With the Metal 2, such hacks will no longer be a requirement. Using eGPUs paired with an RX 480/580 involved a hack to enable eGPU support, and a hack to enable the RX 480/580 GPUs graphics acceleration. Previously, users who wished to utilize external GPU units had to jump through a few hoops due to it not being officially supported. Apple is partnering with Valve to support SteamVR, along with support for the Unreal 4 engine and Unity. That means that eGPU setups featuring units like the Akitio Node, will officially support AMD’s popular RX 580 GPU.īut not just that, the Metal 2 developer kit will make it possible to connect to VR headsets. Other questions about external GPUs? Let us know below.Apple has announced that its new Metal 2 Developer Kit, which launches later today, will support external graphics units over Thunderbolt 3.

How to set up your Mac with an external GPU.

Thankfully, you don't have to venture into the void without guidance: The eGPU.io community has put together a huge array of helpful how-tos and setup guides for interested users - I'm looking forward to using their startup guide and forums to make a Thunderbolt 3 eGPU for my MacBook Pro.

In addition, should you decide to use an external GPU, there are only a handful of Thunderbolt enclosures and graphics cards with appropriate Mac drivers - you can't just pick an arbitrary graphics card you'd like to attach to your Mac. Proceed at your own risk, here be dragons, et cetera. That's not to say you can't use an external GPU on older operating systems - only that Apple Support won't bail you out if you do something that doesn't agree with your Mac. Here's the issue: Macs won't officially support external GPUs until macOS High Sierra.

As such, Apple has historically trended toward putting in GPUs that balanced power with optimization: great for your laptop's battery life not so great for gamers, VR, or visual effects artists.Įnter external GPUs: Like external hard drives, these essentially allow you to stick a GPU in a Thunderbolt housing, where you can then connect it to your computer from there, when you run games, VR, and visual apps optimized for that GPU you should see significant performance improvements. But all that power comes at the expense of battery and optimization: Heavy-duty GPUs are frequent power hogs with lots of fan noise and problematic battery life.

Apple egpu developer kit