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DIY eGPU Macbook experiences


oripash

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Hi,

now i´m using my gtx 970 about 1,5 ghz will go to the gtx 980 classified as far as i can go so hopefully at least even so 1,5 ghz or beyond that :-) if testet the gtx 970 yesterday on furmark without any problems should i go with 3d mark to test it? or which test tool should work the best?

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An EVGA gtx 980 classified is a hell of a card :P

Are you sure you want to spent that much money on a card that is limited in it's performance in an eGPU setup?

Just make sure your PSU has enough horse power and 2x8-Pin PCIe power connectors. Additionally the gtx 980 classified is a very wide card!

1.5GHz is nice, can achieve that as well with my GTX 970 FTW+ ;)

A very picky test would be Battlefield 4. That game is very sensitive when it comes to occed cards and does not accept furmark stable OCs :(

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Hi,

hmm I´m not quit sure if i should go with an classi, but i don´t want to go with an gtx 970 because of the memory issue.... playing on 3 or 2 screens must of the time :-) which card would you suggest for egpu? Do you think the thunderbolt connection will limit the classi more than a normal card? Or let me say it this way do you thinkt that oc will have any effect on the performance because of the thunderbolt connection limiting?

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Any faster card will give you better results!

But if the fact that you only have approximately 90% of a desktop cards performance, that 90% will have a bigger inpact the faster the card is. So paying much money for slightly faster card, like the GTX 980 classified, will have a smaller effect in an eGPU setup.

A GTX 980 with 4Gb should be alright (EVGA, MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, Zotac,...).

To focus on (fully working 4GB) is the right way for you, because of your multi display setting! I can already fill my GTX 970s VRAM over 3,2GB with playing Far Cry 4 with ultra settings in 1920x1200.

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so this means i get apporoximiatly 90% performance of any card, so even when i go with a titan z or an amd r9 295x2 right? so what matters is raw performance of the card right? so there´s no problem by the bandwith of thunderbolt it self, do i get this right? so basically if i go with a card with lets say 8 cores and 96gb of ram it will also have the 90% performance of the desktop equivalent right? (just theoretically) :-D

sorry but i´m not really familiar with this pci-e bandwith topic and how it affects performance, i only know the benchmarks showing pci-e 1.0 2.0 3.0 with x1 x4 x8 and x16 but don´t have any ideas where thunderbolt 2 will be in this benchmark? i assume it should be like pci-e 2.0 x8 is this correct?

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Hmm looks interesting, maybe i´ll have a look at the guide where i can only enable the intel hd5200 with my macbook and than try this one :-) i´ve one last question regarding thunderbolt capabilities on the macbook are both ports connected to the same pciebus so does this mean that both ports share the bandwith or do i´ve 16gbps per port?

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I am really glad that I have found this form. There's lots of information here, but I am finding it rather overwhelming.

I have an early 2013 retina MacBook Pro, fully decked out. I am thinking of setting up an eGPU using thunderbolt 1 (I assume that is what I have). I would like to use the best video card and enclosure possible. My question is, what kind of performance increase can I expect? Also would using a GTX 970 be overkill due to the bottleneck of thunderbolt 1?

thank you very much for your help. I know this information is probably within the fast stores of information at this for me, but I can't seem to find the answer to my question on my own. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Great. I saw some of those already. I am wondering if the bottleneck of the Thunderbolt 1 would make the eGPU improvement in speed not worth getting a GTX970. Any opinion?

Well he has a GTX 970 (connected to TB1) and a 3d Mark FireStrike graphics score of 9225

I have a GTX 970 (connected to TB2) and a 3d Mark FireStrike graphics score of 11188. That is just 82% of my setup and 75% of a desktop PCs performance.

If you want and can afford a GTX 970, go for it ;)

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I´ve one question regarding this pci-e scaling thing, why is the performance difference between the higher resolutions not so geat than the one with the lower resolutions?

So basically on 4k the performance difference is 5% and on FullHD 13%? Should higher resolution not transfer more data over the thunderbolt port?

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Well he has a GTX 970 (connected to TB1) and a 3d Mark FireStrike graphics score of 9225

I have a GTX 970 (connected to TB2) and a 3d Mark FireStrike graphics score of 11188. That is just 82% of my setup and 75% of a desktop PCs performance.

That's just it, I don't really understand those numbers. It looks to me like his score of 9225 is 82% of your 11188 (using a TB2), which is 75% of a desktop PC, making his setup 61% of a desktop PC. Right?

My current GT650 on board GPU gives me decent frame rates as is. I'm not sure how to generate the graphics score using my rMBP. So my question is will the eGPU be worth it?

Any opinions?

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Compared TB2 - TB1:

TB1 gives 82% performance of TB2

Compared TB1 - Desktop PC:

TB1 gives 75% performance of Desktop PC

Nothing about 61%!

You can download and run 3dMark Firestrike (for Windows) here: 3DMark cross-platform benchmark for Windows, Android and iOS

A eGPU would increase your performance massively.

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I have set up my MBPr mid 2014 15 inch with Intel Iris Pro with the Akitio thunder2 and a gtx 660ti from nVidia, however after all drivers were installed and all kext files were edited, I'm still not able to use the card as preferred. It is being recognised as shown below.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]14183[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]14184[/ATTACH]

I'm able to use the external GPU to render in blender using CUDA, but it's not able to use it as an outputting device nor as a default card. Is there any way to fix this? Thanks in advance!

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I'm able to use the external GPU to render in blender using CUDA, but it's not able to use it as an outputting device nor as a default card. Is there any way to fix this? Thanks in advance!

How and what kind of display did you connect to the eGPU?

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I just connected one FHD monitor via the DVI-I port. The card was in my desktop before, so I'm quite sure that it is working properly.

MBPr 15" 2014 doens't provide external screen support in OS X with an Nvidia eGPU, you can only use it for CUDA/OpenCL. AMD cards work though.

At least for now it's this way, read this as reference -> http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/8507-no-kext-loaded-gtx-970-akitio2.html

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