Mid-2014 15" MBP GT750M + GTX1070@16Gbps-TB2 (AKiTiO Thunder2) + Win10 [diegovb]

[diegovb]

It is done! I got my GTX1070 to work on my Mid 2014 Macbook Pro 15" using Windows 10. I managed to get Optimus running, which means it can power my internal display! Nitty-gritty below!

 

Software deetz:

 

• Windows 10 installed via Bootcamp
• Intel Iris Pro drivers v15.40.22.64.4424
• nVidia Graphics Drivers v383.39
• rEFInd bootloader (to enable Iris Pro on Windows)
• gpu-switch by 0xbb (to set Iris Pro as the display's main driver)

 

Hardware deetz:

• Macbook Pro 15" (Mid 2014), 2.5GHz, Iris Pro + GT 750M
• AiKiTiO Thunder2 (powered by its power brick)

• MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition

• Corsair RM550x (to power the card)

• Some very elegant black electrical tape

 

If there's anyone interested in any part of the process (or anything else) leave a comment and I will update the post!

[JohnyB33]

You managed to get the eGPU running with two different power supplies?

[Dschijn]

Yeah, not the best way. Better power the AKiTiO with the RM550x aswell.

[diegovb]

5 hours ago, > DEUS < said:

Hi,

do you have some bench running with this setup? 

 

Not yet. Any particular one you're interested in?

[Barzenberg]

My 1070 egpu is arriving this wednesday. Have you been using it under heavy load (does it work well)? What FPS are you pushing with various games?

Thanks

[diegovb]

1 hour ago, Barzenberg said:

My 1070 egpu is arriving this wednesday. Have you been using it under heavy load (does it work well)? What FPS are you pushing with various games?

Thanks

 

It's been hit and miss. I can hit 1080p60 on Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Rocket League can hit 60 FPS at 2880x1800, but not consistently. GTA V runs at like 40 FPS on 1080p, but neither the CPU nor the GPU is the bottleneck, so I'm assuming it has something to do with the bandwidth of the Thunderbolt interface.

[Barzenberg]

Thank you. Rocket League at 1800p 60hz probably has more bandwith than with the GTA test so I don't know if it's a bandwidth issue. Any tips on setting it up or did it go smoothly?

Thanks,

austin

[diegovb]

20 hours ago, Barzenberg said:

Thank you. Rocket League at 1800p 60hz probably has more bandwith than with the GTA test so I don't know if it's a bandwidth issue. Any tips on setting it up or did it go smoothly?

Thanks,

austin

 

 

 

 

There were some complications outside normal for getting it to work on my internal screen. Running games on a screen connected to the graphics card directly was pretty much plug and play. For getting it to drive the internal screen I had to instal rEFInd to enable the Intel graphics chip on Windows, then install the Intel graphics drivers, run gpu-switch to select the integrated chip as primary, disable the GT750M on the Device Manage, and restart.

It still take a few tries to boot up, but once Windows loads and the video card shows up in your Device Manager you're good to go!

 

As far as the bandwidth thing, my assumption was that GTA needs to send more texture and vertex information to the graphics card or something. Just a guess though.

Edited June 22, 2016 by diegovb

[Barzenberg]

Thank you for your help. I thought Nvidia's Optimus automatically did this. Is it because there are two graphics cards inside your macbook (mine has two as well)? Could you please provide links to what you downloaded and a short description of what to do. I'm very new to all of this and your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Austin

[diegovb]

1 hour ago, Barzenberg said:

Thank you for your help. I thought Nvidia's Optimus automatically did this. Is it because there are two graphics cards inside your macbook (mine has two as well)? Could you please provide links to what you downloaded and a short description of what to do. I'm very new to all of this and your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Austin

1

 

 

Sure! I didn't come up with this for the record. I'd like to give credit to the OPs but I can't really; I got info from a bunch of sources while browsing many threads so I don't remember which pieces came from where.
 

Basically, Optimus won't kick in unless it sees an Intel integrated graphics card and an nVidia card. You also want this nVidia card to be your eGPU, not your dGPU. For all of this to happen you need to:

• Install rEFInd, a third-party EFI bootloader for your Macbook. Warning: this is risky because you're messing with boot-level stuff. You should be fine, but if this makes you scared go research about it. http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ 
• Once you're booting through rEFInd, modify the refind.conf file to enable the Intel Iris Pro card on your Windows partition. You need to change the spoof_osx_version flag. More info here: http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/configfile.html For the record, rEFInd can be circumvented if you hold down ALT while booting; it might help you fix stuff if you screw up and Windows isn't booting.
• If you got this far, you should be able to go on Windows, open Device Manager, and see 2 graphics adapters, your GT750M and some generic named one. Now you need to go on the Intel website, install their graphics drivers, and restart your computer.
• Now the 2 graphics adapters should show up with their correct names. Download gpu-switch and use it to set your integrated card as the primary one (on the Windows side, IDK if doing it on the OS X side helps or not). I don't know why, I think that this way Optimus knows to route your dGPU/eGPU stuff to the display through the Intel chip or something. Download from here: https://github.com/0xbb/gpu-switch
• Restart, and now Optimus should be enabled on your iGPU/dGPU pair. Take note that, at least for me, one of the drivers was super buggy and maxing out one of my CPU cores (by spamming interrupt signals, if you're curious). I fix it by disabling and then re-enabling the Intel Iris Pro on the Device Manager after every boot (I know, pretty annoying). If you let it max out your CPU cores it will mess with your framerates in some games.
• Almost there. Disable your dGPU, and then restart with you eGPU connected. Now you should be able to play dem mad gaemzzz!!11!1!

 

If your games are CPU-bound, open Resource Manager and make sure your CPU isn't being artificially capped (the blue bar in the graphs, you want it to be ~100%).

 

Good luck! Please post here if it works, because my process was not in the same order since I was trying multiple things that failed before I actually got it to work.

[Anqi]

Has anyone tried to use both thunderbolt ports on the Mac and the akitio enclosure?

[P-Mac]

On 6/21/2016 at 7:42 PM, diegovb said:

• Take note that, at least for me, one of the drivers was super buggy and maxing out one of my CPU cores (by spamming interrupt signals, if you're curious). I fix it by disabling and then re-enabling the Intel Iris Pro on the Device Manager after every boot (I know, pretty annoying).

 

You can also hibernate or sleep the computer and wake it back up and it'll fix the Intel drivers churning away at the CPU. (Works for me on Win10)

 

On a side note, have you ever experienced the whole setup refusing to boot randomly? Like you won't even get to the startup chime...whenever this happens, I have to hold the power button until the computer turns off (I watch my USB drives and/or the eGPU's LEDs) and then try again to start up. It only boots with some luck, but once it boots it's rock solid...

 

I'm only asking because I have the same exact Mac and was wondering if it was system dependent.

Edited June 27, 2016 by P-Mac

[diegovb]

On 6/26/2016 at 2:41 PM, Anqi said:

Has anyone tried to use both thunderbolt ports on the Mac and the akitio enclosure?

 

I have not, but I assume it won't help with anything since the enclosure runs at PCI-e 2.0 x4 which has less bandwidth than a Thunderbolt 2 connection.

 

16 hours ago, P-Mac said:

 

You can also hibernate or sleep the computer and wake it back up and it'll fix the Intel drivers churning away at the CPU. (Works for me on Win10)

 

On a side note, have you ever experienced the whole setup refusing to boot randomly? Like you won't even get to the startup chime...whenever this happens, I have to hold the power button until the computer turns off (I watch my USB drives and/or the eGPU's LEDs) and then try again to start up. It only boots with some luck, but once it boots it's rock solid...

 

I'm only asking because I have the same exact Mac and was wondering if it was system dependent.

 

 

Nice tip! Thanks!

 

Yeah, I'm getting the same booting issue, takes 1-5 tries to actually boot up.

[Barzenberg]

On 6/27/2016 at 2:31 AM, P-Mac said:

 

You can also hibernate or sleep the computer and wake it back up and it'll fix the Intel drivers churning away at the CPU. (Works for me on Win10)

 

On a side note, have you ever experienced the whole setup refusing to boot randomly? Like you won't even get to the startup chime...whenever this happens, I have to hold the power button until the computer turns off (I watch my USB drives and/or the eGPU's LEDs) and then try again to start up. It only boots with some luck, but once it boots it's rock solid...

 

I'm only asking because I have the same exact Mac and was wondering if it was system dependent.

I finally got it to work every time. Unplug the thunerbolt cable and turn off everything. Press the power button and hold alt to get the boot options. Plug the thunderbolt in and turn on your gpu psu. Boot into Windows. 

 

Dieovb, I have a question about your process. I'm happy running games on an external monitor but benchmarks on the external monitor are using both graphics cards (1070 and 750m) and that is hindering the performance. Does the method you described solve this?

Thanks,

Austin

[cloudlee9]

Hi diegovb, have you run the 3DMark for the 1070? I already got a eGPU of 970 and now planning to upgrade to 1070 or 1080. But I am not sure the tb2 interface is enough for the new GPU. So if you can run a 3DMark test it will be very helpful, thanks.

[diegovb]

On 6/30/2016 at 2:10 AM, Barzenberg said:

I finally got it to work every time. Unplug the thunerbolt cable and turn off everything. Press the power button and hold alt to get the boot options. Plug the thunderbolt in and turn on your gpu psu. Boot into Windows. 

 

Dieovb, I have a question about your process. I'm happy running games on an external monitor but benchmarks on the external monitor are using both graphics cards (1070 and 750m) and that is hindering the performance. Does the method you described solve this?

Thanks,

Austin

3

 

Cool, I'll def. try that next time. Games on the internal monitor get a performance hit as well. Try setting Windows to output only through your external monitor, making sure that the external monitor is connected directly to the graphics card (and maybe you need to disable the 750m? i don't remember exactly).

 

On 6/30/2016 at 11:20 PM, cloudlee9 said:

Hi diegovb, have you run the 3DMark for the 1070? I already got a eGPU of 970 and now planning to upgrade to 1070 or 1080. But I am not sure the tb2 interface is enough for the new GPU. So if you can run a 3DMark test it will be very helpful, thanks.

 

Here's the results for the 1070 running through nVidia Optimus on the internal display: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11379920

[UncleGravity]

@diegovb The 3dmark benchmarks you posted for the internal display say it used the 750m.  Are you sure Optimus is using the 1070?  I have a set-up similar to yours (but with a 970), and optimus works perfectly with the 750m, but not with my eGPU.  

[diegovb]

7 hours ago, UncleGravity said:

@diegovb The 3dmark benchmarks you posted for the internal display say it used the 750m.  Are you sure Optimus is using the 1070?  I have a set-up similar to yours (but with a 970), and optimus works perfectly with the 750m, but not with my eGPU.  

 

 

I am pretty certain that those results are from the 1070 and 3D Mark is just incorrectly reporting the GPU name. Regardless of that, Optimus IS working for me with the 1070 for me. I am sure of this since I get better performance, and I disabled the 750m on the device manager. However, I have been having performance problems on certain games, on some more than others, so I am going to wait until I have access to an external monitor to use the setup again. Kind of disappointing, but what can you do.

[Tech Inferno Fan]

@diegovb, would you mind doing 3dmark11 and 3dmark13 (Firestrike) runs using an external LCD and posting links to the results? Those would allow me to add you to the appropriate spot on the leaderboard.

[diegovb]

1 minute ago, Tech Inferno Fan said:

@diegovb, would you mind doing 3dmark11 and 3dmark13 (Firestrike) runs using an external LCD and posting links to the results? Those would allow me to add you to the appropriate spot on the leaderboard.

 

I don't have access to one until ~3 weeks from now, but I'll post them then

[niket7]

Hi@diegovb and everyone else in this thread. I am running exactly same setup that@diegovb have. I have successfully enabled Iris Pro using refind as well. The only difference is that I upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1. But now I plan to do a clean install of Windows 10 since it's not working.

 

I have tried so many different steps and various boot sequences that are mentioned on this forum but after booting up Windows my GTX 1070 is not detected under device manager. The PSU looks fine and also my Akitio and GPU powers up fine. Then I connect thunderbolt to MBP and boot into Windows. But somehow it is not able to detect eGPU in Windows device manager. I have also tried disabling my 750m and then booting Windows with just Iris Pro but still it doesn't detect my eGPU. I have also tried to first wait for refind boot menu to come up and then powering up my eGPU (already connected), but no luck with that either.

 

Also after connecting eGPU and booting in OS X when I go to System Information > Thunderbolt nothing shows up there. I know that GTX 1070 doesn't have any support yet to work with OS X. My main aim is to at least get it work in Windows.

 

I will have an update again in a day or two once I have fresh installation of Windows 10. If that doesn't work then I may plan to fresh install Windows 8.1 since many other users have informed that they had problems with Windows 10 but got it worked somehow with Windows 8.1.

 

Can you suggest anything else please? Any help is greatly appreciated!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edited August 9, 2016 by niket7

[diegovb]

12 hours ago, niket7 said:

Hi@diegovb and everyone else in this thread. I am running exactly same setup that@diegovb have. I have successfully enabled Iris Pro using refind as well. The only difference is that I upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1. But now I plan to do a clean install of Windows 10 since it's not working.

 

I have tried so many different steps and various boot sequences that are mentioned on this forum but after booting up Windows my GTX 1070 is not detected under device manager. The PSU looks fine and also my Akitio and GPU powers up fine. Then I connect thunderbolt to MBP and boot into Windows. But somehow it is not able to detect eGPU in Windows device manager. I have also tried disabling my 750m and then booting Windows with just Iris Pro but still it doesn't detect my eGPU. I have also tried to first wait for refind boot menu to come up and then powering up my eGPU (already connected), but no luck with that either.

 

Also after connecting eGPU and booting in OS X when I go to System Information > Thunderbolt nothing shows up there. I know that GTX 1070 doesn't have any support yet to work with OS X. My main aim is to at least get it work in Windows.

 

I will have an update again in a day or two once I have fresh installation of Windows 10. If that doesn't work then I may plan to fresh install Windows 8.1 since many other users have informed that they had problems with Windows 10 but got it worked somehow with Windows 8.1.

 

Can you suggest anything else please? Any help is greatly appreciated!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

 

Make sure to have installed the Boot Camp drivers so that the Thunderbolt interface works. Also, I turn on the GPU ~3-4 seconds before powering up the MBP; it's the only way I have gotten it to show up. FYI, for me, the graphics card showed up as an unknown device under the display adapters section until I installed the nVidia drivers with the GPU connected.

[diegovb]

On 8/2/2016 at 9:08 PM, diegovb said:

I don't have access to one until ~3 weeks from now, but I'll post them then

@Tech Inferno Fan Life and technical difficulties have gotten in the way of this, but I should be able to run the benchmarks somewhere next week assuming my computer cooperates with me (it hasn't lately).