**Understanding External GPUs (EGPs) on Macs**

External GPUs (EGPs) are a game-changer for Mac users who want to upgrade their graphics performance without replacing their existing hardware. An EGP is essentially an external graphics card that can be connected to a Mac, providing additional processing power for graphics-intensive applications. In this article, we'll delve into the world of EGPs on Macs and explore what they are, how they work, and what you need to know to get started.

**How External GPUs Work**

When it comes to external GPUs, there's a key principle to understand: if you're using an EGP to power your graphics-intensive application, you'll still have to copy that draw data from the EGPU over to the integrated GPU, which is driving the display. This is because most modern Macs have both a discrete GPU and an integrated GPU. For example, on a 15-inch MacBook Pro with both a discrete GPU and an integrated GPU, if the display was being driven by the integrated GPU but your application was being driven by the discrete GPU, you would still have to copy that draw data from the discrete GPU over to the integrated GPU.

However, in the case of using an external graphics box with an external display, what's being accelerated is what's being displayed on that external monitor. This means that when using an EGP, the performance gain will be most noticeable when displaying graphics-intensive content on an external display rather than running applications internally. Understanding this principle is crucial for getting the best performance out of your external GPU.

**Apple Recommendations and Officially Supported GPUs**

If you're considering investing in an external GPU, it's essential to know what Apple officially recommends. Apple only officially supports AMD GPUs in Mac OS, so here are the officially supported GPUs in Mac OS 10.13 and later:

* For 10.13: The AMD RX 570, 580, Radeon Pro WX 7100, AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, and RX Vega 60.

* For 10.14 (Mojave): The same list as above, plus the AMD Radeon RX Vega Frontier Edition Air and Radeon Pro WX 90/100.

* For 10.15 (Catalina) and later: The same list as above, with no additional GPUs officially supported.

When choosing an external graphics box, you'll also want to ensure that it provides enough power to your card to support the recommended GPU. Apple has made this easy by listing compatible GPUs and enclosures on their website. Recommended external graphics boxes from Apple include the OWCA eRee Helios FX, PowerColor Devil Box, Sapphire GraphicsBox, and more.

**Power Delivery Specifications**

When selecting an external graphics box, it's essential to consider power delivery specifications. Something like Sonnet's 650W Graphics Breakaway Box is highly desirable because it provides 85 watts of power delivery along with plenty of power to the card. This will ensure that you can get full speed charging when connected to your MacBook Pro.

**MacBook Pro and External GPU Compatibility**

For MacBook Pros, it's crucial to choose an external graphics box that provides enough power to your card. If you're using a 15-inch MacBook Pro, you'll want an external graphics box that can provide at least 85 watts of power delivery. For a 13-inch MacBook Pro, you'll want to use the Thunderbolt 3 ports on the left side of the machine and avoid daisy-chaining your GPU.

**Conclusion**

External GPUs are a great way to upgrade your Mac's graphics performance without replacing existing hardware. By understanding how EGPs work, what Apple officially recommends, and choosing an external graphics box that provides enough power, you can get the best performance out of your external GPU. Remember to check Apple's documentation and recommendations for more details on supported GPUs and enclosures.

**Additional Resources**

For more information on external GPUs, we recommend checking out Apple's official website for documentation and developer resources. You can also visit Sonnet's website for information on compatible GPUs and external graphics boxes.

**Final Note**

We hope this article has provided you with a solid understanding of external GPUs on Macs. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the section below. Don't forget to like and subscribe for more content on all things Mac!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: encuz of one ladies and gentlemen boys and girls this is Jeff Benjamin with nine-to-five Mack on this week's episode of back to the mat we talked all about external GPU boxes because Apple kept its promise and launched external GPU support in Mac OS ten point thirteen point four so we want to talk about that right now now I have been excited about the prospects of using external GPUs on the Mac for quite some time for me it's just really intriguing to be able to have this thin and light laptop this MacBook Pros is a 20-17 base model 13-inch MacBook Pro having this thin and light laptop yet still having access to a lot of extra power things to an external GPU enclosure and that's what's possible now on Mac OS so I can take this thing with me on the go if I'm traveling but I can bring it back to the office docket with my external GPU and then have access to all that extra power provided by the GPU now this thing doesn't even have a discrete GPU it's using an Intel integrated GPU so it's not going to be powerful enough for anything but the most basic of functions now before you jump into the deep end of the pool you start going out to Amazon start shopping for external graphics enclosures and for graphics cards make sure that you have a Mac that is compatible first that's step number one and the following maps are going to be compatible with external graphics on Mac OS ten point thirteen point four the 2016 MacBook Pro the 2017 MacBook Pro the 2017 4k iMac the 2017 5k iMac and then this guy right here the iMac pro so those five Macs are compatible with the external GPUs oh no I've committed an infraction the cable police are going to give me is it better now here's an obvious question why would you need an external GPU to begin with we know it offers more graphics power so it's gonna be good for things like gaming but is there any other application where an external GPU might be beneficial the answer to that question is yeah it can accelerate applications that use metal OpenCL OpenGL and there are lots of applications that use these frameworks so it's not just all about gaming think about video editing or machine learning applications really anything that can benefit from having a powerful GPU can benefit from an e GPU set up in Mac OS and then there's things like connecting to multiple external displays which is sort of an obvious application but then you have things like VR connectivity so connecting an HTC vive to your Mac via that external GPU is now possible in Mac OS ten point thirteen point four so what else should you know about an external graphics box well depending on the chassis you get it may be able to charge your MacBook Pro at full speed depending on its power delivery specifications you can also use the GPU while your MacBook Pro is in clamshell mode so you can close the lid and still benefit from the GPU it also supports hot plugging so it's not gonna crash when you unplug or plug it into your Mac even while the Mac is booted up even while you're logged in it just works so you don't have to jump through a whole lot of hoops like you used to have to do even just a few beta releases ago Apple's also implemented a new menu bar icon when you connect an e GPU for safely ejecting or disconnecting that GPU and here's something that maybe you didn't know you can actually connect to multiple external GPUs to your Mac using Thunderbolt 3 and if you want to view your external GPUs performance simply open up Activity Monitor click where it says window and then select GPU history so what type of scenarios would benefit from a GPU acceleration well one such scenario would be applications that can utilize multiple GPUs simultaneously and then there's of course connecting an external display directly to the HDMI or DisplayPort connection on the GPU and running games on that external display games are going to benefit heavily from the hardware acceleration provided by that GPU and then as mentioned connecting a VR headset like the HTC vive directly to the GPU inside the enclosure now here's something that you want to consider each display whether internal or external is only driven by one single GPU now here's something else to consider for the internal display on your Mac that means the built-in display on the 5k iMac or the 4k iMac or the built-in display on a macbook pro only the built-in GPUs that means either the integrated or discrete GPUs on these devices is eligible to drive the display so that's something you want to keep in mind so what does that actually mean well it means that an external GPU cannot drive the internal display on a MacBook Pro or on an iMac only the internal integrated or discrete GPUs can drive the display on these devices now Apple's support documentation it seems like it contradicts what I just said because there's a bullet point here it says in general and EGP you can accelerate performance in these types of applications and on the last bullet point it notes Pro applications and 3d games that accelerate the built-in display of an iMac or MacBook Pro this capability must be enabled by the applications developer now at first glance it seems like oh wow well an external GPU can drive the internal display of an iMac or MacBook Pro but that's actually not the case if your application renders with an external GPU and you want to present it on the internal display of your MacBook Pro you will first have to copy over that information from the external GPU to the GPU driving your MacBook Pros display so that obviously is going to affect performance because you actually had to copy the draw data from one GPU to another GPU and they can't talk directly they actually have to use system resources to perform that copy now that same principle for example would still apply to the internal GPUs on say a 15-inch MacBook Pro with both a discrete GPU and an integrated GPU say that display was being driven by the integrated GPU but your application was being driven by the discrete GPU well you would still have to copy that draw data from the discrete GPU over to the integrated GPU because the integrated GPU is actually driving the display however in that case you're using PCIe bandwidth with an external GPU you're using Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth and Thunderbolt 3 has much less bandwidth available than PCIe so the moral of the story is actually a pretty simple one if you want the best performance from your external GPU you need to connect to an external display that way there's no copies needed what's being accelerated is what's being displayed on that external monitor so now that you know the basic ins and outs of EGP you support on the Mac let's talk about some of the hardware that Apple recommends now it's actually pretty simple cut and dry because apple only officially supports AMD GPUs in Mac OS so here are the officially supported GPUs in Mac OS 10 point 13 point for the AMD rx 570 the 580 the Radeon Pro WX 7100 the AMD Radeon rx Vega 56 in rx Vega 60 for the Vega frontier Edition air in the Radeon Pro WX 90 100 now before deciding on the e GPU chassis you want to check and make sure that it provides enough power to your card to support that card because some cards have higher power requirements like the rx Vega 64 obviously has a higher power requirement than the rx 580 for instance an Apple 2 has made this easy because they've listed the GPUs and the enclosures that work with those GPUs so Apple is recommending the OWCA eree helios FX the power color devil box the Sapphire gearbox in three external graphics boxes from sonnet the graphics breakaway box 350 W the 550 W and the 650w sonnet also produces an all-in-one set up with the rx 570 built in it's called the Radeon rx 578 graphics breakaway puck so keep that in mind as well now if you're using any GPU with a MacBook Pro you definitely want to keep in mind the power delivery specifications obviously something like sunnites a graphics breakaway box 650 W is highly desirable because it provides 85 watts of power delivery along with providing plenty of power to the cards so it's going to work with every eligible Mac and every eligible GPU with no problems if you're using a 15-inch MacBook Pro you want an external graphics box that can provide 85 watts of power delivery so that you get full speed charging when connected to your MacBook Pro if you're using a 13-inch MacBook Pro you want to make sure that you're using the Thunderbolt 3 ports on the left side of the machine you also want to avoid daisy chaining and GPU you want it directly connected to the Thunderbolt three ports on your Mac so hope this video was able to clear up a little bit about external GPUs because obviously Mac OS 10 point thirteen point four was just released a lot of information is coming out right now from Apple as far as what developers need to do to update their apps best practices involved with the GPUs or external GPU support things of that nature so I think as the days and weeks move ahead that we'll learn a lot more about external graphics boxes so folks I hope this video was able to help you out there are a couple of takeaways that I just want to emphasize number one Apple has some really good documentation on their website so I definitely will link that down below you can check that out for more details documentation for developers and end users number two is that Apple definitely recommends certain graphics card and graphics box combinations so you want to check out their recommendations see what's natively supported with in Mac OS the next point is that you should probably ought to use an external display true developers will have the option of supporting external graphics acceleration in their apps when displayed on the internal display but again that's going to come at a cost and one last very very important detail that I almost forgot is that bootcamp does not officially support external graphics boxes on the Mac so that's something you definitely want to keep in mind now that said there will probably be steps we can take to work around that restriction but officially Apple is saying no there is no bootcamp support for external graphics boxes so ladies and gentlemen this was just the tip of the iceberg as far as external graphics boxes are concerned if you want to learn more again make sure you check out the links down below in the description and also if you appreciated this video I know it's a little different than some of our other back to the Mac videos but please leave me a thumbs up and let me know this is Jeff with 905 Mac you youcuz of one ladies and gentlemen boys and girls this is Jeff Benjamin with nine-to-five Mack on this week's episode of back to the mat we talked all about external GPU boxes because Apple kept its promise and launched external GPU support in Mac OS ten point thirteen point four so we want to talk about that right now now I have been excited about the prospects of using external GPUs on the Mac for quite some time for me it's just really intriguing to be able to have this thin and light laptop this MacBook Pros is a 20-17 base model 13-inch MacBook Pro having this thin and light laptop yet still having access to a lot of extra power things to an external GPU enclosure and that's what's possible now on Mac OS so I can take this thing with me on the go if I'm traveling but I can bring it back to the office docket with my external GPU and then have access to all that extra power provided by the GPU now this thing doesn't even have a discrete GPU it's using an Intel integrated GPU so it's not going to be powerful enough for anything but the most basic of functions now before you jump into the deep end of the pool you start going out to Amazon start shopping for external graphics enclosures and for graphics cards make sure that you have a Mac that is compatible first that's step number one and the following maps are going to be compatible with external graphics on Mac OS ten point thirteen point four the 2016 MacBook Pro the 2017 MacBook Pro the 2017 4k iMac the 2017 5k iMac and then this guy right here the iMac pro so those five Macs are compatible with the external GPUs oh no I've committed an infraction the cable police are going to give me is it better now here's an obvious question why would you need an external GPU to begin with we know it offers more graphics power so it's gonna be good for things like gaming but is there any other application where an external GPU might be beneficial the answer to that question is yeah it can accelerate applications that use metal OpenCL OpenGL and there are lots of applications that use these frameworks so it's not just all about gaming think about video editing or machine learning applications really anything that can benefit from having a powerful GPU can benefit from an e GPU set up in Mac OS and then there's things like connecting to multiple external displays which is sort of an obvious application but then you have things like VR connectivity so connecting an HTC vive to your Mac via that external GPU is now possible in Mac OS ten point thirteen point four so what else should you know about an external graphics box well depending on the chassis you get it may be able to charge your MacBook Pro at full speed depending on its power delivery specifications you can also use the GPU while your MacBook Pro is in clamshell mode so you can close the lid and still benefit from the GPU it also supports hot plugging so it's not gonna crash when you unplug or plug it into your Mac even while the Mac is booted up even while you're logged in it just works so you don't have to jump through a whole lot of hoops like you used to have to do even just a few beta releases ago Apple's also implemented a new menu bar icon when you connect an e GPU for safely ejecting or disconnecting that GPU and here's something that maybe you didn't know you can actually connect to multiple external GPUs to your Mac using Thunderbolt 3 and if you want to view your external GPUs performance simply open up Activity Monitor click where it says window and then select GPU history so what type of scenarios would benefit from a GPU acceleration well one such scenario would be applications that can utilize multiple GPUs simultaneously and then there's of course connecting an external display directly to the HDMI or DisplayPort connection on the GPU and running games on that external display games are going to benefit heavily from the hardware acceleration provided by that GPU and then as mentioned connecting a VR headset like the HTC vive directly to the GPU inside the enclosure now here's something that you want to consider each display whether internal or external is only driven by one single GPU now here's something else to consider for the internal display on your Mac that means the built-in display on the 5k iMac or the 4k iMac or the built-in display on a macbook pro only the built-in GPUs that means either the integrated or discrete GPUs on these devices is eligible to drive the display so that's something you want to keep in mind so what does that actually mean well it means that an external GPU cannot drive the internal display on a MacBook Pro or on an iMac only the internal integrated or discrete GPUs can drive the display on these devices now Apple's support documentation it seems like it contradicts what I just said because there's a bullet point here it says in general and EGP you can accelerate performance in these types of applications and on the last bullet point it notes Pro applications and 3d games that accelerate the built-in display of an iMac or MacBook Pro this capability must be enabled by the applications developer now at first glance it seems like oh wow well an external GPU can drive the internal display of an iMac or MacBook Pro but that's actually not the case if your application renders with an external GPU and you want to present it on the internal display of your MacBook Pro you will first have to copy over that information from the external GPU to the GPU driving your MacBook Pros display so that obviously is going to affect performance because you actually had to copy the draw data from one GPU to another GPU and they can't talk directly they actually have to use system resources to perform that copy now that same principle for example would still apply to the internal GPUs on say a 15-inch MacBook Pro with both a discrete GPU and an integrated GPU say that display was being driven by the integrated GPU but your application was being driven by the discrete GPU well you would still have to copy that draw data from the discrete GPU over to the integrated GPU because the integrated GPU is actually driving the display however in that case you're using PCIe bandwidth with an external GPU you're using Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth and Thunderbolt 3 has much less bandwidth available than PCIe so the moral of the story is actually a pretty simple one if you want the best performance from your external GPU you need to connect to an external display that way there's no copies needed what's being accelerated is what's being displayed on that external monitor so now that you know the basic ins and outs of EGP you support on the Mac let's talk about some of the hardware that Apple recommends now it's actually pretty simple cut and dry because apple only officially supports AMD GPUs in Mac OS so here are the officially supported GPUs in Mac OS 10 point 13 point for the AMD rx 570 the 580 the Radeon Pro WX 7100 the AMD Radeon rx Vega 56 in rx Vega 60 for the Vega frontier Edition air in the Radeon Pro WX 90 100 now before deciding on the e GPU chassis you want to check and make sure that it provides enough power to your card to support that card because some cards have higher power requirements like the rx Vega 64 obviously has a higher power requirement than the rx 580 for instance an Apple 2 has made this easy because they've listed the GPUs and the enclosures that work with those GPUs so Apple is recommending the OWCA eree helios FX the power color devil box the Sapphire gearbox in three external graphics boxes from sonnet the graphics breakaway box 350 W the 550 W and the 650w sonnet also produces an all-in-one set up with the rx 570 built in it's called the Radeon rx 578 graphics breakaway puck so keep that in mind as well now if you're using any GPU with a MacBook Pro you definitely want to keep in mind the power delivery specifications obviously something like sunnites a graphics breakaway box 650 W is highly desirable because it provides 85 watts of power delivery along with providing plenty of power to the cards so it's going to work with every eligible Mac and every eligible GPU with no problems if you're using a 15-inch MacBook Pro you want an external graphics box that can provide 85 watts of power delivery so that you get full speed charging when connected to your MacBook Pro if you're using a 13-inch MacBook Pro you want to make sure that you're using the Thunderbolt 3 ports on the left side of the machine you also want to avoid daisy chaining and GPU you want it directly connected to the Thunderbolt three ports on your Mac so hope this video was able to clear up a little bit about external GPUs because obviously Mac OS 10 point thirteen point four was just released a lot of information is coming out right now from Apple as far as what developers need to do to update their apps best practices involved with the GPUs or external GPU support things of that nature so I think as the days and weeks move ahead that we'll learn a lot more about external graphics boxes so folks I hope this video was able to help you out there are a couple of takeaways that I just want to emphasize number one Apple has some really good documentation on their website so I definitely will link that down below you can check that out for more details documentation for developers and end users number two is that Apple definitely recommends certain graphics card and graphics box combinations so you want to check out their recommendations see what's natively supported with in Mac OS the next point is that you should probably ought to use an external display true developers will have the option of supporting external graphics acceleration in their apps when displayed on the internal display but again that's going to come at a cost and one last very very important detail that I almost forgot is that bootcamp does not officially support external graphics boxes on the Mac so that's something you definitely want to keep in mind now that said there will probably be steps we can take to work around that restriction but officially Apple is saying no there is no bootcamp support for external graphics boxes so ladies and gentlemen this was just the tip of the iceberg as far as external graphics boxes are concerned if you want to learn more again make sure you check out the links down below in the description and also if you appreciated this video I know it's a little different than some of our other back to the Mac videos but please leave me a thumbs up and let me know this is Jeff with 905 Mac you you\n"