5 ms·

Once egpus work on Apple Silicon there will be little reason to own a pc

by zer0zzz 5mo ago

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
bel8 5mo ago
Mac GPU isn't the bottleneck for most games. Compatibility is.
- zer0zzz 5mo ago
  I’m not talking about games, I think a Mac mini on a rtx pro 4000 would be a nicer experience than a g10 is all.
_blk 5mo ago
I assume your reasons are different to mine so for your reasons it might very well be true. But for my reasons definitely not as long as Apple Silicon can't run Linux somewhat decently natively - and even then, it's still an Apple..
- zer0zzz 5mo ago
  Depends. I put it on an M1, and that soc is quite good at running linux.
lowbloodsugar 5mo ago
Just built a workstation with an older Threadripper Pro. It has 128 PCIE lanes, for 7 16-lane PCIE slots. An egpu has 4. I have one GPU, at x16, and I can add more. Most people don't need that, but most people don't need an eGPU either. The number of gamers who would switch to Macbook+eGPU is negligible. It's just not compelling. For LLMs, hanging a 5090 off the thunderbolt port makes prompt processing fast, but I will be surprised if the M6 doesn't come with silicon just for that, as its the current gap. M5 is quite adequate for token generation for the price, given the RAM quantity and bandwidth. An M6 that accelerates TTFT would make an eGPU irrelevant. For gaming, the threadripper gets at least +50FPS for windows vs linux, and some games just freeze for periods of time on linux with things like dynamic frame generation. I have an SSD for windows just for gaming.
- bigyabai 5mo ago
  > The number of gamers who would switch to Macbook+eGPU is negligible. It's just not compelling. This. eGPUs fade in and out of relevance every few years, and even back in the Intel Macbook days there were people advocating for eGPU gaming with Bootcamp. It was a terrible solution, there is every reason to avoid macOS with a dGPU when you have something like Linux or even Windows as an alternative.
  - Melatonic 5mo ago
    Thats also because we keep trying to use terrible interconnects. If we get an interconnect with a proper latency spec things might change
  - hacker_mar 5mo ago
    [dead]
- zer0zzz 5mo ago
  FWIW, I am partial to eGPUs not for laptop gaming but for space. I want to write cuda kernels at home but I dont want a big tower. I have a Minisforum mini-pc the size of an M4 Mac Mini attached to one of those egpu enclosures and the whole setup was pretty easy and sits on my desk nicely.
  - traderj0e 5mo ago
    Yeah the desire makes sense. The Macs are very nice hardware. You can get a mobo/case that's not much larger than the GPU itself, but it's still clunky. It's just, unfortunately eGPUs are unlikely to become more than a curiosity.
    - zer0zzz 5mo ago
      I am definitely enjoying mine, but I've found for what I do some of the hosted kernel writing tools are easier to deal with. I actually had to do a ton of work arounds for my tb5 egpu on Linux recently for it to not drop off the pci bus every ~48 hours.
traderj0e 5mo ago
Been hearing this for over a decade, except back then it was eGPU in Intel Macs which were closer to other PCs if anything. Even if this didn't require so much DIY and if Thunderbolt could do PCIe speeds, most people don't want to add drama when they can just use a PC with regular PCIe slots and native compatibility with Nvidia. The native way already has enough edge cases without adding an unusual setup.
- zer0zzz 5mo ago
  What would be native enough here? What if they got Asahi working with NV gpus for rendering and running cuda kernels? Would eGPU on asahi be sufficient or do you really only see pcie worthwhile? Some of us mainly want more gpu options on a high performance consumer arm machine (for Linux).
  - traderj0e 5mo ago
    Thunderbolt still doesn't provide the full PCIe bandwidth, but even if it did, I'd want PCIe itself. I don't trust the encapsulated version over Thunderbolt to work the same. Virtualized Linux would be ok though. That's what datacenters already do with their GPUs, albeit on x86 not ARM. Doesn't need to be Asahi, cause that's unlikely to completely work.
    - zer0zzz 5mo ago
      That's understandable.
ActorNightly 5mo ago
Man, Apple fans are still proving the stereotype to be accurate after 20 years. Ignoring the fact that the Mac OS gets in your way every time you try to do something that Apple doesn't like, with no guarantee that an update won't break anything existing, ignoring the fact that Macs are non repairable, non upgradable, ignoring the fact that they don't support multiple displays flawlessly, I hope you realize that egpu support natively is NEVER coming to Macs, because why the fuck would they enable it when they can just charge you full price for a desktop computer? Apple is built on the sole image that Apple users have money, so buying another Mac Mini or Mac Pro in addition to your laptop is what you are supposed to do. Android is way ahead of Mac with Android Desktop mode and Samsung Dex, to the point where you don't even need to own a laptop anymore. Ive been using my S24/S25 with lapdock for over 3 years now as a laptop, and it works flawlessly. Apple can easily do this with iPhone, but they won't because that means one less macbook purchase.
- zer0zzz 5mo ago
  > Man, Apple fans are still proving the stereotype to be accurate after 20 years. Who is this straw man you're flogging? > Ignoring the fact that the Mac OS gets in your way every time you try to do something that Apple doesn't like, with no guarantee that an update won't break anything existing, ignoring the fact that Macs are non repairable, non upgradable, ignoring the fact that they don't support multiple displays flawlessly, Lot to unpack there, most of it does not matter to most normies. When I bought my current mini-pc to drive my egpu I didn't focus on any of this stuff. Just about all I looked for was something that can drive a gpu over TB4/5 and has good perf/watt in a small form factor. > I hope you realize that egpu support natively is NEVER coming to Macs, because why the fuck would they enable it when they can just charge you full price for a desktop computer? Sounds like you are more hopeful they wont than I am that they will. They've already enabled RDMA over TB5 for ML applications, and they've left their boot loader open enough for the asahi community to reverse engineer tons of functionality. I do think eventually there will be some form of GPGPU programing popularized on the mac that isn't Metal (gross). > Apple is built on the sole image that Apple users have money, so buying another Mac Mini or Mac Pro in addition to your laptop is what you are supposed to do. I think you have a very specific use case in mind, chiefly gaming. There's a lot more eGPUs offer, and it has nothing to do with turning your normie laptop into a sick gaming rig. > Android is way ahead of Mac with Android Desktop mode and Samsung Dex, to the point where you don't even need to own a laptop anymore. Ive been using my S24/S25 with lapdock for over 3 years now as a laptop, and it works flawlessly. Apple can easily do this with iPhone, but they won't because that means one less macbook purchase. I fail to see how Android is relevant in this context at all? For one, the arm64 hardware would have to exceed the single thread and perf per watt of an M5 and secondly you'd actually need tools and applications worth using for desktop use. I am seeing some of the newer AMD 370/395 and Intel Ultra 7/9 socs as being much more of a serious alternative to the M4/5 here. In fact my current eGPU setup is an Ultra 9 mini-pc with an egpu, its just a shame im still on x86.
jaimex2 5mo ago
The only thing Apple silicon has going for it is power use and that gap is getting closed. I can't really see any reason why I would switch to Mac, it just seems like you pay a lot more for a closed expensive environment that fights you at every step. I'll never pay anyone for a developer licence or fee either. They can sponsor me to port my software to their platform.
- zer0zzz 5mo ago
  Is it? I recently paid $999 for a pre-build intel mini-pc system thats best case in line in perf with a M2 from four years ago. That seems roughly the same as what I'd paid for an equivalent mac mini in the past, and I thought prices for custom builds were going up quite a bit too?
- traderj0e 5mo ago
  Mac lets you run any software you want, but I understand the principle of not wanting to support them.

Once egpus work on Apple Silicon there will be little reason to own a pc

by zer0zzz 5mo ago

Once egpus work on Apple Silicon there will be little reason to own a pc

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

bel8 5mo ago

Mac GPU isn't the bottleneck for most games. Compatibility is.

zer0zzz 5mo ago
I’m not talking about games, I think a Mac mini on a rtx pro 4000 would be a nicer experience than a g10 is all.

_blk 5mo ago

I assume your reasons are different to mine so for your reasons it might very well be true. But for my reasons definitely not as long as Apple Silicon can't run Linux somewhat decently natively - and even then, it's still an Apple..

zer0zzz 5mo ago
Depends. I put it on an M1, and that soc is quite good at running linux.

lowbloodsugar 5mo ago

Just built a workstation with an older Threadripper Pro. It has 128 PCIE lanes, for 7 16-lane PCIE slots. An egpu has 4. I have one GPU, at x16, and I can add more. Most people don't need that, but most people don't need an eGPU either. The number of gamers who would switch to Macbook+eGPU is negligible. It's just not compelling. For LLMs, hanging a 5090 off the thunderbolt port makes prompt processing fast, but I will be surprised if the M6 doesn't come with silicon just for that, as its the current gap. M5 is quite adequate for token generation for the price, given the RAM quantity and bandwidth. An M6 that accelerates TTFT would make an eGPU irrelevant. For gaming, the threadripper gets at least +50FPS for windows vs linux, and some games just freeze for periods of time on linux with things like dynamic frame generation. I have an SSD for windows just for gaming.

bigyabai 5mo ago
> The number of gamers who would switch to Macbook+eGPU is negligible. It's just not compelling. This. eGPUs fade in and out of relevance every few years, and even back in the Intel Macbook days there were people advocating for eGPU gaming with Bootcamp. It was a terrible solution, there is every reason to avoid macOS with a dGPU when you have something like Linux or even Windows as an alternative.
- Melatonic 5mo ago
  Thats also because we keep trying to use terrible interconnects. If we get an interconnect with a proper latency spec things might change
- hacker_mar 5mo ago
  [dead]
zer0zzz 5mo ago
FWIW, I am partial to eGPUs not for laptop gaming but for space. I want to write cuda kernels at home but I dont want a big tower. I have a Minisforum mini-pc the size of an M4 Mac Mini attached to one of those egpu enclosures and the whole setup was pretty easy and sits on my desk nicely.
- traderj0e 5mo ago
  Yeah the desire makes sense. The Macs are very nice hardware. You can get a mobo/case that's not much larger than the GPU itself, but it's still clunky. It's just, unfortunately eGPUs are unlikely to become more than a curiosity.
  - zer0zzz 5mo ago
    I am definitely enjoying mine, but I've found for what I do some of the hosted kernel writing tools are easier to deal with. I actually had to do a ton of work arounds for my tb5 egpu on Linux recently for it to not drop off the pci bus every ~48 hours.

traderj0e 5mo ago

Been hearing this for over a decade, except back then it was eGPU in Intel Macs which were closer to other PCs if anything. Even if this didn't require so much DIY and if Thunderbolt could do PCIe speeds, most people don't want to add drama when they can just use a PC with regular PCIe slots and native compatibility with Nvidia. The native way already has enough edge cases without adding an unusual setup.

zer0zzz 5mo ago
What would be native enough here? What if they got Asahi working with NV gpus for rendering and running cuda kernels? Would eGPU on asahi be sufficient or do you really only see pcie worthwhile? Some of us mainly want more gpu options on a high performance consumer arm machine (for Linux).
- traderj0e 5mo ago
  Thunderbolt still doesn't provide the full PCIe bandwidth, but even if it did, I'd want PCIe itself. I don't trust the encapsulated version over Thunderbolt to work the same. Virtualized Linux would be ok though. That's what datacenters already do with their GPUs, albeit on x86 not ARM. Doesn't need to be Asahi, cause that's unlikely to completely work.
  - zer0zzz 5mo ago
    That's understandable.

ActorNightly 5mo ago

Man, Apple fans are still proving the stereotype to be accurate after 20 years. Ignoring the fact that the Mac OS gets in your way every time you try to do something that Apple doesn't like, with no guarantee that an update won't break anything existing, ignoring the fact that Macs are non repairable, non upgradable, ignoring the fact that they don't support multiple displays flawlessly, I hope you realize that egpu support natively is NEVER coming to Macs, because why the fuck would they enable it when they can just charge you full price for a desktop computer? Apple is built on the sole image that Apple users have money, so buying another Mac Mini or Mac Pro in addition to your laptop is what you are supposed to do. Android is way ahead of Mac with Android Desktop mode and Samsung Dex, to the point where you don't even need to own a laptop anymore. Ive been using my S24/S25 with lapdock for over 3 years now as a laptop, and it works flawlessly. Apple can easily do this with iPhone, but they won't because that means one less macbook purchase.

zer0zzz 5mo ago
> Man, Apple fans are still proving the stereotype to be accurate after 20 years. Who is this straw man you're flogging? > Ignoring the fact that the Mac OS gets in your way every time you try to do something that Apple doesn't like, with no guarantee that an update won't break anything existing, ignoring the fact that Macs are non repairable, non upgradable, ignoring the fact that they don't support multiple displays flawlessly, Lot to unpack there, most of it does not matter to most normies. When I bought my current mini-pc to drive my egpu I didn't focus on any of this stuff. Just about all I looked for was something that can drive a gpu over TB4/5 and has good perf/watt in a small form factor. > I hope you realize that egpu support natively is NEVER coming to Macs, because why the fuck would they enable it when they can just charge you full price for a desktop computer? Sounds like you are more hopeful they wont than I am that they will. They've already enabled RDMA over TB5 for ML applications, and they've left their boot loader open enough for the asahi community to reverse engineer tons of functionality. I do think eventually there will be some form of GPGPU programing popularized on the mac that isn't Metal (gross). > Apple is built on the sole image that Apple users have money, so buying another Mac Mini or Mac Pro in addition to your laptop is what you are supposed to do. I think you have a very specific use case in mind, chiefly gaming. There's a lot more eGPUs offer, and it has nothing to do with turning your normie laptop into a sick gaming rig. > Android is way ahead of Mac with Android Desktop mode and Samsung Dex, to the point where you don't even need to own a laptop anymore. Ive been using my S24/S25 with lapdock for over 3 years now as a laptop, and it works flawlessly. Apple can easily do this with iPhone, but they won't because that means one less macbook purchase. I fail to see how Android is relevant in this context at all? For one, the arm64 hardware would have to exceed the single thread and perf per watt of an M5 and secondly you'd actually need tools and applications worth using for desktop use. I am seeing some of the newer AMD 370/395 and Intel Ultra 7/9 socs as being much more of a serious alternative to the M4/5 here. In fact my current eGPU setup is an Ultra 9 mini-pc with an egpu, its just a shame im still on x86.

jaimex2 5mo ago

The only thing Apple silicon has going for it is power use and that gap is getting closed. I can't really see any reason why I would switch to Mac, it just seems like you pay a lot more for a closed expensive environment that fights you at every step. I'll never pay anyone for a developer licence or fee either. They can sponsor me to port my software to their platform.

zer0zzz 5mo ago
Is it? I recently paid $999 for a pre-build intel mini-pc system thats best case in line in perf with a M2 from four years ago. That seems roughly the same as what I'd paid for an equivalent mac mini in the past, and I thought prices for custom builds were going up quite a bit too?
traderj0e 5mo ago
Mac lets you run any software you want, but I understand the principle of not wanting to support them.