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eGPU natively supported in macOS Sierra

D

Demigod Mac

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 25, 2008
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MVC's blog announced that Sierra natively supports eGPU, no hackery or tricks required.

http://www.macvidcards.com/blog/macos-sierra-had-native-egpu-support

First attempt with one of our flashed Titan-Xs on nMP 6,1 showed some new info in the Displays panel about "automatic display switching". Perfect boot, display working, CUDA working. No system mods whatsoever.

Not sure how non-EFI cards will work.

Not sure how laptops will work.

But this is a HUGE step forward for OSX !
Click to expand...
 
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People with the nMP will be able to upgrade their GPUs but I wonder what happens with the nnMP. If there are better cards out at that time, yes they can upgrade but won't they have wasted any money on the installed GPUs?
 
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JimGoshorn said:
People with the nMP will be able to upgrade their GPUs but I wonder what happens with the nnMP. If there are better cards out at that time, yes they can upgrade but won't they have wasted any money on the installed GPUs?
Click to expand...
People with nntp, will have plenty of compute power. Also people with MP 6.1 will be able to most likely use the DeviceID's for GPUs from MP7.1.

Regardless if it will have Nvidia or AMD GPUs.
 
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JimGoshorn said:
If there are better cards out at that time, yes they can upgrade but won't they have wasted any money on the installed GPUs?
Click to expand...

Yes, and more money for the Thunderbolt enclosure. And more wiring and boxes.

But on the plus side, it's still a dramatic improvement because now it's possible. And the old cards provide boot screens. And with Metal and DX12, they could in theory all contribute.
 
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JimGoshorn said:
People with the nMP will be able to upgrade their GPUs but I wonder what happens with the nnMP. If there are better cards out at that time, yes they can upgrade but won't they have wasted any money on the installed GPUs?
Click to expand...
pci-e bandwidth and the TB to pci-e boxes cost as much as an good video card just for the box.
 
Joe The Dragon said:
pci-e bandwidth and the TB to pci-e boxes cost as much as an good video card just for the box.
Click to expand...

Empty external Thunderbolt expansion boxes are almost a nominal cost. ( Depending on how many slots. Single slot can be as cheap as $250.00 ) You are going to using your own video card anyway and most likely not both at the same time from the same manufacture.
 
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linuxcooldude said:
Empty external Thunderbolt expansion boxes are almost a nominal cost. ( Depending on how many slots. Single slot can be as cheap as $250.00 )
Click to expand...

$250/$199 > 1 ( a ratio greater than 1:1 )

The RX 480 is probably going to be a "good" video card.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10389/amd-teases-radeon-rx-480-launching-june-29th-for-199

For cards in the $700-1000 range, yeah it would be more nominal percentage.

This payoff can be longer term rather than the immediate. One $250 chasis now and then amortize that over 6-8 year deployed lifetime ( similar to how folks are trying to stretch MacPr 1,1-1,2 boxes over extended lifetimes). $400/8 is $50/year or $4-5/mo. Folks pay more than that for Netflix/Amazon prime or a long list of other stuff.
 
JimGoshorn said:
People with the nMP will be able to upgrade their GPUs but I wonder what happens with the nnMP.
Click to expand...

The nnMP is likely going to be just the "Mac Pro". This whole slap a 'n' on the front is in part folks wishing the old one is going to come back somehow. If there is a "nMP 2.0" that extremely likely means that "return of the King" isn't going to happen; might as well just synch up with reality. What need is something like cMP "classic" or oMP ( old or original) as an abbreviation. (e.g., the MBP is the retina models at this point if talking about anything relatively current. )

If there are better cards out at that time, yes they can upgrade but won't they have wasted any money on the installed GPUs?
Click to expand...

Better cards doesn't necessarily mean going to get better, newer drivers/support.

For the deep bargain hunters, it isn't going to be so much the installed GPUs a not being able ti easily sell the "old" to defray the cost of the new.

In the Mac Pro space, seems likely that what is really being "replaced"/"upgraded" is more likely the 'Compute' GPU and not the 'Display' GPU. The 'Display' GPU is probably just as useful as it was ( all the more so if there are secondary displays to drive which can offload from the new one. )

eGPUs should make a bigger impact in "connect to display" usages more so in laptop ( and mini , iMac ) space more so than in Mac Pro one. By time Mac Pro GPU has fallen 'way behind the times' GPU wise most likely the CPU , RAM , TB ports, etc probably have also.
 
Very interesting that ASP implies that it supports automatic graphics switching. Wonder if that means it can draw to the internal display.
 
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JimGoshorn said:
People with the nMP will be able to upgrade their GPUs but I wonder what happens with the nnMP. If there are better cards out at that time, yes they can upgrade but won't they have wasted any money on the installed GPUs?
Click to expand...

Umm... it will be very sad when (if) a 7,1 is released.. My prediction:

Everyone with a 6,1 + eGPU will have the latest GPU technology (they will be upgrading GPUs as available).
The 7,1 will be released by Apple, but the eGPU support will be purposefully removed so 7,1 buyers (suckers) will be forced to pay for Apple's highest GPU upgrade which will be already one (+) year old GPU technology.

You know my prediction will come true admit it. The only possible thing I may have wrong is that Apple will ever release a 7,1... 912 days and counting - certainly is a strong statement (of fail)...
 
deconstruct60 said:
The nnMP is likely going to be just the "Mac Pro". This whole slap a 'n' on the front is in part folks wishing the old one is going to come back somehow.
Click to expand...

Apologizes, I wasn't sure how to properly identify the tube v2. No, I don't think that Apple will bring back the tower again because Phil said the tube will be the computer for the next 10 years. I think they would cut their nose to spite their face on that.

In the Mac Pro space, seems likely that what is really being "replaced"/"upgraded" is more likely the 'Compute' GPU and not the 'Display' GPU. The 'Display' GPU is probably just as useful as it was ( all the more so if there are secondary displays to drive which can offload from the new one. )
Click to expand...

Interesting. So if it is for compute, do you think that Apple would bypass the 2nd GPU and go directly to the eGPU for computer tasks? I don't quite see how they could run both the 2nd GPU and the eGPU for computing.

Do you think they will completely bypass treating both GPUs as a single unit?
 
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developer13245 said:
Everyone with a 6,1 + eGPU will have the latest GPU technology (they will be upgrading GPUs as available).
The 7,1 will be released by Apple, but the eGPU support will be purposefully removed so 7,1 buyers (suckers) will be forced to pay for Apple's highest GPU upgrade which will be already one (+) year old GPU technology.

You know my prediction will come true admit it.
Click to expand...

Nope.
 
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developer13245 said:
...
The 7,1 will be released by Apple, but the eGPU support will be purposefully removed so 7,1 buyers (suckers) will be forced to pay for Apple's highest GPU upgrade which will be already one (+) year old GPU technology.
Click to expand...

Absolutely zero need to do that. 7,1 can easily be shipped with TBv3 a substantive differentiator. eGPU on TBv2 is hamstrung if want to push/pull data from it. It is nice if Apple back ported it to TBv2. However, long term it is a limited end. In short term, if the eGPU as primarily a 'Compute card' even more so.

7,1 will likely have better CPU , RAM , SSD. Folks who solely care about buying the "latest, greatest, discrete GPU card' every 12-14 months.. a high fraction of them never bought a 6,1. ( either kept dropping cards into pre-6,1 models or flipped to Windows). Far more likely will see a fraction of the pre-4,1 folks flipping over to used 6,1 as the used prices come down. Apple sees none of that whole "buy 2-3 generations back" market anyway so there is not much to motivate gimping the new model.

If Apple deploys an upgrade service the folks who want a more compact solution will still pay even if there is a eGPU capable path. As long as it is not ridiculously priced ( much higher than a external enclosure) some people will pay.
 
developer13245 said:
Umm... it will be very sad when (if) a 7,1 is released.. My prediction:

Everyone with a 6,1 + eGPU will have the latest GPU technology (they will be upgrading GPUs as available).
The 7,1 will be released by Apple, but the eGPU support will be purposefully removed so 7,1 buyers (suckers) will be forced to pay for Apple's highest GPU upgrade which will be already one (+) year old GPU technology.

You know my prediction will come true admit it. The only possible thing I may have wrong is that Apple will ever release a 7,1... 912 days and counting - certainly is a strong statement (of fail)...
Click to expand...

Doubt that, either way there is a script you can run that enables eGPU support fairly easily. I have an EVGA GTX 980 TI SC on my iMac prior to Sierra.
Sierra just seems to make it easier for EFI cards.
 
I'm curious to see the results of taking apart Sierra's graphics stack. There are other interesting things I haven't seen posted here yet that are probably related to this topic. But I'm sure Netkas has either already stumbled upon them or will be...
 
Update: It seems you still need the video card in the Thunderbolt enclosure with a modded EFI. MVC updated his post in the netkas forums.
 
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