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Thanks, I had no idea eGPUs were a thing!
by all_usernames 7y ago
Thanks, I had no idea eGPUs were a thing!
- chx 7y agoHead to https://egpu.io/ https://egpu.io/ then
- askafriend 7y agoThat's the whole premise of the Mac Mini. It's the only non-Pro designated Mac that has four Thunderbolt 3 ports. I don't think you'd find this level of I/O in any other machine in this price range. That incredibly powerful I/O makes for tons of expansion possibilities. Storage, GPU, etc. (Edited to say "non-Pro designated")
- mayoff 7y agoCurrently shipping Macs with four Thunderbolt 3 ports: * Mac Pro * Mac Mini * iMac Pro * MacBook Pro 16" * MacBook Pro 13"
- askafriend 7y agoYou're totally right, I should have said non-Pro designated Mac. I must have mixed it up in my head.
- olyjohn 7y agoNot all Thunderbolt 3 ports are the same. Good chance that two ports are sharing a single PCIe 3.0 4x controller. Since PCIe 3.0 is good for ~7.8Gb/sec/lane, you're looking at two 40Gb/sec Thunderbolt ports sharing about 31Gb/sec of bandwidth on the PCIe bus. Okay, probably not that big of a deal really. The point being that a "Pro" system might have 4 individual Thunderbolt controllers, each getting their own 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes. I think that's why the specs say "Up to 40GB/sec" on the page. It sadly doesn't say which controller it has... But I guess my whole point is really moot in practicality. Good luck saturating that much bandwidth.
- gowld 7y ago4K 60Hz is 8Gbps at 8bit/channel 4:2:0 color. If you go to 16bits and 4:4:4, teach of those double the data rate.
- askafriend 7y agoMac mini, iMac Pro, and Macbook Pro all have two Thunderbolt 3 controllers. The Mac Pro starts with two controllers but can be configured up to six. The I/O is actually pretty good and provides for a ton of headroom for expansion down the line (I'm thinking primarily storage and GPU for my use-case). I can see a pretty high powered eGPU saturating the lanes.