External Graphics for Mac around the corner.

[Mike Lucey]

I was being tempted to move away from my Macbook Pro and back to a more powerful Win laptop that featured a more powerful graphics card.

However, it looks like Apple have seen the light and with the newly announced OS High Sierra, existing Mac users will be able to run external graphics cards. From what I gather it will have to be an AMD card but that's okay by me as they appear to be less costly than the nVidia equivalents.

I will now wait to see if the 2017 Macbook Pro includes 32Gb of ram as I'm finding that 16Gb not enough at times. If this happens I'll upgrade if the price is more realistic, which I believe to be the case if rumours are true.

[db11]

I'm in the same boat as you and have been looking at a Razor Blade Stealth / Core setup as an option to continuing with Mac.

The enabling of external graphics with Metal2 is a welcome development which may allow me to stay with Apple. With regards AMD GPU: the recent announcement of Nvidia Pascal GeForce GPU drivers for MacOS hopefully means that they might become an option when the Apple external graphcs solution becomes publicly available (reported as Spring 2018).

Apple's AR Development Kit (https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/5/15743274/apple-external-gpu-vr-development-macos-high-sierra-wwdc-2017) went on sale yesterday for $599 with the following spec:

@unknownuser said:

the Apple-approved enclosure on the company’s website is a Sonnet external GPU chassis with Thunderbolt 3 support and a 350-watt power supply. The package comes with a AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB graphics card, which is a VR-ready GPU. Developers will also get $100 toward a HTC Vive headset to use for VR purposes. You have to be a member of the Apple Developer Program to even be eligible to purchase the kit.

Also right on board with re the need for 32GB of RAM. Unfortunately yesterday's updates remain capped @ 16GB. This is a restriction of the KabyLake processors that they're speccing, not an Apple product management decision — we'll have to wait until Intel's next generation CannonLake chips for higher memory capacities to become available.

So I'm going to push off anything radical (like moving to Windows!) for the next year to give Apple time to make good on their promise to better meet the needs of their pro users. I was encouraged by what I saw from the WWDC announcements yesterday: while the iMac isn't the right machine for my needs, at least it shows that Apple has begun paying attention again.

[Dacicusan]

I'm already using from a while an eGPU solution with my MacBookPro 2014. I have an Akitio2 eGPU chasis with a GTX 1060. Runs flawlessly.

[db11]

How difficult was it to set up? Is the throughput of TB2 enough for 4k/5K?

[Mike Lucey]

I've been waiting to see how High Sierra handles eGPU and it looks that things are heading in the right direction.

Check out 'Hands-on: macOS High Sierra’s native eGPU support shows promise [Video]'
https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/07/hands-on-macos-high-sierra-native-egpu-support-shows-promise-video/

I've also managed to get a good workaround for a numeric keypad on my Macbook Pro. It's a clear plastic overlay for the trackpad called Nums. I won't say any more on this thread but will create a new dedicated topic on Nums.

Once done I will put a link here.

[Mike Lucey]

NUMS! A handy numeric keypad for the Macbook Pro
https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=72%26amp;t=67911