Mac Pros, Ara, and Modularity

Re:Mac Pros, Ara, and Modularity by Sanddancer on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @08:45PM (#6644592)

Intel hasn't approved an external graphics card that can connect via thunderbolt, and probably won't for the foreseeable future. It's one of the big issues I have with thunderbolt -- it's micromanaged to hell and back.

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Re:Mac Pros, Ara, and Modularity by 2muchcoffeeman on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @09:37PM (#6644736)

Are you saying there is no all-in-one external graphics card?

Sonnet makes an external PCIe Thunderbolt enclosure that you can pop a graphics card into, and there is that DIY guy: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162652-diy-external-thund...

Granted that is not pretty and there are OS support issues. But it is possible and I am hopeful it gets easier.

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Re:Mac Pros, Ara, and Modularity by dnissley on Thursday October 31, 2013 @09:38AM (#6646693)

The last time the sonnet enclosure came up it was determined that the bandwidth of thunderbolt is simply not yet enough for a high end graphics card (especially if we're talking about upgrading years from now) and the enclosure itself did not provide enough power (only 100-150w). Not to mention there are no reports of this actually working with any graphics card, let alone a high end one worth upgrading to.

Just to demonstrate the bandwidth of PCIe3 x16: PCIe1.1 x16, PCIe2 x8 and PCIe3 x4 all provide around 4GBps. That's right, not 4 Gbps. So that's 32Gbps times 4 for a grand total of 128Gbps over PCIe3 x16. In comparison, Thunderbolt 2 at 20Gbps is very constricted.

I'm not sure the external GPU route will ever be useful for professionals, but I'm hopeful that it will become a more viable option for gamers who want a laptop that is light and thin, and the decently portable option to plug in a midrange graphics card that would work way harder than any integrated graphics could.

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