egpu cards shipping, first report of success in!

6/26/2018

We have begun shipping the eGPU cards that we've been working on for years. (literally, I'm sad to say)

First proud owner has reported success, his nMP 6,1 is running 10.13.5 with no mods at all. And he will be installing Windows shortly and report on that.

Some quick notes for future customers:

1. Easiest to install the Nvidia drivers before you get the card.
2. Before install, type the following into terminal: sudo nvram enable-legacy-orom-behavior=1 (From Apple)
3. Plug the eGPU into the lower left TB port on the 6,1.
4. Connect a display directly to the properly powered eGPU. (all power pins connected)
5. Boot your nMP 6,1 and watch the display come to life.

Once you have it set up, you can just treat the eGPU as being part of nMP. Boot screens, boot picker, etc are on the eGPU display. A separate blog post will cover Windows install, waiting to hear from Customer #1 how his Win experience goes before I write it up.

Good times.

7 Comments

Timothy Freitas

6/29/2018 10:23:09 am

why won't you flash a RX 470 video card for the mac pro? If I understand the specifications correctly It can easily run on the internal power supply and out-preform the Radeon 5870.

7/11/2018 04:59:49 pm

What would it take to have some cards for the 2012 mac pro the would work under Mojave for sale on the website. How do you guys expect to make any money if you have nothing to sell? I have found that sourcing my own video card can be problematic as there is so many variation of the same card. What suggestions do you have for this dilemma?

MacVidCards Europe link

7/16/2018 04:58:11 pm

We have GTX780 which works out of the box in Mojave: https://www.ebay.pl/itm/MacVidCards-NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX780-3-GB-for-Apple-Mac-Pro-Graphics-Card-Upgrade/282970150003?hash=item41e255d473:g:8HoAAOSwj0Ra~fBC

Simon

7/3/2018 12:23:29 pm

Any advice for using an eGPU with a Macbook Pro Touch 2017 and a 'flashed' 12gb Nvidia Titan Black?

David King

7/11/2018 11:18:12 pm

I am the first owner of this card. Overall Dave and the team did a fantastic job with the implementation of the card. It is now stable and running on Mac OS consistently. I just updated to 10.13.6 with no issues so far. Make sure you read the instructions thoroughly. You must use port one for the EGPU and the other gotcha is that for the first few times leave the other thunderbolt buses empty. There are 6 ports and 3 busses. Look it up. Once at the login screen plug in your other thunderbolt peripherals. After a few times you don't have to unplug and replug on reboot, it just works.

Windows however is a different story. It works but the other thunderbolt ports can't have anything plugged in. After researching this apparently apple changed something with the firmware starting with Mac OS 10.12.5 maybe with the Mac Pro. You can see the thunderbolt driver is there in devices but it is greyed out. It functions sort of. The egpu works but doesn't seem to like anything else plugged in for windows. If you use the AMD gpus built in and use your other thunderbolt devices, they work fine. For example, I have a Blackmagic Decklink 4k Extreme 12g in another Akitio Node Pro on one of the other thunderbolt buses as well as a Sonnet 3bay Thunderbolt PCIE expansion box on another bus. Again this works consistently in Mac OS but not in windows. Trying to install the thunderbolt driver from Intel doesn't do anything at all. This is probably due to a new firmware apple introduced. I hope this helps anyone that is looking at the card or who bought it.

Dave is very helpful and responsive. I appreciate all the help and am very happy with the Mac Performance side.

muellmaa

7/31/2018 07:14:45 am

So David is basically telling us, MVC‘s solution is crap for Bootcamp usage (nothing else can be plugged in)... What a shame this would be.

8/20/2018 08:33:59 am

I don't blame this on MacVidCards. I am guessing here. I think this has to do with how apple changed the firmware on Macs. I used to see the thunderbolt icon display with bootcamp. Even on my 2018 MacBook Pro it does't show the thunderbolt icon in the system tray. You have to go to the device manager to see anything. Thunderbolt devices work. The egpu is inconsistent with windows again because of apple is my guess.

egpu cards shipping, first report of success in!

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