TH3P4G3 Thunderbolt eGPU Dock Review (2022)
egpu.io
egpu.io
Support has always been somewhere in between the hacking required to get a hackintosh to work and the “it just works” of native Mac stuff. Usually just requires a specific sequence of keyboard presses, clicks, or events to get it working
I have a 2018 Macbook Pro and a pretty interesting/fun/skeletal eGPU setup made out of a Thunderbolt-to-M.2 adapter (intended for SSDs), M.2-to-PCIe adapter for the card, and a fanless 600W ATX power supply. I use it with an AMD 5700 XT and 6800 XT. Hooked up to a 55” LG OLED TV. It’s been very fun to operate.
It Just Works to a degree, and takes some tinkering as well. Quite a bit of tinkering actually.
The dedicated cards make windowing around in macOS snappier and smoother. It’s noticeable everywhere. IntelliJ is way, way snappier (it has Metal-based GPU acceleration these days.) The 6800 XT is noticeably smoother and faster than the 5700 XT.
For me, the responsiveness is worth it working as a programmer. 100%. Caveat: I enjoy the tinkering. Bought the setup to learn things and mess around.
Also, it’s a bit unstable. The GPU driver will lock up from time to time; I think it’s power supply fluctuations in my setup having a bad effect on a card running super tight video timing to push 4K 120Hz over a DisplayPort-to-HDMI-2.1 adapter. The wall power circuit breaker has too many devices on it (my fault). What happens is that the GPU or GPU driver sometimes locks up and the card becomes unresponsive and I can’t “safely remove” the device from the macOS menubar thing. When I unplug it, the Macbook Pro hard-poweroffs with a PFFFFT-gasp from its fans. It’s pretty clearly a systemic weakness. Might even be unfixable at the motherboard chipset level given how brutal the hard-poweroff is. –I’m not that surprised that they dropped support for eGPUs, given that adding support in their ARM M-series CPU platform would have needed some different core design decisions.
Playstation 3 emulation runs great, in macOS.
That said, if you’re biologically wired to be sensitive to responsive and smooth GUIs everywhere, then a fast GPU works really well with macOS. What you really want if you’re like this is not an eGPU but an M2 pro or better with HDMI 2.1 output and an LG OLED TV. This gives you 4K at 120Hz, HDR, variable refresh rate, and super low output latency. Full viewing angle too. It’s magical.
the support eventually improved and was dropped with apple silicon.
Nowadays, I'm only using it for my linux based desktop and I'm thinking of getting rid of the egpu enclosure.
I am quite convinced Apple would have loved to throw in a Radeon GPU in their mac pro, but the limiting factor is the drivers themselves.
You can effectively use eGPU docks for other PCIe devices, like 10GBe cards or NVMe enclosures. Its a waste of space though.
FWIW, I have a razer chroma X and I cant even fit modern GPUs into it anyway.
On Macs at least, Thunderbolt is extremely dependable. I don’t have as much experience with it on other platforms, but I’ve never personally experienced a problem using external SSDs on my Intel NUC with TB3 support.
You spend $150+GPU+PSU cost, tether your laptop to a wall outlet, and add size and weight to your “portable” kit.
That doesn’t compete all that well with just buying a higher end laptop or waiting a few years to buy the next generation of laptop. If you’re willing to go through all that expense and compromise of portability you’re probably willing to have a separate desktop system and reap the benefits of having a second more fully modular system.
It reminds me of that Voyager III concept car where you could detach a small car from the rear minivan section. Cool idea for an auto show, but why not just own a second vehicle?
anyone who uses a 2nd monitor is also “tethering” themselves to a desk, not sure that is a strong argument.
Futher, cpu speed increases have kind of plateaued, while GPUs have not.
Finally, most laptops max out around ~150-200watts of available power. While that $3000 Alienware laptop may have a 4080, its not a real desktop gpu, which in an egpu enclosure can pull 450 watts.
Finally, a goid egpu box is also a dock, one cable into the laptop, plug and go.
For example, consider a small form factor desktop in a case like this one in the DAN C4-SFX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiCwDRzLHDk
What percentage of extra weight/space is this compared to carrying a laptop, eGPU, and second monitor? Could you not just carry two larger sized portable displays and the ITX desktop system and have the same outcome (but with better modularity and price/performance value)?
In my opinion, most people who want portable gaming are fine with buying a typical gaming laptop which they'll probably get many years of above-console quality gaming out of. That laptop-wattage 4080 you mentioned is more than good enough for playing literally any game. The people who feel like "as long as it fits in a duffel bag it's portable" and want the most performance possible should probably skip the eGPU and just travel with an ITX build desktop PC.
In other words, an eGPU fits in a weird middle zone between those two solutions that doesn't make a lot of sense. It's saving you a very slight amount of kit over just carrying a desktop around with you, and it's the most costly solution.
Then when you need your laptop back, you unplug 1 cord, put it into your backpack and go about your day.
Update (I can't reply to the reply because of HN's "posting too fast" bullshit): Thanks for the reply. I thought a TB port would have to be one of the modules, and none is listed. But I guess TB ports are built-in, based on this: https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptops-are-now-thunderbol...
Framework laptops with 11th gen Intel boards seem to unofficially support it, and 12th-gen and beyond boards are officially thunderbolt certified. This applies to all four ports on the Framework 13.
Source: https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptops-are-now-thunderbol...
If you're seeing something otherwise let me know, though!
https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1225cru/how_d...
But, the takeaway is, you wouldn't see a "thunderbolt" port separate from a USB-C port; the physical interface doesn't differ, just how the data is marshalled along the wire.
If I have a laptop with two USB-C ports, but only one supports thunderbolt, that is because one is wired to the xHCI hub and the other is wired through PCI-e via the thunderbolt interconnect. The physical connection is the same, so there would be no reason for Framework to sell a "thunderbolt-capable USB-C".
If you're going to argue about something you don't seem to have comprehension of, at least try to consume the provided answers before you stubbornly dig in.
Maybe you're replying to the wrong person. If you don't understand comment threading on Internet forums, you need some remedial instruction. I have no idea where you should turn for that. But step 1 is to stop lashing out against random people because you're frustrated.
So here, in elementary bulletpoint recaps of this conversation.
A) all USB-C ports are physically capable of handling Thunderbolt. There's no such thing as a Thunderbolt USB-C.
B) the most recent Framework laptop is Thunderbolt certified and tested, so your USB-C ports will support Thunderbolt.
If that simplification isn't enough for you, maybe avoid more technical communities. Just stick to TomsHardware.
A case might be nice if you prefer not to have a bare GPU on your desktop and if you want to slow down the dust buildup. SFX power supply units appear to run you about $100 for something like 650W. The power delivery is limited to 60W (in terms of how much power it'll deliver to charge a laptop), which is sufficient for many laptops but probably not all of them (I think the last generation of Intel MacBook Pros might want more than 60W).