Hi all,
I've been following and reading this forum for weeks planning my big build date. Last week my kit arrived and the setup is now done, as follows:
Akitio Thunderbolt 2 PCI Express Chassis (Not powered directly from supplied PSU, all power from Corsair supply)
Corsair VS550 PSU
EVGA GTX 970 (1 DVI monitor, 1 HDMI monitor)
PCI express 16x riser with molex
MacBook Pro 2015 Retina 13" (i5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD - 1 monitor connected via DisplayPort to VGA adapter - this allows me to clamshell the MacBook whilst in OS X)
Unfortunately the somewhat "plug and play" experience most users seem to get from earlier generations is not what I have encountered. Ironically OS X was a doddle however Windows is a whole other kettle of fish. By installing automate-egpu and the Nvidia web drivers I can get to OS X and use gaming reliably by plugging the Thunderbolt cable in as the chime occurs and Apple icon appears. If the chassis is plugged in when the MBP is turned on it'll only boot successfully 10-20% of the time, the rest the screen stays blank and no chime is heard. So I have my GTX 970 in OS X which is great; however as you all know any kind of serious gaming has to be done in Windows due to lack of OS X ports.
I installed Windows 10 via bootcamp (and later using VMware Fusion with the physical disk mounted as a VM) both instances the OS will start and when I hotplug the eGPU it sees a GTX 970 however when I install drivers and reboot the OS will never boot. It gets permanently stuck at the boot splash with a pending load. Later I installed Windows 8.1 to try that instead however despite a couple of successes (absolutely no idea what variables caused it) last night, I now can't get into Windows 8.1 again.
I donated to receive a copy of eGPU setup 1.3 however from any documentation I've found this seems to only benefit MBR/legacy users. This generation of MacBook Pro is UEFI exclusively so not quite sure how to proceed.
On the bright side I do have World of Warcraft running in OS X at 1920x1080 with every setting at ultra including AA and post AA. It looks stunning and is very reliable, running for several hours. My CPU temps are far lower than before too.
Anyone have any suggestions?
Many thanks
David