eGPU on MacBook Pro 4,1 and up with PCIe ExpressCard slot

[kautame]

Resolved here: Catalina 10.15.0 still eGPU capable on unsupported machines...

I REALLY don't understand what the problem is with my system. I've tried again to use the GDC Beast with a Metal compatible Nvidia card (GTX 760) with Catalina, and when I booted from the USB stick with Dosdude's Catalina installer I was glad because my external monitor connected to the GTX 760 was working: I could move the cursor in that screen, and even move there the window with the options.
And during the installation it was working: it had a bright background and I could move the cursor there too. But after I booted in the new installation the screen went black and told me "no connection". And the card was not in the Graphics tab in System Information. I rebooted many times, but nothing. Then I tried installing the Legacy Video Card patch, and this time on boot the screen went on and it even showed me the Catalina background photo, but the boot never ended. I forced a reboot and this time the monitor didn't work, but System Information sees and recognizes my card as a GTX 760, but it just doesn't work. So, I'm back in High Sierra, thinking that the problem is this iMac itself…

 

[Larsvonhier]

Really strange on your iMac. I will test further on various machines/setups sometime soon, and will report here.

 

[jsk108]

Hi guys,

I have MBP early 2011 17" with TB1 and expresscard 34 slot. I guess I can use both for eGPU solution. Will it work with the express card though? And also what gpu to choose: I have broken amd dedicated gpu and only the intel buildin is running. So should I get intel or amd gpu for the eGpu? I am new in all this adventure. Thank you in advance for any response.

 

[Larsvonhier]

Depends a bit on which macOS you want to use. High Sierra is currently proven for "unsupported eGPU usage". Mojave is difficult to patch for internal GPU and eGPU at the same time. On Catalina, I managed to get the eGPU recognized on the express card beast solution (headless, bringing metal to the internal screen!). I´m also experimenting with TB1/TB2 adapters right now for external GPU with this connection path on a MBP8,2 (also with dead dGPU, so I´m on intel internally also there). Generally, if you take AMD/ATI as eGPU vendor, you´ll get recent driver support from Apple and AMD. Nvidia is left behind, but still there are some cards that Apple officially supports (look at their support website for latest infos). eGPUs from intel are not commonly known (at least to me) so it might be gotten confused in your question...

 

[jsk108]

Depends a bit on which macOS you want to use. High Sierra is currently proven for "unsupported eGPU usage". Mojave is difficult to patch for internal GPU and eGPU at the same time. On Catalina, I managed to get the eGPU recognized on the express card beast solution (headless, bringing metal to the internal screen!). I´m also experimenting with TB1/TB2 adapters right now for external GPU with this connection path on a MBP8,2 (also with dead dGPU, so I´m on intel internally also there). Generally, if you take AMD/ATI as eGPU vendor, you´ll get recent driver support from Apple and AMD. Nvidia is left behind, but still there are some cards that Apple officially supports (look at their support website for latest infos). eGPUs from intel are not commonly known (at least to me) so it might be gotten confused in your question...

I'm currently running on Catalina as well. I was previously on HSierra. Yes as I thought, I'll go with amd based egpu, i really like amd vs nvidia. I'd like to try using the expresscard slot for egpu and leave the TB1 as optional. I live in Europe so I am searching for affordable expresscard or TB1 egpu. Most of the egpus are for TB3 port. I thought if I find something affordable or cheap, can I use adapter for TB3>TB1? Not usre if this is possible or will it work. Any ideas which express card egpu to use? The link of yours to ebay is no longer available to check.

 

[Larsvonhier]

just look for "edc beast" on ebay, still plenty there in the range of 36-50 Euros

 

[jsk108]

edc beast

you mean "exp gdc beast"? with the edc beast i only got kid's costumes Thank you again, I'll have a look.

 

[Larsvonhier]

Interesting. Results here in Germany and your place seem to vary. But yes, the "exp" can do the trick, and mine was a typo. Meant "gdc beast" not "edc beast" originally. Anyway, you found it.

 

[jsk108]

I found this useful video for those of us who likes to be guided on steps.

And also this very useful Pdf with more information about the EXP GDC dock compatibility

 

[Plhplh]

Hi everyone, just registered here in hopes to get some help with my setup.

i cant get it to work and maybe you guys know whats the problem.
i have an oldish 2009 macbook c2d wich i installed bootcamp win7 and el capitan on.
i switched the wifi card for exp beast with an KalmX gtx 750 TI, have card recognized in both systems but could not get it running in win (error code 12) so i am trying os x now.

the card runs there but if i do mirror screens i get heavy stutter when moving finder windows and also can so far not run my application without issues wich is the 3D Game Skyrim with a porting kit.
do not have a hdmi monitor but would like to mirror or use my ipad.
therefore the hdmi out of the Nvidia 750 TI has a hdmi headless adapter (good one 4K).
without the adapter the card isnt selectable in os x monitor settings.

so when i want to run my system and play skyrim with this setting, i get the mentioned window lag in os x (drawing a window leaves sth like the dead shadow of the window where it used to be before drawing it somewhere else)
and in the game depending on all kinds of resolution settings i tried i get heavy lag, crash within seconds or even black bars hiding elements of the screen permanently during runnning the game.


are these issues because i try to mirror back the screen on an oldish computer (6gb ram btw)?
should hanging an hdmi screen on the nvidia output fix my issues?
and if so, anyone with an opinion of doing so with a hdmi capture card + my ipad pro 12.9?

 

[Larsvonhier]

Hi everyone, just registered here in hopes to get some help with my setup.

i cant get it to work and maybe you guys know whats the problem.
i have an oldish 2009 macbook c2d wich i installed bootcamp win7 and el capitan on.
i switched the wifi card for exp beast with an KalmX gtx 750 TI, have card recognized in both systems but could not get it running in win (error code 12) so i am trying os x now.

the card runs there but if i do mirror screens i get heavy stutter when moving finder windows and also can so far not run my application without issues wich is the 3D Game Skyrim with a porting kit.
do not have a hdmi monitor but would like to mirror or use my ipad.
therefore the hdmi out of the Nvidia 750 TI has a hdmi headless adapter (good one 4K).
without the adapter the card isnt selectable in os x monitor settings.

so when i want to run my system and play skyrim with this setting, i get the mentioned window lag in os x (drawing a window leaves sth like the dead shadow of the window where it used to be before drawing it somewhere else)
and in the game depending on all kinds of resolution settings i tried i get heavy lag, crash within seconds or even black bars hiding elements of the screen permanently during runnning the game.


are these issues because i try to mirror back the screen on an oldish computer (6gb ram btw)?
should hanging an hdmi screen on the nvidia output fix my issues?
and if so, anyone with an opinion of doing so with a hdmi capture card + my ipad pro 12.9?

Would it be possible to switch from El Cap to High Sierra on your MacBook? If it i.e. is a MacBook Pro 4,1 you could try this. All C2D with Penryn CPUs (instead of the older Meroms) can do so, at least with using the dosdude1 installer/patcher - or even out of the box.
I mention this because I got by far the best results with my eGPUs with High Sierra. Driver support for OpenGL and Metal at the same time is best there (and got unusable on Mojave / Catalina due to heavy patches for the old internal GPUs on such machines).
One thing seems clear: As long as even macOS cannot draw/render its own GUI window elements correctly, there is even less hope to run fast apps like games or movie playback. In such a case, the driver (kext) support seems incorrect or missing. The 6GB RAM is not an issue, I have tested such a setup here...

 

[Plhplh]

Thank you for the reply. i tried earlier to get the dosode sierra patcher going but couldnt. Been a while forgot the errors.
Its a 5,2 macbook 2009

under os x i have no clue how to mess with the driver/kext. Are there things i could try in that regard?

 

[Plhplh]

Tried now with a borrowed hdmi monitor and while i could get it run windowed the lag and stutter are unusable. Kinda ready to give up and a bit sad i made a whole into my macbook to have the beast cable going through.

really no idea what else i could try as the sierra patcher didnt work for me and probably would be more of a boost then actually from unusable to usable i suppose

 

[Larsvonhier]

Tried now with a borrowed hdmi monitor and while i could get it run windowed the lag and stutter are unusable. Kinda ready to give up and a bit sad i made a whole into my macbook to have the beast cable going through.

really no idea what else i could try as the sierra patcher didnt work for me and probably would be more of a boost then actually from unusable to usable i suppose

The 5,2 is definitively very capable of running everything up to Catalina. High Sierra is also no problem normally at all.
There must be some general underlying problem with that particular machine of yours. I´d really suggest to get HS running stable first and then turn focus on the eGPU. I personally have not tested your GPU card, but lower-spec GT650 and GT630 that worked very stutter-free. Fiddling with the kexts is only necessary if you try to use a card that is not covered by the standard Apple/Nvidia driver packages. Speaking of which: You could also try to use the NVidia Web Drivers (available from Nvidia directly, use only the exact ones for your macOS version and build!). They replace the Apple bundled drivers and are optimized (a bit). Good thing: You can switch back and forth with a preference pane plus reboot. Even for El Cap (10.11.6 final) they should be available.

 

[Plhplh]

I couldnt make the DD patcher accept my installer file, tried all kinds of extracting methods

tried webdrivers / cuda drivers

maybe its the card? I ve read it makes trouble on hackintosh
i have the Palit KalmX version no fans, powering the beast with 12v

 

[Plhplh]

I managed to get a clean HS with the patcher on a new ssd into my 5,2 mb.
but now i cannot make it recognize the beast/gtx 750 ti.
so far i always hotplugged right after the apple gong sound and had it recognized and “working“ with external display or hdmi adapter. But now nothing....

weird. Any advice?

the beast setting is on pwr ON and 15s delay. Just tried off on both switches. Really confused


edit. Ah its in the deeper system info as nvidia display without loaded kext.
what now?


ok wanted to try the obvious and install nvidia web drivers but they say i need 10.13.6 wich obviously i have and is shown in about this mac.


edit2 ttied several different CUDA drivers now but cant get it recognized and the CUDA window always says „gpu not supported“ no matter if recent drivers or as old as 2015

 

[Plhplh]

Update, finally found a working web driver silly me also had to do os update. Driver .135 worked.
now off to further testing.
okay it seems to be more stable then under el cap but inconsistently still getting UI bugs and overall sluggish system behavior. For example firefox moving the browser around leaves glitches.....

i am not sure whats best practice to get this really stable. It sounds like others get a clear boost in system behaviour so sth must still be wrong here. Lower resolution i am around 1200x800 doesnt help much or at all.

if i want to mirror back to my mb screen with 4k hdmi dongle whats the best settings?

btw playing mp4 in the preview from finder with space key plays them flawless! No stutter there but in system UI
does this mean with graphics i should be fine?



whoops the mp4 was when setting internal display so i guess that was the igpu 9400m.
with the gtx set i do get stutter playback and UI troubled still

 

[jrtz4]

Spent the last hour or two reading through this thread, pretty amazing stuff. Anyway I've got a MacBook Pro 5,1 that I'm looking to use with this setup. What I'm looking to do is use a GT 710 on and expresscard beast. Anyway, has anyone used a 710 on this setup before? I'm aware that there are two GT 710 variants, and I would be of course making sure I have the kepler variant.

 

[FrankieG4]

I got a very strange behaviour with mine.. MacBook Pro 8,3 17” with failed and disabled amd gpu (arch Linux method), upgraded from gtx 1060 ti to a PowerColor Radeon rx590 , works fantastic on Windows 10 through exp gdc and express card , on macosx i only got the rx590 to work with high Sierra, i tried the card on Patched Mojave and Catalina but i cant get it to work, it is shown on System profiler as usual “Radeon Polaris 8192 mi) but “no kext loaded” appears , another thing is that on macosx the perfomance are about 40% less than windows

Any Hints? Thanks guys ! Anyway great work ..

 

[Larsvonhier]

The problem with patched Mojave and Catalina (patched for using OpenGL instead of metal on the internal NVIDIA/ATI GPUs) is that a side effect of these patches is that you cannot use eGPUs any more directly.
A co-worker of mine managed to get it up and running on only partly patched systems: He left out the GPU patches (from dosdude1 patcher) and got a system that had internally un-accelerated screen output plus fully working eGPU (with metal then).

 

[FrankieG4]

The problem with patched Mojave and Catalina (patched for using OpenGL instead of metal on the internal NVIDIA/ATI GPUs) is that a side effect of these patches is that you cannot use eGPUs any more directly.
A co-worker of mine managed to get it up and running on only partly patched systems: He left out the GPU patches (from dosdude1 patcher) and got a system that had internally un-accelerated screen output plus fully working eGPU (with metal then).

Thanks .. i’ll Stick with high Sierra then

Any hints on the perfomance gap between windows 10 and macosx?

 

[priestley]

- Алло!
Простите меня за мой английский, я пишу с помощью Google translator.
Я очень долго следил за этой нитью, так как сам еще не нашел конкретного решения этой проблемы.
Есть iMac 27 '2010.
Я рассматриваю вариант подключения через порт mpci-E. Для меня очень важно, чтобы внутренний экран работал на моем компьютере, так как я использую его как основной.
У кого-нибудь есть какие-нибудь соображения на этот счет?

Заранее всем спасибо!
Я очень надеюсь на вашу помощь!

 

[Larsvonhier]

- Алло!
Простите меня за мой английский, я пишу с помощью Google translator.
Я очень долго следил за этой нитью, так как сам еще не нашел конкретного решения этой проблемы.
Есть iMac 27 '2010.
Я рассматриваю вариант подключения через порт mpci-E. Для меня очень важно, чтобы внутренний экран работал на моем компьютере, так как я использую его как основной.
У кого-нибудь есть какие-нибудь соображения на этот счет?

Заранее всем спасибо!
Я очень надеюсь на вашу помощь!

What I could figure out (Google did not translate ;-) with the help of my co-worker (speaking russian):
It´s not easy (if possile at all) to route the eGPU display out back to the internal iMac screen.
But you can use the eGPU "headless" without a monitor attached and supply the CUDA or metal capability to the softwre running on the iMac screen. It depends on the use case and is not as efficient as piping the output to an external screen.

Other way to go: There are GPU boards that fit the internal iMac connector so that you could exchange the whole internal GPU with a better one...

 

[priestley]

Что я мог выяснить (Google не переводил ;-) с помощью моего коллеги (говорящего по-русски):
Это не так просто (если вообще возможно) направить дисплей eGPU обратно на внутренний экран iMac.
Но вы можете использовать eGPU "безголовый" без подключенного монитора и поставлять возможности CUDA или metal в программное обеспечение, работающее на экране iMac. Это зависит от случая использования и не так эффективно, как передача выходного сигнала на внешний экран.

Другой путь: есть платы GPU, которые подходят к внутреннему разъему iMac, так что вы можете обменять весь внутренний GPU на лучший...

Спасибо вам за Ваш быстрый ответ! Я очень рад, что вы быстро меня поняли я долго думал о внутреннем GPU, но этот вариант для меня довольно дорогой. Есть 8GB RX 570 и блок питания. Я попробую эту связку в качестве эксперимента. Еще раз спасибо!

 

[Camillione]

Depends a bit on which macOS you want to use. High Sierra is currently proven for "unsupported eGPU usage". Mojave is difficult to patch for internal GPU and eGPU at the same time. On Catalina, I managed to get the eGPU recognized on the express card beast solution (headless, bringing metal to the internal screen!). I´m also experimenting with TB1/TB2 adapters right now for external GPU with this connection path on a MBP8,2 (also with dead dGPU, so I´m on intel internally also there). Generally, if you take AMD/ATI as eGPU vendor, you´ll get recent driver support from Apple and AMD. Nvidia is left behind, but still there are some cards that Apple officially supports (look at their support website for latest infos). eGPUs from intel are not commonly known (at least to me) so it might be gotten confused in your question...

Hello dear Larsvonhier,

for many years I am upgrading my machine (MacBookPro5,1) some weeks before I was looking into if I could upgrade the processing power of my laptop and stumbled upon your videos (

) where you were showcasing that you successfully got an eGPU to work with your MacBookPro4,1. I got inspired on setting things up by your example via the ExpressCard34-Slot. Since some weeks now I am trying to get everything to work properly but I still keep failing at it. Then I found your thread here and didn't want to hesitate to maybe ask you for your help (since you even got everything worked out on an older MBP).

At this moment I got macOS Catalina 10.15.7 (19H2) working on my MacBookPro5,1 from Late 2008 by using DosDude1's Patcher. Everything is running smoothly except for some bugs here and there which go away after some time (mainly only coming up at the start of the system). I already got the EXP GDC Beast version 8.5c where I want to that I wanted to hook up with the Gainward Phantom (GeForce) GTX 770 working as eGPU. The GraphicCard seems to be natively compatible with Catalina because of the KeplerChip, but the machine doesn't recognize it - although it's juiced up via the ATX-Power module. The fans are also running on full speed. I installed the latest CUDA Driver from NVidia but there are no WebDrivers from NVidia that would work. When trying to install them it only says "Mac OS X version is not compatible // Mac OS X version 10.15.7 (19H2) is not supported with this package. Please see NVIDIA’s website for further driver information."

Then I read that the NVidia drivers are only supported up to High Sierra which led me to try and install a dual boot with Catalina for my main tasks and High Sierra for cutting video and other intensive work. But that didn't workout fine. It seems like the HighSierra Patcher from DosDude1 only allows one EFI and so my Catalina EFI got deleted and I only could get into HighSierra. But even there I couldn't get the eGPU to work/being recognized by the system. So I had to reinstall the functioning Catalina system back from my TimeMachineBackups.

Now you mentioned that you and/or your colleague from work still got DosDude1's Catalina to work fine with an eGPU Nvidia GraCa and I wanted to ask if you could help me with this?

Is there any solution? One thing I found is Lilu and the WhateverGreen Kexts which seem to need a Clover based EFI and as far as I know DosDude1's Patcher does not utilize Clover, right? But then I read that one could implement Boot Arguments from the Terminal and so the CloverConfigurator would become obsolete. Do you have some suggestions? Or do you think it would be a better choice to go with an AMD card? And if so which would you recommend?

Really appreciating your dedication, work and help to keep old hardware alive and running macOS with more graphical power.
Sorry if my English is not that good. I'm from Germany, too, and tried to keep it helpful for others that might search the web for similar answers

Best Regards,
Arthur