI to DVI Monitor/changing the primary monitor/activating gfxCardStatus/...), it works 100% reliable. All issues that I ever observed are driver related (the background light of the Retina Display Turns off during iGPU/dGPU switches – also silverlight is a bitch but it has always been...). So regarding the booting part only: I never observed any problems. The eGPU-Output actives during the Apple Logo Boot and the Login is already displayed on both internal and external screen.

I observed exactly the opposite! When I disabled FileVault, all my trouble was gone. So if I enable FileVault (without Goalque's script), I will not get boot + recognition of the card. Only if I disable FileVault and plug in right after the Apple appears, it works without the script. With the script, it's all fine of course.

@goalque: I finally tried the new version: -m works great now – I am able to flexibly switch between mobile mode and eGPU mode. With significantly prolonged battery life using the default OS X driver. :-) I have maybe one suggestion but this is more a matter of comfortableness: could one add a "mobile" mode as I called it so that you run the script, let's say "-mobileMode", and then the script reboots with the default OS X driver? Just a suggestion – I can understand that there are more important things that you want to solve. (Thinking of El Capitan...)

Thanks for your guide – now that I read about your encouraging success, I'd like to give it another go with my Windows and eGPU... I was wondering: Is it really necessary to install rEFInd from Windows? Because it seems a lot easier from Mac OS, so if it is basically the same, I'd try it from Mac OS. What do you think?

I don't know a definite answer – but my intuition is that this is not about the OS itself. 10.10.4 is definitely not obligatory but it might be that it helps you with configuration issues. If I were you, I'd take an external usb drive, install Yosemite on it and just try it out. :-)

And exactly that's the problem -a mode should solve. It's not about recognizing the eGPU, it's about being able to start at all! I have exactly the same behavior without the script and only with the extra boost, I can start the 2014-rMBP.

OS X 10.10.4 – running for both devices. Just download the latest driver manually, put it on the Desktop and let the magic work. (;

I had the theory that Silverlight tries to apply some kind of security so that one won't redirect the display stream and do evil stuff like recording it. I also observed Silverlight to be very sensitive to any changing of the screen configuration (like adding a monitor) while it is running – that was before the eGPU. I have the feeling this is more than bad programming. I assume it's a feature for the silverlight host.

You are right, that's because the background process is re-doing the hack after each boot – which is necessary. Windows of course won't do that for us. I was trying the same as you. My intuition is that we won't solve this problem until we activate the Intel Iris Pro. (The same setup works on the MBA without any issues so I assume this is about the dGPU.) I tried the Iris Pro Guide which is provided here but it results in a black screen during Windows login for me. I know through several tries that the hack does what it should – the iGPU can be activated. I assume that it's the dGPU that is interfering. So one would need to kill the dGPU on the EFI level probably. But this goes far beyond my skills. Another way to go might be figuring out what goalque's discovery is actually doing so that one could teach windows to do the same. Interestingly, I observed that goalque's hack skips reFIND (I tried the reFIND + apple_set_os.efi hack – this could activate the iGPU but most of the time I observed these problems.)

Hey people, does anyone have any experience using Silverlight and an eGPU? With my setup (see signature), Silverlight does not work, when I have the eGPU connected. I know that Silverlight always switches to the dGPU and sometimes I also have trouble with Silverlight and the NVIDIA Webdriver (the switch just turns off the LCD backlight). But as long as the eGPU is there, Silverlight will always state "plugin error". I'd appreciate very much if you could share your experiences or even solutions. Cheers, Simurgh5

I have a theory. Could you borrow an external monitor? If yes, I'd like you to test the following setup: 1) Connect an external monitor to the eGPU and boot with eGPU. 2) Make the external display your primary monitor (within the OS X Monitor settings drag and drop the menu bar to the external display) 3) For me, OS X now says that all displays are driven through my eGPU and the benchmarks confirm this it seems (with a small drop on the internal display due to Optimus, as would be expected). If this works out, one could conclude that the trick is to make OS X think that there is an external display connected. (I think this has been suggested before.)

@goalque: Great work! I gratefully confirm that the automatic mode is running smoothly for several hours now and that it does what it should: The Webdriver is enabled when disabled and the rMBP can be booted with the eGPU connected. This is more than I'd ever have expected when I started my eGPU project. I have one (hopefully) small request for the next version: Could you make the Webdriver re-enabling optional? [For whatever reason, I am experiencing much lower battery life with the Webdriver enabled. I've always had this before so this is not due to the script.] Or if you think this feature might be confusing for other users: could you tell me what I'd have to change in the script? I am familiar with programming in general but not very much in the shell – so I'm afraid to change anything in your beautiful script without knowing all dependencies within it.

I'm voluntering for anything if you want to test the 750m + ... configuration