Radeon RX 470/480 eGPU in macOS AKiTiO Thunder2

[VillasManzanill]

dang it

im sure a lot of video editors would be happy to know whether the card works or not on the rx 480 (there is a free trial)
thanks !

I don't have Final Cut Pro to test unfortunately.

 

[theitsage]

Got everything fitted inside the mini ITX case. It's working great. No issue with wakeup from sleep. I tried hooking up a monitor and that works too. The MacBook Air seems to hang during boot with the external monitor plugged in though.

OpenGL is not 100% with the AMD drivers in Sierra so I could not run Unigine benchmarks. Nonetheless, it's very cool to plug a single cable into a Mac laptop and have a powerful desktop GPU, ethernet, external hard drives, and optical drive. Total cost of parts for this build is about $460 (without the GPU, hard drive, and optical drive).

[doublepost=1471665241][/doublepost]

dang it

im sure a lot of video editors would be happy to know whether the card works or not on the rx 480 (there is a free trial)
thanks !

I installed FCP and ran BruceX test. Got about 85s on average after 3 runs. I'm not familiar with the program to check where to select the eGPU or there's such an option. Good news is FCP X runs fine.

I ran the same test with my Mac Pro with a pair of RX 480s and the result was much better. The average was 20.25s.

 

[VillasManzanill]

Got everything fitted inside the mini ITX case. It's working great. No issue with wakeup from sleep. I tried hooking up a monitor and that works too. The MacBook Air seems to hang during boot with the external monitor plugged in though.

OpenGL is not 100% with the AMD drivers in Sierra so I could not run Unigine benchmarks. Nonetheless, it's very cool to plug a single cable into a Mac laptop and have a powerful desktop GPU, ethernet, external hard drives, and optical drive. Total cost of parts for this build is about $460 (without the GPU, hard drive, and optical drive).

View attachment 645742

View attachment 645743
[doublepost=1471665241][/doublepost]

I installed FCP and ran BruceX test. Got about 85s on average after 3 runs. I'm not familiar with the program to check where to select the eGPU or there's such an option. Good news is FCP X runs fine.

I ran the same test with my Mac Pro with a pair of RX 480s and the result was much better. The average was 20.25s.

Thanks so much!

Those numbers tho don't seem as great as I was expecting for fcpx
With my Mac Pro x5690
64 ram
Ssd
R9 280x
I get 34sec aprox

 

[killawat]

Good sir pls advise what 480 card you've used to achieve such good success.

 

[FricoRico]

This is great news! Do you have to hot plug the eGPU? Have you tried it under Windows yet?

 

[goalque]

Got everything fitted inside the mini ITX case. It's working great. No issue with wakeup from sleep. I tried hooking up a monitor and that works too. The MacBook Air seems to hang during boot with the external monitor plugged in though.

Try turning on the -a mode: sudo ./automate.eGPU.sh -a

Clpeak result:
Global memory bandwidth (GBPS)
float : 205.09
float2 : 217.69
float4 : 222.38
float8 : 165.63
float16 : 68.00

Single-precision compute (GFLOPS)
float : 2556.57
float2 : 2549.48
float4 : 2539.77
float8 : 2526.74
float16 : 2498.77

Unigine Valley:

 

[FricoRico]

Try turning on the -a mode: sudo ./automate.eGPU.sh -a

Clpeak result:
Global memory bandwidth (GBPS)
float : 205.09
float2 : 217.69
float4 : 222.38
float8 : 165.63
float16 : 68.00

Single-precision compute (GFLOPS)
float : 2556.57
float2 : 2549.48
float4 : 2539.77
float8 : 2526.74
float16 : 2498.77

Unigine Valley:
View attachment 645802

That seems a bit low Unigene score though! I ran the same test on my iMac 2013 with a 780M, got 1135 (27.1fps) on ExtremeHD preset. Are you sure your CPU is not bottlenecking the GPU? According to other benchmarks the RX480 would easily output a 51.5fps score.

 

[lowendlinux]

That seems a bit low Unigene score though! I ran the same test on my iMac 2013 with a 780M, got 1135 (27.1fps) on ExtremeHD preset. Are you sure your CPU is not bottlenecking the GPU? According to other benchmarks the RX480 would easily output a 51.5fps score.

He's on a beta OS with hacked support in an enclosure that I believe is x4 running through TB to a MBA..I think its pretty good

 

[goalque]

That seems a bit low Unigene score though! I ran the same test on my iMac 2013 with a 780M, got 1135 (27.1fps) on ExtremeHD preset. Are you sure your CPU is not bottlenecking the GPU? According to other benchmarks the RX480 would easily output a 51.5fps score.

Regarding the OpenGL performance on OS X, AMD drivers have always been stuck at this frame rate, R9 Nano can almost reach 40 FPS average with the same settings via TB2. In OpenCL clpeak test, RX 480 outperforms R9 Nano.

 

[FricoRico]

Regarding the OpenGL performance on OS X, AMD drivers have always been stuck at this frame rate, R9 Nano can almost reach 40 FPS average with the same settings via TB2. In OpenCL clpeak test, RX 480 outperforms R9 Nano.

In that case, forget I said anything then. Nonetheless I'm in awe with your achievement and am likely to follow in your footsteps. I'm planning on replacing my iMac to start using my Macbook in combination with an eGPU for when I'm at home.

Have you tried running Windows yet and do you need to hot plug the eGPU? Would you also mind trying to run NBody-Metal (https://github.com/jrprice/NBody-Metal)? I'm really curious to find out how performant this eGPU is.

 

[Brie_M]

Due to the shorter board, the RX 480 without its reference cooler fits inside the AKiTiO like a glove. I'm currently hooking it up to a lowly 11" MBA lol. The Luxmark score is slightly higher than inside my Mac Pro thanks to the additional help of Intel HD 6000.
View attachment 645377
View attachment 645378

View attachment 645380

View attachment 645381

View attachment 645382

View attachment 645383

View attachment 645384

Does this mod only work with the 480 or can you do it with NVIDIA 1070? Also what are all the things I need to buy to do this?

 

[theitsage]

Does this mod only work with the 480 or can you do it with NVIDIA 1070? Also what are all the things I need to buy to do this?

I tried it with a 980 Ti this morning and this same setup works great with it. I also have a 1070 in my Asus G20AJ but it's a pain to take it out to confirm. I'm certain it will work in Windows.
[doublepost=1471710124][/doublepost]

Try turning on the -a mode: sudo ./automate.eGPU.sh -a

Clpeak result:
Global memory bandwidth (GBPS)
float : 205.09
float2 : 217.69
float4 : 222.38
float8 : 165.63
float16 : 68.00

Single-precision compute (GFLOPS)
float : 2556.57
float2 : 2549.48
float4 : 2539.77
float8 : 2526.74
float16 : 2498.77

Unigine Valley:
View attachment 645802

From the man himself! I cannot thank you enough for your contribution to the eGPU community!

I will give this a shot and see if the hang at startup goes away.
[doublepost=1471710186][/doublepost]

Good sir pls advise what 480 card you've used to achieve such good success.

I have a pair of Sapphire RX 480 8GB with reference cooler.
[doublepost=1471710277][/doublepost]

This is great news! Do you have to hot plug the eGPU? Have you tried it under Windows yet?

No Windows on this MBA (only 128GB). I will try Windows 10 on my 15" rMBP with this setup soon.

 

[killawat]

I have a pair of Sapphire RX 480 8GB with reference cooler.

Thanks again. I setup my instock alerts and am on the hunt lol.

 

[D.T.]

This is pretty fantastic. I'm engaged in some VR work (among other things), and having access to nVidia GPUs on my MBP, without having to have an entire second machine (like we do now), is very appealing, if for nothing other than minimizing/simplifying my desk area

Plus, to be honest, I totally dig on the hack-y-ish nature of this

(Of course, if it's, 1) unreliable, or b) more costly vs. a standalone ... )

 

[xsmi123]

Does this mod only work with the 480 or can you do it with NVIDIA 1070? Also what are all the things I need to buy to do this?

Unfortunately the 1070 probably won't work because NVIDIA hasn't released web drivers for the Pascal based cards yet.

 

[FricoRico]

Today I also bought an eGPU based on the RX 480. Hopefully I'm as lucky as you are and get this beast fired up in no-time

 

[theitsage]

Today I also bought an eGPU based on the RX 480. Hopefully I'm as lucky as you are and get this beast fired up in no-time

Let us know which brand RX 480 you got and how it turns out. I'm waiting on a CPU cooler to mount my RX 480 board-only within the AKiTiO enclosure.

 

[Sublime]

Thanks again. I setup my instock alerts and am on the hunt lol.

Here is the one I have been looking at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...223&cm_re=sapphire_480-_-14-202-223-_-Product

It just came in stock last night.

 

[lowendlinux]

Here is the one I have been looking at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...223&cm_re=sapphire_480-_-14-202-223-_-Product

It just came in stock last night.

That'll be the one I get when I build my all red box when Zen hits the shelves.

 

[FricoRico]

Let us know which brand RX 480 you got and how it turns out. I'm waiting on a CPU cooler to mount my RX 480 board-only within the AKiTiO enclosure.

I'm using a XFX RX480 XXX OC. So far the fan started spinning and Goalque's script detects the eGPU. Sadly I'm unsure where to go next now, macOS shows the display device, but is unsure what to do with it:



Does anyone know why? I did not solder a barrel connector to the PSU yet. It's using the standard power supply that came with the box. Is that causing the problem or is the dGPU ruining the show?

 

[theitsage]

Does anyone know why? I did not solder a barrel connector to the PSU yet. It's using the standard power supply that came with the box. Is that causing the problem or is the dGPU ruining the show?

I think the dGPU has something to do with it. I've tried several GPUs (both AMD & Nvidia) and they all work with this AKiTiO enclosure.

 

[FricoRico]

I think the dGPU has something to do with it. I've tried several GPUs (both AMD & Nvidia) and they all work with this AKiTiO enclosure.

Alright let me try to disable the dGPU then! Thanks for the hint

 

[FricoRico]

I was able to disable the dGPU in Windows using @goalque 's EFI bootloader demo. This meant that Windows actually detected type and make for the RX 480, even though no clock speeds or temperature could be provided by GPU-Z.

Sadly I wasn't able to warm-boot into macOS Sierra using the utility and the dGPU was still enabled. Furthermore I'am also unable to use the eGPU inside Windows 10 because it had 'too little resources' (error 12).

 

[theitsage]

Sorry to hear you're running into issues with your eGPU build. I tried my eGPU setup with Windows 10 this past weekend and encountered error 12 as well. I read on Techinferno that Nvidia cards seem to have higher success rate in Windows.

 

[Fahad_alsabah]

This is coming together better than I anticipated. I soldered 2 molex connectors to barrel plugs to power both the AKiTiO Thunder2 and HighPoint RocketStor Thunderbolt dock. All components are getting power from the ATX PSU now.

The HighPoint RocketStor Thunderbolt dock gets daisy-chained into AKiTiO Thunder2. I also plugged a laptop hard drive and optical drive from a salvage MBP using SATA and slimline SATA to USB adapters.

Next step is mounting everything inside the mini ITX case.

View attachment 645553

View attachment 645554

View attachment 645556

[doublepost=1472590299][/doublepost]

Got everything fitted inside the mini ITX case. It's working great. No issue with wakeup from sleep. I tried hooking up a monitor and that works too. The MacBook Air seems to hang during boot with the external monitor plugged in though.

OpenGL is not 100% with the AMD drivers in Sierra so I could not run Unigine benchmarks. Nonetheless, it's very cool to plug a single cable into a Mac laptop and have a powerful desktop GPU, ethernet, external hard drives, and optical drive. Total cost of parts for this build is about $460 (without the GPU, hard drive, and optical drive).

View attachment 645742

View attachment 645743
[doublepost=1471665241][/doublepost]

I installed FCP and ran BruceX test. Got about 85s on average after 3 runs. I'm not familiar with the program to check where to select the eGPU or there's such an option. Good news is FCP X runs fine.

I ran the same test with my Mac Pro with a pair of RX 480s and the result was much better. The average was 20.25s.

I was wondering if you can help me out, I'm using a sonnet echo express III-D chassis, a 5k late 2015 iMac and a external 450 watt psu, can I use an amd radeon pro duo on osx and/or windows bootcamp.