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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

Is thunderbolt fast enough to drive a high end GPU?

Fast external GPUs are my dream. I can buy a convenient sized laptop with excellent specs in every category except for GPU. As soon as I want a good GPU, the laptop has to become a 10lb monster.

I want to just dock it at my home desk with the GPU and convert my laptop into essentially a desktop workstation. Then I can undock it and take it out to the coffeeshop when I want to work outside. Maybe the external GPU is tiny too, and I can throw that in my backpack with it when I want to do gamedev work outside the house.

I don't think external GPUs are part of Apple's plan. The GPU comes inside the Mac, and if you want to upgrade it you can buy a new Mac.

That would seem very expensive.

External GPUs are not cheap too!

Perfect(for Apple)!

Component upgrade costs are always cheaper than replacing the entire system, but what is the cost delta between replacing two GPUs and a CPU versus replacing the system. We don't know the cost for the Mac Pro yet, but given it's size and the limited number of components that are internal, it would appear to be optimized for system-level replacement.

What Apple has designed could be described as a laptop for your desk. Sales of systems where the CPU/GPU are upgradable are plummeting. The market is driving computers in this direction.

That seems a shame , upgradeability has always let me have a relatively high performance system without breaking the bank.

I don't necessarily want a top end CPU, but I like a decent GPU and a lot of memory.

Not to mention the environmental factors.

I empathize, but the Mac Pro hasn't really been an option for anyone not looking to break the bank. If you're in to building your own systems, there are always other options:

OS X system guides - http://www.tonymacx86.com/

OS X interestingly forgoes external graphics PCIe support (for now) with Thunderbolt. Windows supports it. Also Windows, since Windows 7 supports 24+ bit panels (think Dell Ultrasharp U2711), OS X is still stuck on 16.7 million.

Lately, I haven't felt like Apple has my back for pro-A/V :/

It's basically a PCIe x4 interface, so it's about 1/4 the bandwidth of most high-end video cards, and you should be able to make an external enclosure for them. So yes, it's possible to add one, it just won't be quite as fast.

More likely, you've got 2 upgradeable graphics cards in there, already running in an SLI configuration. It should be entirely upgradeable.

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but since the video cards share the same thermal core, I'm not sure they are going to be easy to upgrade anymore.

Yes. You'd have to remove the stock heatsink and fans from the card you were putting in, which would surely invalidate its warranty straight away. Then you'd have to somehow mate it with the heatsink bases on that side of the Mac Pro's thermal core, not something that's not likely to be straightforward if the replacement card's make and model don't closely match that of the stock card it's replacing. And that's just the beginning of the possible problems.

Every indication seems to be the cards inside the Mac Pro are not upgradeable.

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