![]() Using Thunderbolt External Video card with a MacBook Pro|||||| Posted: Sept 21st, 2015 ( notes at bottom) Update: On March 29th, Apple released which includes for some Macs/TB3 cases/graphics cards. Original Article from 2015 follows, with a 2012 MacBook Pro using older OS X version. ( If you're also using a Thunderbolt cased PCIe video card, send a report to news at xlr8yourmac.com) '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). The theory is as follows, GPU's are typically connected via PCIe ports and since there are several manufacturers that provide Thunderbolt to PCIe expansion chassis for MacOS, physically connecting a GPU to a Thunderbolt equipped Macintosh is easy. However, there is a catch; as delivered MacOS doesn't support or recognize a GPU connected to an external PCIe chassis via Thunderbolt. ![]() Thanks to Thunderbolt 3 and its high-bandwidth 40Gbps transfer rate, external enclosures can now accommodate high-end graphics cards. That means you can now supercharge the visual performance of your Mac computer, even if it’s a laptop. Apple notes that it is possible for developers to render their application on an external GPU and present the application on the Mac’s internal display, but this comes with caveats,. Conducting some pre-purchase research on the internet was not encouraging since most of the opinions confirmed that MacOS will not drive displays over Thunderbolt and even if it would, since the PCIe bus is so much faster than Thunderbolt, a GPU will be continuously constrained by the bandwidth of the Thunderbolt interface. There were also a few articles by people that had successfully enabled video cards over Thunderbolt. Due to the increasing popularity of Thunderbolt accessories, the price of PCIe Thunderbolt docks has dropped to the point where I was prepared to take the plunge and buy an AKiTiO 'Thunder2 PCIe Box' to connect to my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13, Late 2012). This particular AKiTiO box supports a single half length PCIe card and supplies 25W of bus power (as per the PCIe specification). Since my Macbook is fitted with a Thunderbolt 1 interface and the AKiTiO chassis has a Thunderbolt 2 interface (2x the transfer rate of Thunderbolt 1), my chosen combination will have the Thunderbolt 1 port on the MacBook Pro as the speed limiting bottleneck, however I still wanted to see what performance could be possible. Half length GPU's are much rarer than full length ones which tends to limit the available choice, notwithstanding since MacOS 10.10 natively supports NVIDIA cards, I acquired a cheap Gigabyte GT 740 GPU (with 2 gig of ram), and a 600w AT ( ATX?) Power supply to power the GPU (actually the GPU would have also been fine with a much less powerful power supply). ( See 'Troubleshooting' notes below for general info on external power supply, jumpering and cables.) I then followed the excellent instructions found on. In addition to the guide, I used 'Nano' contained within the MacOS terminal to actually perform the editing of the files and I also needed to issue the command 'sudo kextcache -system-caches' to actually get the MacOS to boot and recognise the revised kext files. ( and check permissions after editing.) With these tasks complete, I rebooted my MacBook with the GPU connected via Thunderbolt, startup was normal on the MacBook and the external screen remained blank.Once the log-on screen was completed, the external screen came to life and I was running two screens. NB I have successfully run this modification on pretty much all versions of MacOS 10.10 (up to 10.10.5 at the time of writing). 'About this Mac' reported the two screens and also identified the Intel GPU for the MacBook Screen and the NVIDIA Card for the external display. How to set up a skype call. Most webcams have audio, so that shouldn't be a problem.
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