Attaching a Thunderbolt GPU to a Macbook Air | Hacker News Reader

Attaching a Thunderbolt GPU to a Macbook Air

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Let's be honest: The Thunderbolt ecosystem is tragic.

- We're only now seeing the first docks come available. It only took Belkin an extra year to develop it.

- The hopes and dreams of internal buses being used outside the standard case is still only a dream unless you are willing to pay extreme premiums. Even then there is still no native solution for video.

- I still need a special cord from Apple to run Dual-link. If I want a Thunderbolt display for my Macbook, I still end up with a power cord adapter that's over a year out of date.

- And now Apple wants to convince us that somehow, someway, the forthcoming Mac Pro will somehow usher in a new wave of adoption? What flavor Kool-Aid are they drinking and are they somehow consuming it through FW800?

While USB3 is faring a little better, I still encounter mystical errors any time I use a card that relies on Displaylink drivers. The fact of the matter is that it seems like this latest generation of ports is being hindered less by the underlying technology and more by corporate bullshit that leaves us all frustrated.

Ugh, don't get me started on the $300 Belkin Docks. ($250 for the Matrox DS1 / $400 for the Sonnet Echo 15!)

I feel like I'm living in the early days of VHS (USB3) vs. BetaMax (ThunderBolt) right now: Expensive, and while BetaMax is technically better, VHS will win on price & availability.

Could you expand on this? I've been eyeing the Belkin.

Nothing personal/technological; the reviews of it have been very positive.

It's the $300 MSRP is a just a little ridiculous. (Though I know it takes a lot of R&D.. etc..., but this is just how Firewire devices were: full of promise, but are few and far between plus priced too high)

> $300 MSRP is a just a little ridiculous

Is it? Sounds pretty normal to me. Belkin is a pretty good brand and charges accordingly. Like Apple, really.

I think that for their target market $300 won't be a barrier at all. In fact after checking it out I'm pretty tempted...

$300 is about 3 times what it should be, in my opinion. It's not much more than a fancy USB hub with audio & a NIC. USB 3.0 hubs with NICs are about $50-60, or one could easily use a regular USB 3.0 hub and attach a USB NIC, sound card, etc. Perhaps not as clean but a hell of a lot cheaper.

Even worse, the price is not really $300 - in order to use it, you'll need a thunderbolt cable which is nearly $40 (!).

There are few to no storage solutions that can benefit from thunderbolt over USB 3.0 and the whole ecosystem reeks of greed and vendor lock-in. No, thanks.

The cable costs $40 because there are two discrete processors at either end. Intel charges about $20 each for those processors. The margins on Thunderbolt cables are probably a lot worse than you'd think.

It doesn't matter why the cable is $40, just that you need a $40 cable to use a $300 dock.

What are you smoking? You cannot get anything even remotely similar for $100.

> one could easily use a regular USB 3.0 hub and attach a USB NIC, sound card, etc. Perhaps not as clean but a hell of a lot cheaper

Great, go and string together your tangle of bargain basement crap all over your desk. The whole point of these docks is to not do that.

You guys are not in the target market. I'm surprised you even have macs.

I'm waiting for the $200 CalDigit Station. No FireWire port but multiple USB3 and you can attach 2 monitors, 1 HDMI & 1 Mini DisplayPort.

Still a bit pricy.

Compared to what, USB3 DisplayLink docks? $200 is competitive with dual video DisplayLink docks and can out-perform them in video display (not to mention OS X support for DisplayLink sucks). It can also daisy chain other Thunderbolt devices that can out-perform the USB3 devices you could use on a DisplayLink dock.

To be fair to Apple, DisplayLink kind of sucks on everything.

Apple also supports USB 3.0. go nuts with it if thats what you want, but they are not madefor the same kind of applications.

For some professional enviroments Apple still considers Thunderbolt to be useful. Its sad that they are the only ones thinking this way becouse it truly is a good solution and having more brands on board will probably push the price of cables and docks down, but if we are going to point fingers I think Intel is the one we should point them to.

Considering Intel forced them to use it as a condition of going with a complete platform solution for Apple hardware, it's not a bad idea to point a great deal of the blame at them.

But it's been nearly three goddamned years and the uptake on Thunderbolt is nothing short of pathetic; some of the blame has got to rest with Apple.

It reminds me of firewire, and even that was more popular than thunderbolt.

At least firewire didn't cannibalize your video output port

That's why most Thunderbolt devices allow for daisy-chaining.

Thunderbolt, yes. But when using it for its original purpose as a miniDisplayPort, you run out of options quickly.

I've been assuming this is what Apple is going to do with the next MBP retina. Intel graphics when headless + a new Thunderbolt Display with built-in Nvidia or ATI card when "docked."

Partially agree. I assume Apple wants to go down the truly portable route and offer an addon graphics card in the size and shape of either an airport extreme or apple tv/mini. This would allow someone with a mini to stack a graphics card under it and have the graphics card inbetween the mini & any other screen.

I am/was hoping thunderbolt would provide me the equivalent of a docking station set up for Apple laptops. Hooking up one cable is an acceptable alternative to a docking station. My last Apple laptop setup required four plug ins, monitor, power, keyboard, and mouse. Yeah I know I could wireless the mouse/keyboard but that isn't the point.

Apple already sells a Thunderbolt docking station, with a very nice 27" display built in.

Personally I think baking the GPU power into the displays themselves is the more Apple-y approach. As opposed to some sort of additional-stackable-boxes solution.

(Which I'd love to see; I just don't see Apple doing it.)

> Personally I think baking the GPU power into the displays themselves is the more Apple-y approach.

I don't agree.

Any Monitor with built in GPU won't make sense with the new Mac Pro, which (I think) will be the driving force for the new (likely 4K) Thunderbolt cinema displays.

But without the GPU what Apple machines other than Mac Pros will decently drive a 4k display? [1]

Apple's left the Pro line to languish for so long, I can't imagine they'd let it limit their ability to differentiate in the larger display business.

[1] And of those upgraded MBPs that could hit 4k aren't going to be able to do it on two displays, which is quite popular.

GPUs become obsolete way faster than monitors.

Are you trying to say Apple wouldn't put GPUs in displays because it might accelerate the display upgrade cycle?

I'm trying to say that customers aren't quite stupid enough to invest in a display that they'll throw out 18 months later.

In a product line-up where a new GPU requires an entire new machine, merely having to replace a display would actually be an improvement.

Not that people with those sorts of interests, even when Apple customers, rely on Apple hardware to serve those interests.

As long as it can be used with a pass-through Thunderbolt mode, it would still be perfectly usable as a display/port expander without using the internal GPU, should you buy a faster machine.

Also, Apple stuff seems to last damn near forever, so it'll hold a lot of resale value (even if the GPU is two years old) for those who want to upgrade.

It would be great if that docking station optionally included an awesome GPU. In the mean time, daisy chaining something like this on to the back looks very interesting.

> monitor, power, keyboard, and mouse

+ sound

Although I use USB hub so 1x usb.

> addon graphics card in the size and shape of either an airport extreme or apple tv/mini

Wouldn't the latency remove any substantial merit?

Sony has done this in the past. The add-on wasn't cheap.

    Checkout Option:
    
    [ ] That P stands for "Prosumer", not "Professional", until you add this monitor.
        + $1299

I've been wondering something similar. Since you can lock in the 'value add' of the display, and the current Cinema display with TB is pretty full of stuff anyway, that you'd get a display with built in GPU rather than a display which is being sent the pixels. Not sure how that compares bandwidth consumption wise but from the ability for drivers to not recognize non Apple hosts its a total win.

Your about $400 from an iMac at that point.

Unless that iMac folds down into a macbook pro when you leave the house that's kind of irrelevant

Well, unless this display comes with a MacBook Pro, I think that's relevant.

The only issue I see with this is that graphics cards become obsolete much faster than monitors do. I wouldn't want to replace my perfectly good monitor just because the graphics are too slow.

The obvious answer is a user replaceable card - but that hardly screams "Apple."

This is what people are used to with laptops, so there is a form of precedent.

Apple wouldn't care - look at the 'ancient' video card in the Mac Pro

I would LOVE to see Apple's version of a laptop dock, so far we've only seen kinda ugly all-about-usability docks from the likes of lenovo, nothing aesthetically pleasing, so I think it would be really cool to see what Apple would come up with in this department.

For examples of slightly bad ideas look no further than the Thinkpad Helix -- it would work if there was no switch to undock and they could figure out a way to get rid of the whole flap thing...

> It has become very clear that gaming is not only high-performance, but super practical on an 11" Macbook Air.

I think we have different operational definitions of "practical" here.

Windows only.

> Oh and we're using Windows because games only exist for it, and I can't get the setup to work on OSX (haven't tried too much though).

Is this necessarily true? If you can get drivers for the video card, wouldn't it work?

You need Apple drivers, and Apple only makes drivers for video cards they support. So it would not be quite that straightforward.

A vendor can create their own drivers. This happens all the time for hardware made for the existing Mac Pro.

The existing Mac Pro is quite old. Are graphics cards still being made that support it?

My understanding is newer 'PC' cards with EFI firmware are unofficially supported.

The current Mac Pro is only 1 year old (although that was just a minor CPU bump). Similarly, graphics cards you can get for the Mac Pro are typically a year or so old. You can buy GTX 680s from NVidia or Radeon HD 7950s from ATI.

The newest cards need to be flashed to Mac firmware. For example, you can buy pre-flashed GTX 770s like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-GTX-770-2-GB-for-Apple-Mac-Pr...

What about the driver hacks people made for hackintosh machines?

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.8.4#Graph...

I was hoping for an external GPU enclosure, like a storage bay, that lets me plug in my own card ever since Thunderbolt was announced.

This is a hack that goes: Thunderbolt -> ExpressCard -> PCI-Express. Two adapters is not quite so elegant, but whatever, this seems to work and I love it.

A 13" Air has 12 hours of battery life and weighs nothing and now you can dock it at home to game. Perfect.

Me too. It's sad to read that Intel is blocking the release of such a product. I don't want a separate gaming system, I want an addon for my mac.

Apart from cost - what's preventing this from working with something like the Echo-Express pro? http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresschassis.html - are there software limitations that will prevent a graphics-card from working in that chassis?

I think you're looking at power problems. That page says that it has a 100W or 150W power supply. High end cards often top out above 200W[1].

[1] - http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/279391-28-power-requiremen...

Bandwidth. We can (and already have) gotten video cards working across external links, but they are severely bandwidth constrained.

Thunderbolt is constrained to 10Gbit (20Gbit in some contrived used cases if your'e using Thunderbolt2). A 16-lane PCI-e gaming video card consumes anywhere between 32Gbit and 126Gbit (with modern cards coming in on the high end of that).

So you can get it working, but it'd be mostly pointless. The main impetus for an external video card is to get desktop-like video performance for demanding applications like gaming, but you are heavily bus-bottlenecked which reduces the video performance to a small fraction of its potential.

Village Instruments released a ready-made product years ago:

http://www.villageinstruments.com/tiki-index.php?page=ViDock

...Or you could put together a proper gaming machine for the same price.

I didn't see where it said they did this for cost-effectiveness

Why do something interesting when you can do something boring?

Common doesn't always mean boring.

Of course. I agree that it's cool hack. It's just not very practical.

I am a developer and I prefer developing on my macbook by FAR over windows and I prefer it a lot over Ubuntu et al. Right now I still have my desktop PC taking up space and clutering my desk just so that I can play a few games. I'd rather sell it and for less than what I get for the whole thing buy a thunderbolt GPU and game that way.

Your argument is invalid and only considered from a 'I want to game' point of view, not from a "I prefer a Mac and would like to play PC games without a 'proper gaming machine'" point of view.

With this solution you have a PC power supply + a GPU + a bunch of adapters and cables. This probably takes up as much space as a small case would.

This solution also only works in Windows. So you still have to set up and maintain a separate "gaming machine", aka a Windows partition on your Mac.

I don't think it's a really great idea, games take a lot of disk space and you must have a windows partition. The macbook air storage is a bit small imo.

Plus you don't want to play on a 13 inches screen, let's be realistic.

Not to mention that "clutering" desk with a full keyboard, a good mouse and a bigger screen will still be needed.

@bryanlarsen and @infinita740

I don't agree and I think you lack imagination. My computer case is still a lot bigger than such a setup would be.

I do agree to an extent with Bryan, saying that one could get a small case and put a computer in there, but then I'd have 2 things to keep up to date (and pay for). My Macbook has 16GB of memory and an i5 processor. My Desktop has an i5 as well and 8GB of memory plus some hard drives, dvd, drive, etc, etc and the GPU. The GPU is the one thing my Mac lacks. So with $250 (according to the article) I can upgrade something that I will have no matter what, my Macbook, since I use it to work on, and get rid of something that I am now forced to have (hobbying aside).

@infinita I already have a 'proper' 24inch screen on my desk at home and some Logitech Z5500 speakers and a gaming mouse. I can game using my Macbook's keyboard easily. This will all be there even if I'd get rid of my Desktop.

With this 'new' setup I can have just the GPU on my desk, or build some custom casing (cables and adapters be gone) and attach it behind my monitor. I then just plugin the Macbook and boom, instant gaming pleasure. Besides, when companies start building these setups they would grow smaller and more practical.

As for windows, that is nothing a small thunderbolt (or USB3) harddrive won't solve. Granted it might be a bit slower than SATA (is that true for thunderbolt as well?), but hard drives are not the main bottleneck in gaming anyway, the GPU, CPU and RAM are still more important. I for one don't even use RAID in my current PC.

It is not all ideal, but it still is a lot more ideal than maintaining and upgrading 2 machines and have this huge case standing around just for some GTA V.

While both laptop and desktop may have i5, the desktop i5 should be about 50 % faster on single threaded tasks, and almost three times faster on multi threaded tasks. Of course, you won't notice that when browsing or doing similar light tasks, but otherwise, three times difference is huge. It means waiting 20 minutes for video to transcode instead of hour, for example. When doing data crunching or building big software, desktops are really useful.

Sure you can. However, I already own a MacBook which I use for everything except gaming, for which I had to buy a PC. As soon as these external GPUs become available commercially, I don't have to buy a separate PC for gaming anymore, just a nice GPU and the case, which actually _is_ more cost effective bottom line, assuming that I need my notebook anyway.

You can put together a good gaming machine for $250? That seems a bit low to me but I haven't priced computer parts in a while.

Pretty sure they're referring to the cost of the computer + parts...Also, its like $400-500 for parts unless you have a [fairly] recent graphics card just sitting around

The OP costs $250 + GPU + Windows license, and doesn't have a case. It's also quite likely that the OP is also using an external hard disk rather than putting Windows & a few large games on his SSD. If so, $250 can get you a MB/CPU/RAM/PS.

Must have forgotten to include the Thunderbolt cable for $29...

$250 is too low. But the whole setup with MBA with 512 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM and i7 CPU, the GPU and then the $250 in parts is not only enough money for powerful desktop computer, it is enough money for cheaper MBA variant and then powerful desktop computer.

But then you don't have a Macbook Air for when you want a great portable OS X machine with excellent battery life.

You would have Macbook Air, just not one with 512 GB SDD.

Of course, from the MBA with 512 GB SSD we can assume the OP has unlimited amount of money :)

And you can still run OSX on it...

This is my current setup (minus the drives / SSDs I own already): http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1mjxn

Runs OSX 10.8/10.9, Arch linux and Win7

Any caveats on running OS X on this setup? Thanks for sharing, btw. :)

I run 2 x 30" (2560x1440) and 1 21"(1920x1200) IPS monitors (all DVI). I have 3 Samsung 540 256GB SSD, 2 WD RED 7200RPM 3TB drives (with lifetime warranty!) in the slots.

1. You should probably jump up to 750W PSU (Which is what I did in the end) just for a little more wiggle room. I also moved to small footprint RAM to fit under my cooler -- 4 x 8GB sticks.

2. Use Clover not Chameleon as your bootloader. It's EFI emulation is much better and will give a better OOTB experience (less fiddling with Kexts)

3. You might want to use a different mobo, the Realtec989 can behave strangely under OSX (popping / random interrupts) but this only happened on one install for me and a fresh install cleared it up.

4. Win7 will not install if the drive isn't device 1 or if there are HFS drives around (I have no idea why, seeing as it installs fine on my MBP -- there must be some EFI magic).

5. Fuck any SSD not made by Intel or Samsung -- make sure to use one of the Trim Enablers on the OSX side of things.

6. Don't OC the graphics card unless you're prepared to do some debugging under all OSes you plan on running.

7. OC in increments for the CPU -- test under all OSes before ratcheting up

8. Don't use Win8 with HFS drives, it does stupid shit to their metadata and headers.

9. I didn't bother setting up WiFi since my apartment is wired, but it shouldn't be too hard. Use the included wireless card and there are drivers out there that are confirmed to work.

> Fuck any SSD not made by Intel or Samsung

Why?

I suspect this is a hangover from when drive firmware/chipsets were terrible - Samsung and Intel have been ahead of the curve.

Something Awful's Hardware/Software forum has a huge thread on SSDs. The thread name is pretty explicit of what NOT to use:

"The SSD Megathread - Don't buy OCZ or Crucial drives, read the OP!"

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=345...

To summarize if you don't have an account:

I don't want to read anything just tell me what SSD to buy! (last updated: 07/25/2013)

The Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe is consistently the best value, get a 240GB or larger drive if you can for best results. The non-Deluxe version uses slightly slower memory, but the Deluxe is usually only ~$5 more expensive so get that unless the non-Deluxe is on sale. See the lists below for more options:

Great, rock-solid drives: * Samsung 840 Pro

* Intel SSD 520 (probably not worth the price premium, discontinued)

* SanDisk Extreme

* Intel SSD 330 (3K-endurance memory)

Good value drives: * Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe (best value, the non-Deluxe version is only a bit slower, but also usually not much cheaper)

* Intel SSD 335 (1.5K-endurance memory, 240GB+ only)

* Samsung 840 non-Pro (1K-endurance memory, 250GB+ only, 120GB version may only last ~3.5 years)

BAD drives to avoid: * OCZ drives have very poor reliability, probably due to insufficient memory validation.

* Kingston drives seem to have reliability issues, perhaps also due to insufficient memory validation?

* ADATA drives also seem to have issues due to memory validation.

* Crucial drives are plagued by firmware issues. The M4 has had a lot of problems but seems to have stabilized (but is a poor value today so shouldn't be purchased), the M500 is brand-new and has known issues, and the V4 is the worst SSD on the market (far slower than an HDD).

* Plextor drives benchmark well but have poorly-tuned firmware.

* SATA300 and other older/last-gen drives are not as reliable as modern drives.

NEW drives to avoid until they mature: * Samsung 840 EVO (potential to be the best SSD)

* SanDisk Extreme II (brand new, lots of potential)

* SanDisk Ultra Plus (would make a decent low-end drive, but isn't usually much cheaper than the other faster drives in the "Good" list above such as the Mushkin Enhanced Chronos)

* Seagate 600 and 600 Pro (new LAMD-based drives, seem to have potential)

* Crucial M500 (960GB model is interesting, but M500 has firmware issues, Crucial has a BAD history resolving those)

* Corsair Neutron (new LAMD-based drive with the same name and better performance, how to tell apart from old slower Corsair Neutron?)

Funny, my 520 got flaky after 6 months and failed after 2 years.

I have an Intel (not sure which model, X-25M? Does that exist?) I got in 2009, it started failing last year (SMART warned me). I emailed Intel about it and they asked me to send them SMART results, I did, they told me to mail them the drive, I backed everything up just fine and sent it in, and a (hellish, HDD-slow) week later I got a brand new one.

Restored the data, it's still going like a champ.

> not sure which model, X-25M? Does that exist?

Yup, famous for being pretty much the first range of affordable SSDs that didn't suck.

The year before you'd be lucky to get more than double digit random writes/sec with anything. One OCZ I tried around that time couldn't even get past one digit - it managed something like 6 writes/second. Then the X-25M/E, came out and suddenly we get tens of thousands.

Anecdotal evidence. No manufacturer has a 0% defect rate.

Still, the return rates (for some online retailers but they are probably generalizable) have shown that Intel and Samsung are your best options.

>2 WD RED 7200RPM 3TB drives (with lifetime warranty!)

I thought Reds were ~5400 RPM ("Intellipower") with a three year warranty.

The 'cool, bro!' names for PC components are usually mildly amusing, but I had to laugh when I saw a PSU named 'fatality'... like you want to associate your PSU with death.

(it's named after a pro gamer, which makes it even funnier - I can just imagine shilling for a PSU: 'The 12V rail on this supply helps me react even faster!')

Well, I wouldn't want a $20 PSU blowing up during a match...

Why make a newer smartphone with 2x faster graphics when... you could buy a proper gaming machine for the same price.

Hm, the only reason I want a new Macbook Air over an Ultrabook is that it has the HD5000 graphics which are way faster than anything else on the ultraportable market right now. Ultrabooks with HD5000 graphics still haven't launched. If you're going to install Windows on it you might as well buy a (way cheaper) notebook instead.

Good writeup! For a home workstartion setup this would be pretty ideal imo..it would possibly also reduce heat as the load is moved from the internal GPU to an external one. Windows only kills this though, as i can use my old windows rig from 2009 with a somewhat recent GPU (core2quad 2.8Ghz + HD6870) which still plays basically every game without breaking a sweat.

For my work setup with OSX something like this would be great!

Yeah, $250-not-counting-the-GPU is very much in the "why wouldn't I just dust off my old mid-tower?" range.

So can I do this with my mid 2011 27" imac to get additional graphics performance or drive additional displays with ease?

I just got my shiny new MBA 13" 2013 today and was searching for something like this. Talk about timing.

Hmmm, this is really cool. I'm wondering how well this'll work with my first gen Thunderbolt MBP.

Is it possible to achieve the same result on a mac mini (with an external display, of course) ?

I don't see any reason why not. Coincidentally this is exactly what interests me as well, though I do have an 11" MBA too so I might use it for both at different times.

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