Re:Tried Nvidia’s GTX 1080 – still no external GPU on a Pi
by salamandersauce on Friday May 14, 2021 @09:12AM
(#27153873)
It's possible to use at least some TB3 eGPUs with TB2 and adapters, it's not officially supported by Apple on macOS though. They are still insanely expensive in my opinion for what's basically a case, small PSU and PCI-E to TB3. The cheapest ones that can take most cards are around $300 and usually have some downside. I considered it for my Mac Mini but in the end it just made more sense to sell the Mini and buy a desktop PC with space for a real GPU, more storage, faster processor, etc. I mean my case, power supply and motherboard was less than the price of a Razer Core X...
Re:Tried Nvidia’s GTX 1080 – still no external GPU on a Pi
by 1_player on Friday May 14, 2021 @02:19AM
(#27151296)
Thunderbolt 2, if supported natively by the hardware and using an external monitor, might actually be enough in practice. I used to game on rMBP 2015 with a GTX 1080 in a TB2-connected eGPU and it didn't even saturate the link, so when I upgraded to an iMac with TB3 the performance was pretty much identical.
The rule of thumb is: use an external monitor and the highest resolution possible. Sending control commands one way consumes much less bandwidth if you don't need to send whole images back down the link, and the high resolution and quality is to make the GPU the bottleneck, not the TB2 link.
Re:Tried Nvidia’s GTX 1080 – still no external GPU on a Pi
by teruakohatu on Friday May 14, 2021 @12:59AM
(#27150868)
The other issue is drivers. Nvidia is definitely out since the drivers have not been updated in many years.
More critically, at least in 2013, the docks you needed cost thousands of dollars—and made more sense to just get a separate desktop PC. I don't know if the situation has changed since then—there are more eGPUs out there but it's all for Thunderbolt 3. Thunderbolt 2 is more niche and thus may be more expensive.