Jump to content

DIY eGPU Macbook experiences


oripash

Recommended Posts

On 17 January 2016 at 11:02 PM, Dschijn said:

Good Afternoon, I am sorry for the poor formatting of this post but it won't let me delete the 'quote'! 

 

 

I have been operating with an akitio thunder 2 and gtx750ti and external monitor connected via HDMI for a few weeks now without any dramas. Today I have noticed that while gaming, after about 30 minutes the game freezes, the monitor then goes black and I am unable to play. 

 

Though the game locks up and the monitor does not switch back on, I can still here the background sound and my laptop screen is perfectly functional ( can move mouse across it ), although I cannot access task manager or close the program. Is this something people have encountered and if so is there a way around? It has only just started happening after previously working fine. I am running windows 8.1

 

Thank you for your help in advance. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@p3nzancef1ier Are u using a 120W or even weaker PSU? I would say it is a power issue or the PSU is getting very warm and inefficient and after 30min heating up it can't hold the load. Can you underclock the GPU a bit maybe? Or lower the power target in apps like MSI Afterburner?!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Dschijn said:

@p3nzancef1ier Are u using a 120W or even weaker PSU? I would say it is a power issue or the PSU is getting very warm and inefficient and after 30min heating up it can't hold the load. Can you underclock the GPU a bit maybe? Or lower the power target in apps like MSI Afterburner?!

@Dschijn Ok thank you, that may well be it. Have lowered the power target and we shall see what happens. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello everyone,

I just got my egpu running on my mid 2012 macbook pro retina with the gtx 970 MSI 100ME using El Capitan 10.11.3. I used the script to get it going but I have a few questions someone on here could help me out and answer.

 

1. When I plug my tv/monitor into my egpu my audio comes out my mac and not my tv. Is this normal? Shouldn't I have audio out my tv since I'm using the hdmi cable? Is their a fix to this or do I just have to use my laptop internal speakers or headphone jack.

 

2. Do I need to plug in a monitor into the video card in order to get the egpu performance?  Or this is how it is suppose to be..meaning the performance boost is only their when their is a monitor plugged into the egpu only. In other words, is it possible to get the internal monitor running as the gtx 970 egpu without attaching a monitor to the egpu. It seems that when I dont have a monitor connected to the egpu the mac is doing all the work. Is this normal?

 

3. What is metaltest.swift (benchmark program I believe). How come I get an error trying to run it. Says:

 

etaltest.swift:1:8: error: no such module 'Metal'
import Metal
       ^
<unknown>:0: note: did you forget to set an SDK using -sdk or SDKROOT?
<unknown>:0: note: use "xcrun -sdk macosx swiftc" to select the default OS X SDK installed with Xcode

 

What do I do at this point with it? Can I fix it in a way?

 

4. Can I reboot and put "csrutil enable" back to the way it was after I installed my egpu and script? Or do I need to let it be at csrutil disable. Instructions told me to make it disable but im not sure if i should enable it back to keep the malware away.

 

5. I also installed the cuda drivers from the nvidia website. Did I mess anything up? Were they necessary?

 

I would really appreciate if someone could answer my noob questions for me. If you guys need screen shots or pictures let me know.

THANKS A LOT EVERYONE.

IMG_1004.JPG

Edited by Kr4nG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1. Go into the audio preferences in OSX and try the different outputs.

2. In OSX for gaming yes! Some rendering apps like Octane or Blender do not need a monitor. Gaming on the internal monitor is only possible in Windows 8.1 with a Intel Iris MB only!

3. plz ask goalque

4. Yes, enable it again!

5. No problem, it is ok! Some programs that run on CUDA will benefit. Games shouldn't have a (dis-)advantage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you for the answers. I got answers to questions  2 : 4 : 5.   So can someone let me understand question 1 and 3 ?

 

As far as the audio coming out of the egpu I had no luck. Take a look at my screen shots. Ignore the output to my tv that is actually my apple tv not turned on at the moment or plugged in. Can anyone else confirm that they are getting audio out their egpu unit and not the laptop speakers or jack.

 

56aad82e6b60f_ScreenShot2016-01-28at9.5256aad83a1f360_ScreenShot2016-01-28at9.5156aad8dc42524_ScreenShot2016-01-28at9.5056aad8f57e4c0_ScreenShot2016-01-28at9.51

 

Also, is it safe to close the laptop or do I need to use an app to make it turn off.

 

 

IMG_1006.JPG

Edited by Kr4nG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Kr4nG

1. My script doesn’t support HDMI audio.

3. It’s explained on GitHub,

“I wrote a piece of code to determine if your eGPU supports Metal API.”

It does nothing else.

 

Apparently the latest SDK requires -sdk option:

xcrun -sdk macosx swiftc -o metaltest metaltest.swift

 

4. You can, but kexts won’t load. In order to use eGPU, keep SIP disabled.

Edited by goalque
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey everyone,

 

I have a GTX 960 in a Akitio Thunder on a MBPr mid 2014 running, in OSX it is working very well. (All I did was running the eGPU script)

I also tried to enable SIP again, but then my eGPU didn't work anymore, but after reading your post goalque, it's supposed to work that way, isn't it?

One problem I have is, in Win 10 on an external SSD the internal screen is always black after the installation of the nvidia drivers. IS there any possibility to chance that? In the monitor settings of Windows it recognises the internal Display, but it stays black. Im not sure if this is just an issue with the backlight.

Can anyone help me? 

I tried it also with a clean Win 10 installation and the latest nvidia drivers, but that didn't change anything...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Dschijn Im not sure if i could install the latest ones, as I wanted to install the "latest" ones of the intel website it said while installing, a newer version is already installed, and i repeated the same with the intel driver update utility....

I tried the drivers, but it made no change.

But is it normal/ or supposed to be that the device manager tells me the device is disconnected (code 45)? And it is also set invisible.

Edited by LeoTP
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Dschijn

 

Managed to run my Thunder2 with Zotac 750 TI 2GB with fully closed case thanks to you!!

Will continue to bootcamp windows 10 and try it with eGPU since game performance on Mac OS is not that good.

 

Since I am able to fully closed the case with Zotac 750 Ti, will it harm my GPU  due to lack of ventilation on the casing itself? I kept the front stock fan running, is it enough to keep the hot air our of the thunder2?

My room temperature usually around 23-26 Celcius.

Also I am no able to see the performance of my GPU on iStat Menus (Mac OS), it doesn't show the temperature/performance of my GPU, nothing about GPU. Why is that?

 

Thanks in advance!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@LeoTP Which device has code 45? The monitor or the Intel Graphics?

 

@iddinmx Glad it works! Alternative GPUs are a special kind in OSX. Is there a chance you could test in Windows? The GPU will work with that cooling, but there might be throttling if the GPU hits 80°C.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Dschijn Will install Windows by this week or next week and update you! Just read the post regarding the Optimus by @Evo* which only works with Windows 8.1 aha.


Thanks alot! I'll post my experience soon I managed to install Windows along with benchmark!

 

p.s. : It gave me chills when the first time I plugged the barrel mod connected from USED DA-2 220W, triple-checked making sure the output is around 12V!! Luckily it didn't blow up my thunder2 hahaa. But yes I managed to make the barrel mod ONLY from DA-2 without soldering! :D List of items used:-

 

41yFleeXJAL._SY355_.jpgrp7896.jpgpaperclip.jpg

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Dschijn It's a 13" Mid 2014, Core i5 2.6GHz, 8GB Ram, 128GB SSD. Can you make a screenshot of your Windows Device Manager in Windows? Can you see your iGPU there?

Mine looks like:

snip_20160202205615.png

 

And Yes i have the latest bootcamp drivers via AppleUpdate

Edited by LeoTP
E1: Added Screenshot E2: bootcamp drivers
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So does the MSI gtx 970 support Metal tool? I still get the same error when using the new command

" xcrun -sdk macosx swiftc -o metaltest metaltest.swift "

 

Will their be a future hdmi audio support for us?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I found out, what the problem is: need to use that: 

 

 

And it worked one boot, with Optimus enabled, also playing games was working well. (I have Win10 on an external USB SSD drive running, and I also used a second HDD where the Optimus EFI Partition is running, and it was working once. But after restarting it's not working anymore. It either freezes wie these spinning balls, or i get a BSOD, saying something like page fault in non paged area...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@DschijnThanks, so it looks like there is an issue for Win 10/Nvidia Drivers to activate (or not deactivate) the iGPU :/

 

Only with the EFI Mod,  Win10 does not deactivate it, maybe i need to wait for the next nvidia driver update...

 

I installed the latest Nvidia drivers, sadly that did not help. If you or anyone else has any idea what I can do, it is highly appreciated. :)

 

Update: the BSOD was most likely caused by "Duet-Display"

Found here: https://support.zwift.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203898833--Solution-PAGE-FAULT-IN-NONPAGED-AREA-with-Bluescreen-in-Windows-10 :)

Edited by LeoTP
Update
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, LeoTP said:

Well, I found out, what the problem is: need to use that: 

 

 

And it worked one boot, with Optimus enabled, also playing games was working well. (I have Win10 on an external USB SSD drive running, and I also used a second HDD where the Optimus EFI Partition is running, and it was working once. But after restarting it's not working anymore. It either freezes wie these spinning balls, or i get a BSOD, saying something like page fault in non paged area...

 

How did you get windows on external usb? I tried 5 times and every time I want to install the boot camp drivers the windows crashed and I cant reboot into windows. (no bootcamp installed on internal ssd) Used win to usb to get it to boot and install but it seems to break every time i need to install the drivers. I tried win 8.1 and win 10 with no luck.  Any advice? Do I need to install bootcamp on internal drive, install boot camp drivers, clone it to my external drive, and then delete the internal partition?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Kr4nG I installed a Win 10 Education Version that way:

 

used a Windows maschine to clean the SSD with diskpart and clean

plugged the USB Drive to the OSX and formatted it with the OSX standard format (that was the easiest way to get a ufi partiton...)

plugged the USB to a Windows PC and formatted the non UEFI Volume to NTFS

started WintoUSB and installed Windows 10 Edu on it

pluggend the USB drive to the Mac and while booting up i hold the alt key and selected EFI Boot, which is the Windows USB SSD.

I'm using a Samsung Evo 850 Sata SSD with a USB 3 enclosure, but a WD HDD with usb 2 enclosure is working as well.

 

Windows was booting up and running (without any extra drivers). Then I installed Bootcamp on Windows. I didn't use the BootCamp in OSX (well to get the driver package, which I installed on Windows).

How does Windows crash? While installing BootCamp it gets stuck at a certain point, the you have to open the task manager and kill the realtek installing process then it goes on.

 

 

Current state with the eGPU: its working sometimes with the EFI Mod and sometimes it gets stuck with the spinningballs, and the I have to reboot it until it works, with unplugging the eGPU and replug it and try again.

Edited by LeoTP
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.