eGPU budget solution?

[Itzzdannyboy]

Hi I have a 2012 Non-Retina 13 MBP (i5, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD, Intel Graphics 4000) and I was wondering of there was any methods of connect a GPU to my MBP for a fairly inexpensive way. I was also wondering whether I could also connect a display via the GPU. Also my MBP doesn't have the new ThunderBolt 2 version. Thanks!

EDIT: Would the AKiTiO Thunder2 PCIe BO work with my device?, as I have thunderbolt but not thunderbolt 2!

 

[Samuelsan2001]

In a word no. All solutions are incredibly expensive (you could buy a full gaming tower for the same price).

You could run an external display of copurse but your macbook will do that perfectly fine anyway up to 1600p resolution.

 

[v3nom]

Yes it works! Still you would need the AKiTiO as main part and add the GPU and PSU to your calculation.
What is our main goal? Which OS should it be? What is your budget? Do you have a GPU in mind?

This is my GTX970 eGPU for about 600-700$:

 

[treekram]

I see the AKiTiO Thunder2 PCIe goes for about $220 at Amazon. Then you'd have to buy a PCIe graphics card and likely? a power supply. Would that qualify as "fairly inexpensive"? If so, it should *probably* work. Thunderbolt 2 is supposed to be backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 1. FWIW, on the Amazon page, somebody asked about 2012 MBP non-Retina and the answer supplied was yes, it would work. Officially, the device doesn't support graphics cards but it seems that most of the people buying it use it for graphics card. The previous post came in as I was typing this and they obviously have a working solution (although I don't see them using an external display).

 

[v3nom]

It works even better with external displays! Making it work on the internal is the hard way! Luckly I can do both in Windows 8.1. In OSX you will only make it work on external monitors.
I tested to daisy chain 2 eGPUs over one TB connection and connected 8 displays:

TB1 is slower, yes. But you will still have a huge performance gain. Of course it would be smart to get a GTX980Ti for that…
I would say a GTX960 or 970 is the best you should invest for TB1.

 

[treekram]

Maybe it's just me, but if you're only using a GPU in this box, why would you use it to drive the internal display? With the size of the box and the capabilities the GPU offers, and it being more difficult to configure, I would just use this when I hooked up a big external display. Just curious.

 

[Itzzdannyboy]

Maybe it's just me, but if you're only using a GPU in this box, why would you use it to drive the internal display? With the size of the box and the capabilities the GPU offers, and it being more difficult to configure, I would just use this when I hooked up a big external display. Just curious.

No I was planning to hook it up to either a 27-inch 4k display or two 1080p displays
[doublepost=1452022045,1452021839][/doublepost]

I see the AKiTiO Thunder2 PCIe goes for about $220 at Amazon. Then you'd have to buy a PCIe graphics card and likely? a power supply. Would that qualify as "fairly inexpensive"? If so, it should *probably* work. Thunderbolt 2 is supposed to be backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 1. FWIW, on the Amazon page, somebody asked about 2012 MBP non-Retina and the answer supplied was yes, it would work. Officially, the device doesn't support graphics cards but it seems that most of the people buying it use it for graphics card. The previous post came in as I was typing this and they obviously have a working solution (although I don't see them using an external display).

I had a $600 budget in mind, but now when I come to think about it, it's better for me to just purchase a 2015 rMBP

 

[Queen6]

No I was planning to hook it up to either a 27-inch 4k display or two 1080p displays
[doublepost=1452022045,1452021839][/doublepost]
I had a $600 budget in mind, but now when I come to think about it, it's better for me to just purchase a 2015 rMBP

Probably better to wait a little and buy a 2016 rMBP, unless you can source a 2015 for around $1500

Q-6

 

[jsnuff1]

It works even better with external displays! Making it work on the internal is the hard way! Luckly I can do both in Windows 8.1. In OSX you will only make it work on external monitors.
I tested to daisy chain 2 eGPUs over one TB connection and connected 8 displays:

TB1 is slower, yes. But you will still have a huge performance gain. Of course it would be smart to get a GTX980Ti for that…
I would say a GTX960 or 970 is the best you should invest for TB1.

How are you running a third party GPU under Mac OS? Apple/AMD/Nvidia build only specific drivers for just the small selection of dGPUs in their systems, so there would be no driver support for any other cards. Unless there is some generic ****** driver that works that would not give anywhere near good performance.

 

[v3nom]

You can run almost any GPU in OSX. AMD and Nvidia have drivers for them (guess Fury doesn't work yet).
E.g. a lot of cMP users are running a GTX980Ti or Titan X in their cMP.

Why I'm using eGPU performance on the internal display?
I'm currently living in two places (work/GF) and only have my whole monitor setup at my GFs place. During the week I just take the MB (and the eGPU) since that is lighter and easy to pack. But even away from my desk I want to able to play games. So I can choose to do it where ever and however I want to.

2016 MBPr will hopefully have TB3, which officially will support eGPUs. Intel announced that and the manufacturers have Intels blessing. So, with TB3 we will see ready to go eGPUs and much more support.

 

[jsnuff1]

You can run almost any GPU in OSX. AMD and Nvidia have drivers for them (guess Fury doesn't work yet).
E.g. a lot of cMP users are running a GTX980Ti or Titan X in their cMP.

Why I'm using eGPU performance on the internal display?
I'm currently living in two places (work/GF) and only have my whole monitor setup at my GFs place. During the week I just take the MB (and the eGPU) since that is lighter and easy to pack. But even away from my desk I want to able to play games. So I can choose to do it where ever and however I want to.

2016 MBPr will hopefully have TB3, which officially will support eGPUs. Intel announced that and the manufacturers have Intels blessing. So, with TB3 we will see ready to go eGPUs and much more support.

Oh wow I haven't read up on custom macs for a while...Nvidia and AMD now make native OS X drivers?? Thats pretty cool.

 

[treekram]

Why I'm using eGPU performance on the internal display?
I'm currently living in two places (work/GF) and only have my whole monitor setup at my GFs place. During the week I just take the MB (and the eGPU) since that is lighter and easy to pack. But even away from my desk I want to able to play games. So I can choose to do it where ever and however I want to.

Thanks for providing information on your particular needs and how you went about solving them.

 

[BoGyesz]

Yes it works! Still you would need the AKiTiO as main part and add the GPU and PSU to your calculation.
What is our main goal? Which OS should it be? What is your budget? Do you have a GPU in mind?

This is my GTX970 eGPU for about 600-700$:

Thanks for sharing the video. I'm thinking about buying the same eGPU configuration for my '13 rMBP but I might wait until the new rMBP comes out and see what specs it offers. If I can buy that with a decent dedicated GPU, then I won't need the eGPU (for a while). I mostly play SC2 and D3 only.

 

[v3nom]

If you can wait, wait! With the CES currently releasing official TB3 eGPUs there might be a lot of changes happening in the future.

 

[Robstevo]

Will the razor core work with thunderbolt 2?

 

[v3nom]

Can't say... Intel said there will be an adapter to get TB3 stuff on a TB2 connection, but no products yet.
The Razer Core is really really great!

 

[dbanderson1]

Can't say... Intel said there will be an adapter to get TB3 stuff on a TB2 connection, but no products yet.
The Razer Core is really really great!

It looks very cool. I think it would be awesome if they made an Mac edition in brushed aluminum... similar to what seagate did to their drives.