System specs
- Mid 2015 15" MacBook Pro ( Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB)
Mojave 10.14.6Catalina 10.15.4 (last update March 2020)- 27-inch (3840x2160) Dell UP2718Q
- 24-inch (1920x1080) Dell U2412M
eGPU hardware
- eGFX Sonnet Breakaway 550
- Gigabyte RX580 8GB
- Thunderbolt 2 cable ( https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD861LL/A/apple-thunderbolt-cable-20-m )
- Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter
Installation steps OSX
This is easy part of installation here should not appear any problem. Prepare you video card and eGFX, insert video card and insert Thunderbolt 3 to eGFX and connect Thunderbol 2 to it.
- Open Terminal in osx
- Here is the page with script that we will use: ( purge-wrangler )
- You need to copy that code and insert that code to Terminal.
- Enter password to Terminal as required.
- Reboot your system.
- Insert your eGPU Thunderbolt to Macbook.
- Log-out from Mojave, log-in.
- Enjoy.
Comments
I do picture editing and a bit of video making, Lightroom, Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve.
Everything runs good, most of the power you see in Resolve, and powering that 4K screen of mine. Rest of the OS doesn't really show much more. Anyway flawless installation and usage. Thanks to all those making the scripts!!!
Mid-2015 Macbook Pro Retina - Core i7 - iGPU Intel Iris Pro - eGPU AMD Radeon RX580 - Sonnet Breakaway 550 - Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter - Screen 1 Dell UP2718Q - Screen 2 Dell U2412M
2015 15" MacBook Pro [4th, 4C, H] + RX 580 @16Gbps-TB2>TB3 (Sonnet Breakaway 550) + macOS 10.14.6 [build link]
@_photoguy_ Thank you for sharing this nice build guide! Thunderbolt 2 Macs + eGPU through an external monitor have better performance than most would expect. It's a significant boost with iGPU-only Macs.
• external graphics card builds
• best laptops for external GPU
• eGPU enclosure buyer's guide
2020 13" MacBook Pro [10th,4C,G] + RTX 2080 Ti @ 32Gbps-TB3 (AORUS Gaming Box) + Win10 2004 [build link]
In general yes, though my 4K display is really taxing the mac no matter what!
Mid-2015 Macbook Pro Retina - Core i7 - iGPU Intel Iris Pro - eGPU AMD Radeon RX580 - Sonnet Breakaway 550 - Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter - Screen 1 Dell UP2718Q - Screen 2 Dell U2412M
2015 15" MacBook Pro [4th, 4C, H] + RX 580 @16Gbps-TB2>TB3 (Sonnet Breakaway 550) + macOS 10.14.6 [build link]
Just updated my build desc with up to date OS details, still working good though now suffering from some kernel stability issues since 10.15.4
I would stay on 10.15.1
Mid-2015 Macbook Pro Retina - Core i7 - iGPU Intel Iris Pro - eGPU AMD Radeon RX580 - Sonnet Breakaway 550 - Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter - Screen 1 Dell UP2718Q - Screen 2 Dell U2412M
2015 15" MacBook Pro [4th, 4C, H] + RX 580 @16Gbps-TB2>TB3 (Sonnet Breakaway 550) + macOS 10.14.6 [build link]
@_photoguy_,
Thanks for the update.
Looking at either your case or the Chroma Core.
I'm currently on Mojave (10.14.6) trying to stay clear from Catalina (10.15) as seems I've read mixed reports of issues with Adobe Premiere and I use my machine mainly for video editing.
How much of a boost do you get vs without the gpu for example in video render time?
To do: Create my signature with system and expected eGPU configuration information to give context to my posts. I have no builds.
.@_photoguy_,
Thanks for the update.Looking at either your case or the Chroma Core.
I'm currently on Mojave (10.14.6) trying to stay clear from Catalina (10.15) as seems I've read mixed reports of issues with Adobe Premiere and I use my machine mainly for video editing.
How much of a boost do you get vs without the gpu for example in video render time?
I upgraded to Catalina, now running latest 10.15.5, pretty stable.
Apart from sleeping with the GPU plugged in, that basically stopped working with Catalina: before I used to put the mac to sleep and disconnect power cables and it would resume nicely. Now it 99% goes into some kernel panic or another. Or related to power modes.
I use Davinci resolve which, as far as I know, is a little bit more optimised than Adobe products in terms of GPU usage. With that it's like night and day: try to do anything on the integrated Intel 630 and it's like cycling uphill. Plug in the GPU and it's like you got a good performance sedan.
It also depends a lot on what you're doing: a lot of codecs don't support parallel GPU computing, so they stress the CPU more and don't gain anything by having a powerful GPU. Other things like LUTs, color grading, etc are more prone to GPU optimisations and you can definitely see the speedup there in terms of real time rendering as well as delivery rendering.
Last week I rendered a 4K 9m video in about 10h, averaging 0.5 fps.
The same on the intel was projecting 36h to complete, I didn't bother.
Better GPU would prolly yield even better results, but I'm an amateur so I'm really happy like this.
Mid-2015 Macbook Pro Retina - Core i7 - iGPU Intel Iris Pro - eGPU AMD Radeon RX580 - Sonnet Breakaway 550 - Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter - Screen 1 Dell UP2718Q - Screen 2 Dell U2412M
2015 15" MacBook Pro [4th, 4C, H] + RX 580 @16Gbps-TB2>TB3 (Sonnet Breakaway 550) + macOS 10.14.6 [build link]
9m 4k video in 10 hours, that's a crazy amount of time for exporting still!
What's the speed of your cpu?
To do: Create my signature with system and expected eGPU configuration information to give context to my posts. I have no builds.
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