External Graphics Card For Mac
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'Using an External GPU via Thunderbolt on a MacBook Pro My plan was to attempt to run an external Graphics Card (GPU) via the Thunderbolt port of my MacBook Pro 13' (Retina, Late 2012) and see see if I could improve on the poor performance of the built-in Intel 4000 GPU (included in my Macbook Pro's 2.5GHz i5 processor). Last week, as the result of a straw poll on Facebook, Village Instruments agreed to begin development of an external Thunderbolt-connected graphics card enclosure.
Share on Facebook Tweet this Share Update: Apple has started shipping the External Graphics Development Kit, and it’s showing up on developers’ doorsteps. We’ve provided information from one of the first lucky people to receive the new kit. During Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote, the company’s Mac-themed segment new iMacs, a beastly new iMac Pro, and even another laptops. For the new iMacs, Apple is injecting configurations with discrete Radeon Pro 500 Series graphics chips, which means the all-in-ones will finally support virtual reality headsets such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. But what about current iMac and MacBook owners? Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi showcased a Thunderbolt 3-based external graphics card enclosure supported by MacOS “High Sierra” and Apple’s latest version of, a proprietary application programming interface providing developers with near-direct access to a graphics chip. He specifically mentioned MacBook Pros as compatibles devices for customers who need more graphics performance than what is already provided inside.
Starting on June 5, 2017, Apple started providing developers with a kit consisting of a Thunderbolt 3-based graphics card enclosure, AMD’s Radeon RX 580 graphics card, and a USB Type-C hub. This will enable developers to fine-tune their apps and programs to support an external graphics card prior to going live “in the months to come.” One Apple developer, Josh Farkas, received his External Graphics Development Kit, and he posted the initial experience on Twitter: Unboxing Apple's External Graphics Developer's Kit!????
— Josh Farkas (@JoshuaFarkas) It comes with a breakaway box, hub, and Sapphire graphics card. — Josh Farkas (@JoshuaFarkas) For compa.
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Folks with more coding knowledge than I have (and a greater willingness to potentially brick a $2,400 machine) have been hooking up external graphics cards to Macs for years, but the support now come bundled into macOS 10.13.4 High Sierra. In layman’s terms, Apple officially supports some graphics cards that you’d normally only find in a bulky PC tower—so long as you have a separate external chassis to stick them in and a Mac with Thunderbolt 3. I hoped eGPU support would be revolutionary.
Beyond that, I hoped it’d allow me to break with PCs entirely, as I really only use them for gaming these days. Anyone who watches knows I’ve been a little frustrated with the current state of Mac gaming, and an external graphics card struck me as an easy way to circumvent the limitations of Apple’s built-in processors. In some ways, it is. On the I took an AMD Radeon RX 580 graphics card and slipped it in a spare eGPU chassis loaned from the folks at PCWorld, and I watched in awe as the recently released port of Rise of the Tomb Raider suddenly looked the way it was supposed to on my 2017 15-inch MacBook Pro. Once everything was on the table, setup only took around five minutes. Leif Johnson/IDG Honestly, putting the graphics card in the chassis was the most difficult part of the process, and that took maybe three minutes. That’s the abridged version.
Yes, it works. Though in practice, eGPU support is currently little more than an expensive novelty. Stay within the lines Let’s focus on the best part first. Once I slipped my Radeon RX 580 into an chassis and tightened the screws, all I really needed to do was plug the Thunderbolt 3 cable into my MacBook Pro. Within seconds, an icon resembling a processor popped up on the Mac's top menu bar, showing that the Radeon RX 580 was, in fact, working.
(Getting it to work with games takes a few more steps, but more on that later.) Even better, I didn’t even have to restart. Apple prides itself on elegant simplicity, and in this case Steve Jobs' favorite old saying remains true: It just works.