2015 15" MacBook Pro (R9 M370X) [4th,4C,H] + GTX 1070 @ 16Gbps-TB2>TB3 (AKiTiO Node) + Win10 [motoic] // PERST# delay use may apply to other MacBooks  

Thank you for posting your implementation. It presents a new puzzle. How are the Thunderbolt Cinema Display DP signals being routed?  It would seem it is being accelerated by the eGPU but how given Optimus is not running AND there is now cable between the GTX1070 and the Cinema display?

If the NVidia control panel would run then it would show graphically the LCDs attached to video cards.

Posted by: nando4

Thank you for posting your implementation. It presents a new puzzle. How are the Cinema Display DP signals being routed?  It would seem it is being accelerated by the eGPU but how given Optimus is not running AND there is now cable between the GTX1070 and the Thunderbolt display?

If the NVidia control panel would run then it would show graphically the LCDs attached to video cards.

I assume that the GTX 1070 is basically directly accelerating the Cinema Display now that the MacBook Pro's internal display is out of the picture (hehe). Not sure if that makes sense. See the screenshot. This very browser shows as accelerated.

After firing up Heaven, it shows as accelerated. Basically can confirm that the GTX 1070 is handling things and not the Radeon. (Especially since it's disabled via device manager).

In spite of all of that, NVidia control panel still won't play nice.

I tried terminating all AMD Catalyst processes and that didn't help. I would try uninstalling the Radeon drivers to see if it's a conflict in the future but for now I want to use this setup until I actually need that control panel for something.

Is there a way I can compare performance with others? I'm not sure how good these benchmarks are. 40 fps at 1440P with ultra settings (no AA/AF) seems pretty good to me though.

@timothyov I believe by disabling the internal display, the Cinema display becomes the primary screen. I’m not exactly sure how it’s working for you. Perhaps it’s two Thunderbolt devices under the same bus?

You can compare performance with my 2017 iMac 4k GTX 980 Ti eGPU in Windows. It’s running at Thunderbolt 3 speed so I would guess it’s slightly faster than yours at Thunderbolt 2 speed.

Update: While the Heaven benchmarking seems good and presents no issues, every game I've tested is lagging like crazy and I can't even properly play to see an FPS. I have tried Borderlands 2, Half Life 2 and Bioshock Infinite. My guess is that they're attempting some sort of software emulation or something and thus loading up the CPU and lagging but I'm not sure where to go from here. I'm puzzled why Heaven 4 benchmarked it fine but the games are all crashing.

Will have to mark this as a dysfunctional setup for now

The videogames in question do not show up under "applications using this GPU." Thus they are attempting to either use some sort of software emulation or they're running somehow else. Regardless, I need to figure out a way to get them to run on the 1070 or this setup won't work.

Try a headless display adapter attached to eGPU.

The NVidia GPU Activity app is typically available when running Optimus.  It’s as if you are running an Optimus of sorts (re-routing the eGPU output to your TB display without an interconnect wire) but without an iGPU active.  The iGPU was a requirement for Optimus to activate. An interesting configuration you’ve got there.

The obvious answer to your performance issues is to connect an external LCD to the GTX1070 DVI/HDMI output ports to route display data directly out from the eGPU.

I found this: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-DisplayPort-Female-Adapter/dp/B014DV2RGG/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1498076641&sr=8-8&keywords=mini+displayport+female+to+dvi. What do y'all think?

Reviews state it will output Apple's Cinema display to displayport successfully. Interesting.

timothyov, would you mind capturing and posting the hwinfo64 PCI BUS section like shown here? I’d like to see if perhaps an Intel iGPU is active on your system explaining some Optimus functionality you appear to be having. Ignore the red outlined section. This is just  sample from one of itsage‘s recent articles.

I did some more digging and the TB monitor with the radeon card disabled is running a "Microsoft Basic Display Driver."

I also tried to drill down into where the GTX 1070 is allocated and you can see it here on the table. Lots of nesting... Kind of weird.

The question is that if this setup is improper why is Heaven 4.0 able to use and be accelerated by the 1070 and if so, perhaps I can force the games to do the same somehow?

Posted by: nando4

timothyov, would you mind capturing and posting the hwinfo64 PCI BUS section like shown below? I'd like to see if perhaps an Intel iGPU is active on your system explaining some Optimus functionality you appear to be having. Ignore the red outlined section. This is just  sample from one of itsage's recent articles.

Deeper drill down. So much nesting

So this is interesting. While Microsoft Edge is able to be accelerated by the GTX 1070, Google Chrome is not. I wonder what is controlling what programs I can accelerate with the 1070 and if there's any way I can have that control myself?

Bioshock 2 warned me "The videocard you're attempting to use has less than 32MB of onboard memory." Thus I can confirm that this is some sort of software emulation and that games are refusing to be accelerated by the 1070 at the moment. I assume this is a driver malfunction (and especially since I can't even get the Nvidia control panel to open).

Posted by: timothyov

So this is interesting. While Microsoft Edge is able to be accelerated by the GTX 1070, Google Chrome is not. I wonder what is controlling what programs I can accelerate with the 1070 and if there’s any way I can have that control myself?

Yes, that is under control of Optimus.  The NVidia Control Panel allowing to pick and choose which apps are to be eGPU accelerated, though is not opening for you. One noteworth exclusion from acceleration being Google Chrome. See more info at https://egpu.io/forums/pro-applications/chrome-browser-not-using-egpu/ .

Later on I will poke around with this a bit more. My hunch is that the Nvidia driver I've installed (latest: 6/9/17) is not currently compatible with eGPUs and I might need to go to a previous version.

I've the same MBP and have successfully enabled Optimus by apple_set_os.efi & integrated.bat combo. Nvidia card might require a boot delay as well so this is not a convenient solution. You have to switch the gmux device to the integrated mode in order to get Optimus working with this MBP. Booting into macOS switches the dGPU as default and active so you need to run integrated.bat + apple_set_os.efi on each startup.

Display interfaces connected to the MBP's HDMI/TB ports are always wired to the dGPU. However, some apps can utilize the offline eGPU. Or could it be possible that the DP traffic from the eGPU is circulated through the MBP's dual TB2 port?

Just a note that the apple_set_os.efi doesn't work. I get a pokeball looking error and then it restarts the bootloader all over again. Have tried with both refined and with the thumbdrive. I submitted an issue in the Github repo.

It does work. I've the same MBP + Node via Apple's TB2-to-TB3 adapter.

Please follow the instructions carefully:

https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/how-to-keep-mbps-irisiris-pro-activated-when-booting-into-windows-boot-camp/#post-1458

Pay attention to the pre-boot process. With the Mid 2015 15" MBP M370X, you cannot use the port closest to the ESC key, and you must "hot-plug the Thunderbolt cable at the stage of Windows flag or spinning circle".

@timothyov the last driver which is able to accelerate Chrome is 378.92.No driver forward on would work.I even tried to force it with nvidia inspector and it was showing under Nvidia GPU Activity but once i entered chrome://gpu  the intel driver and open GL were in use.I'm actually using Slimjet which is chromium based but there is no difference.Here is a screenshot with 378.92 in use...

Posted by: goalque

It does work. I've the same MBP + Node via Apple's TB2-to-TB3 adapter.

Please follow the instructions carefully:

https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/how-to-keep-mbps-irisiris-pro-activated-when-booting-into-windows-boot-camp/#post-1458

Pay attention to the pre-boot process. With the Mid 2015 15" MBP M370X, you cannot use the port closest to the ESC key, and you must "hot-plug the Thunderbolt cable at the stage of Windows flag or spinning circle".

I followed the directions exactly. I have the efi file on refind and even with nothing plugged into my macbook the efi file does not boot. It's bugged.

Please try with the USB stick. I've confirmed that it works with both Maxwell and Pascal cards. A couple of questions:

-What's your Win10 build version?

-MBP firmware version?

I'm on 10.12.5.

I have tried with USB stick. When I select the USB stick in Apple's bootloader it instantly takes me to a crash screen and shows me a pokeball looking error.

Ok turns out it only doesn't work with the USB stick. It works on refind. I clicked the EFI and it flashed the screen, then I was able to select windows boot.

So far only the CPU frequency is different. Click on "System Report", do you have the same firmware?

Boot ROM Version: MBP114.0172.B16
SMC Version (system): 2.30f2

Windows 10 version is also an important factor. Type "ver" in the command prompt.

Posted by: timothyov

Ok turns out it only doesn't work with the USB stick. It works on refind. I clicked the EFI and it flashed the screen, then I was able to select windows boot.

I am sure that it will work with the same EFI file on the USB stick if you have set the Boot Camp as the primary boot disk. Maybe the folder structure is not correct?

That's okay, it works with refind and that's good enough for me. I have attached benchmarks on my laptop's display with Optimus. As you can see, performance is better than when the LED Cinema Display was connected through thunderbolt. It seems as a result of the extra processing through thunderbolt on the display there was a performance loss.

Regardless, I would much prefer to power the display via thunderbolt but I have order the mini dp female to displayport male adapter in order to connect the display directly to the EGPU.

Let us know whether the mini-DisplayPort adapter would allow eGPU to work with the Apple Thunderbolt Display. 

Glad to hear you got it working! 🙂 rEFInd installation modifies the default boot behaviour, so that should be completely uninstalled if you want try USB stick route again.

Very interesting finding that you were able to route eGPU DP traffic via the other TB2 port in the beginning. However, you get the best performance when an external display is plugged in directly to the eGPU. This is also what Apple said in WWDC.

I just wish I could get the games to work that way. It's the best solution because I don't need to replug between bootcamp and OSX. It seems that the issue is no matter what the Cinema display is assigned to my Radeon card. I cannot get the Cinema display to be assigned to and driven by the GTX 1070 or the Intel Iris card. Even with Radeon disabled and booted with Intel drivers, the Cinema display will not even function unless the Radeon card is enabled.

The mini-DP female to DP male adapter worked and I'm able to run my Cinema display with the eGPU. Nvidia control panel instantly activated after a hotplug and a restart. I am seeing insane speeds. I will have a more thorough post later. I will have a more thorough post later.

So the only thing you did to resolve the error 12 is reboot the boot camp? w/ DSDT override or disable any pcie slot?

Posted by: MeigetuP

So the only thing you did to resolve the error 12 is reboot the boot camp? w/ DSDT override or disable any pcie slot?

I never did that, I believe I just manually disabled things in Device Manager but actually just a restart cleared up my error. My setup only using rEFIND bootmanager with apple_set_os_efi trick and that's all it takes to get my Apple display running on the eGPU.