Blackmagic eGPU vs. TB2

[martinnoweck]

Anyone using a Blackmagic eGPU via TB2 (working?) and getting a serious playback / render advantage (Mac Book Pro 2015)?
Best wishes and kind regards,
Martin

 

[Marc Wielage]

I think the eGPU is a lost cause with TB2. You have to upgrade to TB3.

 

[Brian Timmons]

It's a slight hack but it can be done.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/sorry-apple-egpu-with-my-2015-macbook-pro-is-awesome.2160051/

https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/script-enable-egpu-on-tb1-2-macs-on-macos-10-13-4/

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Yeah and usually have to tweak the hack when new OSX versions come out, but it's still just a simple walk into the terminal anyway. That said, the BMD eGPU does not work with TB2, you'll need to get a TB2 PCie expander and your AMD GPU of choice. Nvidia GPUs and the appropriate drivers are not really a thing under OSX right now. Don't bother going the Nvidia route.

Ultimately, it will accelerate some things well, others not so much. You will run into bottlenecks with memory performance and only having 16GB RAM, assuming you don't have just 8GB RAM.

IMO, given the cost of an eGPU solution and then dicking around with TB2, I'd just sell the laptop and get a new one. The new MBPs will give you 32GB RAM and you can get a Vega GPU. Sure, it's a mobile GPU and does throttle... It's not as good as an eGPU solution, but still better than the TB2 eGPU kludge you're looking at, or will be for most everything except demanding Resolve work or pounding out transcodes. Honestly, if you're driving it hard enough where it throttles way down, then it begs the question as to why you're using a laptop. Using an eGPU will help contain the GPU throttling and give you a desktop class unit there, but the CPU and RAM will be working that much harder to keep up with it. In my experience, eGPUs have not been a huge advantage if you have truly demanding workloads that push all the hardware of a laptop. They are a huge advantage if your workload can push the GPU hard and not hit the CPU/RAM with any demanding load.

But yeah, if you want to give it a try, get a TB2 expander and AMD card and go for it. Might just fit your needs.

 

[martinnoweck]

thanks jeff - words of wisdome as always - i will return the BM unit ;-)