2012 15" MacBook Pro Retina (GT650M) [3rd,4C,Q] + GTX 1070 @ 10Gbps-TB1>TB3 (AKiTiO Node) + macOS 10.13 & Win10 [ozzy]  

As an update to this, I've played 2 hours of Mad Max on OS X (which I couldn't play before because of the 650m not being powerful enough).  I don't know the exact framerate but it was 95% smooth with everything on the highest at 1440p, and 100% smooth at 1080p.  Looked very good. 

 

Benchmark results

 macOS

Overview of config:   

Cuda-z showing bandwidth   

Heaven benchmark in OS X using external monitor at 1080p:

Heaven benchmark in OS X using external monitor at 1440p:

Heaven benchmark in OS X on internal MBP monitor at 1080p windowed mode:

Heaven benchmark on internal screen using 650m at 1680x1050   

 

---

Windows 10

Cuda scores:

1440p Heaven benchmark on the external screen on the 1070:

1080p Heaven benchmark on the internal screen using the 1070:

1080p Heaven benchmark on the internal screen using the 650m:

1080p Heaven benchmark on the external screen using the 1070:

This first successful implementation of a GT650M 15″ MBP with an AKiTiO Node thread has been tidied up and added to the implementations table.  Nice work getting it all going.

Hi ozzy, congrats on making it work!

However I do have a similar setup (non retina Macbook Pro 2012, 650M, Akitio Node with 980Ti Hybrid via TB1), which won't get recognized at all in Win10 Pro.

When you just plugged in the Akitio Node w/o doing any tweaks to Windows etc. did it just show up in the Windows Device Manager?

Just wondering, since mine is not being recognized at all in Nandos script (1.35) and Windows 10 Device Manager. In OSX everything works perfect though.

Thanks a lot!

Hi All!

I also just received all my hardware and trying to make this work.  I was able to to set it up via OSX without any issues as suggested above and it works great.  My issue is with windows recognition.  I'll list my specs below, but the strange thing was that my 980 Ti did show up on a boot to windows without doing anything.  I then followed the directions of uninstalling the 650 driver and I lost all screen capabilities...everything went black.  After several attempts at going into safe mode and re-installing and repairing, the system seems to be fundamentally bugged.  I therefor had to reinstall via a clone of a slightly older setup and do all my updates.  Now, my 980Ti does not show up at all.  I have not installed Nandos script yet, because I thought I read that you want it recognized first in the device manager...is that correct?  Any suggestions would be great!  THX!

MBP Retina - mid 2012 - 16 gig RAM

Intel Graphics 4000

nVidia Geforce GT 650M

nVidia Geforce GTX 980Ti Gigabyte G1 Gaming OC Edition

Akitio Node via TB3 to TB 2/1

 

I should also note that i'm using Windows 10.  Also, I found in my device manager a PCI Express Root Port issue and the properties show a code 35.  Is this the error 35 people have talked about?  I was not expecting to see the error here..if it is it looks like I can install Nando's script.  Thx for any comments or advise.

Posted by: [email protected]

 

Hi ozzy, congrats on making it work!

However I do have a similar setup (non retina Macbook Pro 2012, 650M, Akitio Node with 980Ti Hybrid via TB1), which won't get recognized at all in Win10 Pro.

When you just plugged in the Akitio Node w/o doing any tweaks to Windows etc. did it just show up in the Windows Device Manager?

Just wondering, since mine is not being recognized at all in Nandos script (1.35) and Windows 10 Device Manager. In OSX everything works perfect though.

Thanks a lot!

 

Good question.  I didn't have any issues getting the Nod to be recognized in Windows, although I didn't check the Device Manager at all.  However, once I uninstalled the 650m drivers and installed the new nVidia desktop drivers and restarted the 1070 was showing up in Device Manager, but with an error.  Once that happened, I needed the DIY eGPU 1.35 script to do its magic on boot in order to get rid of the error 35 in Device Manager and have the external display attached to the 1070 actually work.

I saw your other post about having trouble getting this to work.  What is the firmware on your Node?  And are you using the Apple TB3 -> TB1 adapter?  I think someone asked that, but not sure I saw an answer.

 

Posted by: egee

 

I should also note that i'm using Windows 10.  Also, I found in my device manager a PCI Express Root Port issue and the properties show a code 35.  Is this the error 35 people have talked about?  I was not expecting to see the error here..if it is it looks like I can install Nando's script.  Thx for any comments or advise.

   

I can check when I get home tonight to see if that's a similar error to what I got on the 1070 when I didn't run the script, although from memory it does look like it.  But that's weird it would show up on the PCI Express root rather than the card.  And it's also strange that the card isn't showing up in the Device Manager as well. Have you installed the latest nVidia desktop drivers?

That's a bummer about having to restore Windows from a backup.  I remember when I uninstalled the 650m drivers the screen went black. I think I restarted and had an un-accelerated screen running in something like 640x480 and then proceeded to install the new nVidia desktop drivers, which also caused the screen to go black during install but I just left it running and after 5-10 minutes or so it came back to normal with full Retina resolution.

OK, I have a good update!  So I started from scratch on both OS X & Windows and did clean installs.  I do them once a year anyway.  Unfortunately my OS X is still crashing on boot.  Once the loader bar gets half way, it crashes and reboots.  

On the other hand, I was still having some issues with windows as well and so I removed the card from the Node and checked all connections and switched the power cables.  After that, BOOM...instant recognition in the clean install of windows.  It did register first as a Microsoft Generic GPU with error code 35, but once I installed the nVidia driver it showed up correctly.  I did not uninstall the existing 650M driver.

I then ran @Nando's boot loader and I also have had no connections issue with this.  The eGPU gets recognized without any tinkering.  Here is where I am confused, the configuration sequence is a mystery to me.  I followed @Nando's videos but when I set up the PCI compaction I get a not found error on all of them.  I decided to stop here and see what you guys did for this set up.  None of you guys went into detail about it.

Any comments would be great and if anyone knows why my OS X is crashing when it did originally work, that would be great too!  Almost there!

rMBP mid 2012 - Akitio Node - TB3 to TB1 Apple Adapter - nVidia 980Ti OC Gamers Edition.

egee, for your 2012 GT650M Macbook, proceed with the following steps to eradicate error 12/35:

– Reboot the system
– At the Windows bootmenu, select Setup 1.35
– Select Option 3 Setup 1.35 ->menu-based and wait for it to start
– Select PCI compaction->legacy mode (checked)
– Select PCI compaction->closeunusedbridges (checked)
– Select PCI compaction->Run compact -> All except SATA+…
– Select startup.bat->Test run
– Select Chainloader->Test Run
– Select Windows

Check the status of the eGPU. If is now working, then from this point onwards whenever you wish to use the eGPU reboot via Setup 1.35->automated startup via startup.bat (default) which will replay all of this in an automated fashion.

@nando4...thanks for the quick reply.  It does not look like that worked.  Out of 3 tries, two went to a pixelated screen and the both the external and internal screens black and one time it just booted normally, but still with error 35.

You might need to let it sit for 5-10 minutes when the screen is black before it comes back to life.  I seem to remember it taking a while...

Hi Ozzy,

I have exactly the same hardware, akitio node, MacBook pro retina 2012 and GTX 1070. The setup works fine in MacOS following your step. However the trouble is in Windows. My window has never been able to detect my GTX 1070 under the "Device Manager", even though I have tried everything about hotplugging as descripted in another post. I would like to know how you get the windows to even show your 1070 under Device Manager? 

same setup here, im not interested in windows. but im experiencing weird partial blackouts on the external screen, the system becomes unresponsive by then. anyone else having such issues? it makes my system really unusable.

@[email protected]
@egee
@superbkriz

If you're still having trouble, I have a little more detailed guide over here. Feel free to try it.

@ari

I think an exerpt from the system log would be helpful. I do have kernel panics with my setup from time to time in macOS :).

Hello and thank you for this post.

I saw this about a month ago, followed the instructions as I have the exact same setup- minus .3GHz on my i7 and I purchased a premade box from Aorus (1070). Your instructions are clear, concise, and to the point- so thanks for the in depth post on how you made this work. 

Two days ago I purchased an external audio interface device (Scarlett i2i) and a pair of external monitors (Yamaha HS5 speakers). I changed the external audio source input and output to the Scarlett device) within the System Preferences. All was good, I played Guild Wars 2 for a few hours; and messed around in Ableton for another few hours. I went to bed and left the setup on, like I usually do. However I left it connected to the internet, which I don't usually do overnight.

Anyway, I woke up and restarted my computer as the external screen was not showing picture when I turned on the Samsung display connected to my eGPU. The lights and fans were working like normal in my eGPU box so I decided to restart the system. After restarting and toggling options within the NVIDIA web driver panel several times, the Samsung screen still would not show anything from my eGPU. To add insult to injury, my screen was tearing doing simple tasks on my MBP, a sign the driver isn't working correctly. 

I have had the screen tearing happen before and it was always fixed by toggling from onboard to the web driver via the NVIDIA control panel- then restarting. However, this time, switching did nothing. So I chose to uninstall the driver and see what happened. Upon reboot, I became stuck on the black Apple loading screen. 

So, I launched recovery, connected my external hard drive- which conveniently had Mavericks on it from 2015 - and reinstalled the OS. Ten hours later on a terrible satellite internet connection I was up to date with High Sierra. It should be noted that I was using the above instructions and avoiding any update to High Sierra with success, instead running the last stable build of OS Sierra (released 2 months ago).

With High Sierra running I tried these instructions again and was warned with this:

The NVIDIA Web Driver Installer has encountered a problem.
The Installer has encountered an issue with your system and the NVIDIA Web Driver may not install properly. Click Continue to proceed or click Cancel to abort the installation process.

Naturally, being curious, I chose to install it. 

And I was back stuck on the black Apple loading screen. Rebooted into recovery and first wiped my SDD, then did a fresh install of OS High Sierra (again). The computer now works as it should, however I was presented with the same warning from above when trying to get my eGPU to work. I chose not to proceed the second time around. 

After reading around here and tonymacx68's forum I came across two possible reasons why my eGPU chose to stop working overnight. First, and I apologize I can't remember where the post is, another user a few days back had written a detailed description of a crash/error report of some kind. Another user traced the error to a MIKEY kext file, or something along those lines (I'll update this once I find the post), which was an audio driver issue if I remember correctly. So is having just added the Scarlett 2i2 external USB audio interface (external sound card), causing the eGPU to all of the sudden to stop working? Or do you think my computer downloaded High Sierra or something overnight and installed it somehow? The second option seems highly unlikely as I have automatic updates shut completely off.

Not sure how to proceed if this is the case, as I would like to be able to use both my eGPU and my external audio interface. Right now I am downloading and in the process of downgrading back to Sierra with a clean install, then running this gauntlet again to get the eGPU working again. 

I'll update you on the process but any feedback or tips would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

HP

 

Upgraded to macOS10.13

From [APP] NVIDIA eGPU support for High Sierra (NVIDIAEGPUSupport)

Posted by: ozzy

Just want to add my name to the list of successes.

2012 Retina 15″ MBP with 650m discrete card, Akitio Node, and nVidia 1070. Works fine on first boot up and ran benchmark that clearly showed eGPU driving the external display.

 

Is hotplugging / hotunplugging with the 2012 Macbook Pro Retina 15inch and a Nvidia card possible or not?

@Christian I've never been able to get hot-lugging/unplugging to work, but I also haven't really tried very hard. I've always just plugged it in before booting the Mac.