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But the M1 ALSO can't support an eGPU, which is kind of the problem. I'm more than happy to pay for an eGPU dock (have one sitting in the corner from when my m

by tw04 6y ago

But the M1 ALSO can't support an eGPU, which is kind of the problem. I'm more than happy to pay for an eGPU dock (have one sitting in the corner from when my main workstation was a macbook). I know not everyone wants to HAVE to pay for an eGPU, but that's a better solution than "You can't have two monitors". My solution was to dump Apple laptops entirely (which I know a lot of people won't want to do). This Asus G14 has no issues powering 2x 4K displays without even breathing hard. No throttling in games or videos, and it supports 40GB of memory on top of a replaceable NVMe SSD.

KingMachiavelli 6y ago
Last I read, there is potential for the M1 to get eGPU support. Other USB-C to PCIe cards have worked so it seems to be a driver issue and not a hardware limitation. Now whether Apple can work nicely with Nvidia & AMD to get drivers, that is a big question.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  GPU over USB if 3rd party drivers can be had is certainly a technical potential (hell PCIe over Ethernet has been a thing for a while) I just don't know if I'd call it a realistic one or one worth using for this use case if it did arrive. Especially since it seems extremely likely the scaled up iterations will be able to do this properly in short order. I am curious about the other "USB to PCIe cards" though. I know there are NVMe to USB (non TB) adapters these days but I think that's largely due to the NVMe protocol being transport agnostic not that PCIe is actually interacting over the USB connection.
  - olyjohn 6y ago
    I was under the impression that Thunderbolt and the latest USB protocols actually are PCIe under the hood. This is why you had to have Thunderbolt security, because essentially you can tap deep into the hardware via a simple external port.
    - zamadatix 6y ago
      Ah yep you're right it supports Thunderbolt 3/USB 4, for some reason I had it in my head the ARM version just had plain USB 3.x type C.
- smoldesu 6y ago
  Apple can still work nicely with AMD, but Nvidia is basically out of the question. Apple burned their bridge with Nvidia a long time ago, to come crawling back now would be a sign of weakness from the company. That being said, I don't entirely understand how an eGPU would work on an ARM device. First of all, Apple would need to decide if the GPU can use unified memory, which is a double edged sword. If they choose to allow it, they would be creating a gaping hole in the security of their device. If they chose to use discrete memory, however, things would get really interesting. It makes me wonder how developers would maintain feature parity across M1 and external GPUs.
- BearOso 6y ago
  Drivers are an untenable problem. eGPU on regular Macs is helped by there being existing x86 drivers needed for first-party Apple hardware. There’s not much incentive for Apple or the third parties to write drivers targeting Apple silicon for external solutions that aren’t widely used. The cost would far outweigh the income.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
>My solution was to dump Apple laptops entirely (which I know a lot of people won't want to do) I think several will trade their M1 laptops due to the memory, architecture limitations creeping up after long-term usage and realizing they're compromising their previous workflow's productivity benefits. The excellent performance (CPU/power) and surprisingly well built Rossetta 2 has overshadowed potential limitations with memory and IO in the reviews. Lightning fast opening of apps is great, but it's not much use to people like me who don't close their apps at all! I keep at least 3 browsers(for different projects) with several dozen tabs(with hibernation), Note taking apps, IDE and a VM with a browser open in it. So what's important to me here is the memory, at least 32GB is bare minimum.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  > I think several will trade their M1 laptops due to the memory They'll trade them for new M1 Macs that don't have those limitations, which are estimated to be released this year. This obviously isn't a "forever" limitation. And Apple will release Apple Silicon Macs with more memory long before any other Laptop maker releases a laptop that can compete with all the advantages of the M1.

by tw04 6y ago

KingMachiavelli 6y ago

Last I read, there is potential for the M1 to get eGPU support. Other USB-C to PCIe cards have worked so it seems to be a driver issue and not a hardware limitation. Now whether Apple can work nicely with Nvidia & AMD to get drivers, that is a big question.

zamadatix 6y ago
GPU over USB if 3rd party drivers can be had is certainly a technical potential (hell PCIe over Ethernet has been a thing for a while) I just don't know if I'd call it a realistic one or one worth using for this use case if it did arrive. Especially since it seems extremely likely the scaled up iterations will be able to do this properly in short order. I am curious about the other "USB to PCIe cards" though. I know there are NVMe to USB (non TB) adapters these days but I think that's largely due to the NVMe protocol being transport agnostic not that PCIe is actually interacting over the USB connection.
- olyjohn 6y ago
  I was under the impression that Thunderbolt and the latest USB protocols actually are PCIe under the hood. This is why you had to have Thunderbolt security, because essentially you can tap deep into the hardware via a simple external port.
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    Ah yep you're right it supports Thunderbolt 3/USB 4, for some reason I had it in my head the ARM version just had plain USB 3.x type C.
smoldesu 6y ago
Apple can still work nicely with AMD, but Nvidia is basically out of the question. Apple burned their bridge with Nvidia a long time ago, to come crawling back now would be a sign of weakness from the company. That being said, I don't entirely understand how an eGPU would work on an ARM device. First of all, Apple would need to decide if the GPU can use unified memory, which is a double edged sword. If they choose to allow it, they would be creating a gaping hole in the security of their device. If they chose to use discrete memory, however, things would get really interesting. It makes me wonder how developers would maintain feature parity across M1 and external GPUs.
BearOso 6y ago
Drivers are an untenable problem. eGPU on regular Macs is helped by there being existing x86 drivers needed for first-party Apple hardware. There’s not much incentive for Apple or the third parties to write drivers targeting Apple silicon for external solutions that aren’t widely used. The cost would far outweigh the income.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

>My solution was to dump Apple laptops entirely (which I know a lot of people won't want to do) I think several will trade their M1 laptops due to the memory, architecture limitations creeping up after long-term usage and realizing they're compromising their previous workflow's productivity benefits. The excellent performance (CPU/power) and surprisingly well built Rossetta 2 has overshadowed potential limitations with memory and IO in the reviews. Lightning fast opening of apps is great, but it's not much use to people like me who don't close their apps at all! I keep at least 3 browsers(for different projects) with several dozen tabs(with hibernation), Note taking apps, IDE and a VM with a browser open in it. So what's important to me here is the memory, at least 32GB is bare minimum.

buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
> I think several will trade their M1 laptops due to the memory They'll trade them for new M1 Macs that don't have those limitations, which are estimated to be released this year. This obviously isn't a "forever" limitation. And Apple will release Apple Silicon Macs with more memory long before any other Laptop maker releases a laptop that can compete with all the advantages of the M1.