There is some yes and no here. At least in the case of
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2011 Minis, some of the new Thunderbolt->PCI-X card
Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi showcased a Thunderbolt 3-based external graphics card enclosure supported by MacOS “High Sierra” and Apple’s latest version of Metal. There is nothing wrong with an external graphics unit, it does have a slightly less then average performance on mac computers then it does on traditional PC's. You will have to buy an extra component which can cost anywhere from 150-200 dollars to hook your graphics card onto and attach it to your mac.
boxes can nearly fully support any PCI-X video card,
if running Windows7 via Bootcamp. In OSX however,
a Thunderbolt aware driver for the video card is required.
So, this would also be true for the 2012 as it is an OSX https://renewwinning493.weebly.com/blog/wd-my-book-for-mac.
limitation and not hardware.
There are Thunderbolt->Express Card adapters (Sonnet
is main source). They seem to be limitied as to which
Express Cards are usable. Again, it seems to be a
driver issue.
External Video Card Mac Mini 2018
So as yet, external GPUs seem to be accessible only via
these pricey Thunderbolt->PCI-X boxes with Windows Free malware removal software.
(using Bootcamp install) and not OSX.
Nov 9, 2012 11:23 AM
External GPUs are in the news lately, what with NVIDIA's announcement offering macOS drivers for its Titan Xp and Apple offering an eGPU Developer Kit for High Sierra, so we thought we'd take a second to explain what, exactly, an external GPU is — and how you'd go about getting one.
External GPUs: Supercharging gaming and video production
All Macs have a CPU, which provides the primary processing power for your computer. But in addition, they have a GPU — a graphics processing unit — designed to drive your computer's screen, external displays, and visuals.
GPUs are what sell high-end Windows gaming laptops and desktops: They keep your favorite game flawless, your external display running smoothly, and visual effects rendering speedy. They're also very important in rendering VR experiences.
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. 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.
Enter 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. Awesome, right? Well, almost.
The cons of an external GPU on your Mac
Here's the issue: Macs won't officially support external GPUs until macOS High Sierra. 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. Proceed at your own risk, here be dragons, et cetera.
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.
How to use an external GPU with your Mac
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.
Questions?
Other questions about external GPUs? Let us know below.
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Can you outrun killer dark shadows? Take leaps of faith into the unknown? Traverse a world where nothing is what it seems? STELA will test your mettle.
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