Macbook Air..... for gaming? Home made external Thunderbolt GPU!

[tobyman2]

Thought this was pretty damn awesome, and possibly open the eyes of manufacturers! IT IS POSSIBLE!

 

Hate just copying and pasting, but every thing is pretty self explanatory! 

 

http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/4271-2013-11-macbook-air-win7-sonnet-echo-expresscard-pe4l-internal-lcd-%5Bus%24250%5D.html

 

TLDR: By buying around $250 in commonly available parts, plus a video card, you can make the graphics of your 11" Macbook Air from 5X to 7X faster. Demo video at end of post. Step-by-step, here's how to exactly do it. Warning: not for the faint of heart!

   
(click to see larger versions, video at end of article)

Hey everyone!

This is my third article here on this forum, though it's the first that the process can be done by anyone with off-the-shelf parts. No more discontinued exotic parts like the BPlus TH05 are required. All you need is a macbook air, a graphics card, a power supply, Windows 7, and ~$250 to buy some adapters and software online. All these parts are readily available for anyone.

Like usual, I really want to thank nando4 for his help in doing all this. He's the mastermind behind the technicals, I just like writing articles and making stuff easier for everyone. He's super dedicated and eGPUs wouldn't be anywhere near where they are today if it wasn't for him! Thanks!

So what are we doing? We're going to make a Macbook Air accept an external video card via Thunderbolt! Yes, you might have read in the news that real commercial solutions are just around the corner. We've been promised by these companies over-and-over again, with youtube videos, hands-on reviews, press releases, etc, but nobody is releasing anything. It's been like this for over a year. Intel even openly admits its bias against GPU usage where it's listed as unsupported in their Thunderbolt Certification Application. Talking to one of their thunderbolt guys, here's what that "Not Supported" means:
 

 

The “Not supported” means that Intel won’t neither certify your product nor deliver, at the moment, any Technology License for this kind of usage. As you know, this Technology License is required to develop a Thunderbolt device in the market and Certification is a must have to market any Thunderbolt product.

So with the bad news out of the way, the good news is that you can still do it yourself -- just a bit less elegantly. We'll be using the Sonnet Thunderbolt to ExpressCard adapter, together with the BPlus PE4L ExpressCard to PCI-Express adapter. This PE4L adapter also includes a Delayed PCI-Reset jumper, making Windows 7 + Internal LCD rendering possible on the Macbook. Also, it's not that bad. As you'll see by the benchmarks later in the article, yes you're only running at expresscard 5Gbps x1 2.0 PCI bus speed (as opposed to 16X 2.0 on a proper PC and only half of Thunderbolt's 10Gbps), but its WAY WAY better than the internal integrated graphics of the laptop, plus you can still max out tons of games. The full PC bus speed is super rarely used anyways, so it's not like you'll get 1/16th the performance.

As part of this tutorial, we'll be using Windows 7 BIOS (installed the regular Bootcamp way). Things are possible in Windows 8 as well, but the instructions differ, and I've also had troubles getting Internal LCD rendering working on Windows 8. Yeah I'm not a fan of using legacy Windows versions either, but whatever, every game works on both OSes for now anyways. Oh and we're using Windows because games only exist for it, and I can't get the setup to work on OSX (haven't tried too much though).

Alright, lets get started!


My laptop specs
 

• Mid-2013 11" Macbook Air
• 1.7 GHz Intel Core i7-4650U (basically the most maxed out 11" mba)
• 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3
• Intel HD Graphics 5000 1024 MB
• 512GB Apple SSD
•  

 

http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/4271-2013-11-macbook-air-win7-sonnet-echo-expresscard-pe4l-internal-lcd-%5Bus%24250%5D.html

 

 

[Samdb]

But look at all the clutter.

[BernardoSLR]

Thunderbolt eGPU look promising, they always did. Linus did an unboxing of the Magma 3T which allowed you to do just the same thing, unfortunately it lacks drivers.

[Damikiller37]

Also Silverstone has a case for this kind of a solution ( not a big surprise xD ) link . It sure is interesting but before companies take it seriously or if they ever do, will probably be quite a while from now on. Drivers are always a problem though and I can see a lot of games not liking this solution.

[tobyman2]

i just think its awesome that its happening with stuff you can buy online already! i guess its more, proof of concept!

[Nicktrance]

Not necessarily news but very interesting, it's seeming more and more probable that the not very distant future would involve all of us gamers using out own ultrabook for everything and we just hook up all our peripherals and eGPUs to it when we need more power. 

[JAKEBAB]

Already posted

[bcredeur97]

I posted this yesterday: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/41195-running-an-external-gpu-via-thunderbolt/?p=537838#entry537838

[totjup5]

ew... a mac... gross.

[NickTheMajin]

ew... a mac... gross.

 

The most informative, unbiased and useful post ever on LTT right here folks

[j0hnlam]

The most informative, unbiased and useful post ever on LTT right here folks

 

Couldn't agree more! 

[onionring]

Not necessarily news but very interesting, it's seeming more and more probable that the not very distant future would involve all of us gamers using out own ultrabook for everything and we just hook up all our peripherals and eGPUs to it when we need more power.

as long as we can get lga2011 ultrabooks , im up with that...

[WorldDominator]

I feel like this is pointless since you're paying a lot to have a thin, compact laptop.

[onionring]

well i have a desktop pc and i want a light notebook.

you just can t carry a full tower in your bag can you?

this would make sense if you dont load your cpu a lot(gaming) but need gpu power(gaming).

then you wouldn t pay for a mobo / cpu twice.

[EChondo]

Hold on.

 

So what's the point in buying a $1000 laptop then slapping on an extra $300-$400 just to play games when you could have built a desktop yourself that is still more powerful OR getting a laptop from MSI/ASUS/Clevo|Sager/Lenovo/etc. for $1200-$1400 that has all that functionality and power built in?

 

It's cool if you want to lug around extra crap, or maybe just use it when you're at home(but come on, you want gaming on the go, not gaming at your home).

[onionring]

Hold on.

So what's the point in buying a $1000 laptop then slapping on an extra $300-$400 just to play games when you could have built a desktop yourself that is still more powerful OR getting a laptop from MSI/ASUS/Clevo|Sager/Lenovo/etc. for $1200-$1400 that has all that functionality and power built in?

It's cool if you want to lug around extra crap, or maybe just use it when you're at home(but come on, you want gaming on the go, not gaming at your home).

no you don t want gaming on the go.

gaming laptop are bulky and have about 1h30mins battery.

ultrabooks are easy to carry and got (comparatively) huge battery life.

mobile gpu are and will always be worse than desktop gpus.

you be lucky to last 1 year at max setting in games on mobile and then you got to throw away a 2000$ laptop just to get a better gpu.

i got a g73j and i use it exclusively for word and watching youtube.

why? because gaming on it is so much worse than on my desktop with eyefinity 27" monitors.

with external gpus you could get a 900$ ultrabook to use for word and other stuff and get 600$ worth of desktop gpu instead of getting a weaker mobile gpu to drain hour battery.

now you could work all day on the laptop and when you get home you dock it with your eyefinity/surround setup to game.

that is assuming you re not editing videos/doing simulation for your work during the day, then you would need a desktop.

i strongly encourage anyone who want to get a gaming laptop to consider a desktop + cheap notebook.

[EChondo]

i strongly encourage anyone who want to get a gaming laptop to consider a desktop + cheap notebook.

Exactly. So why buy a $1000 laptop? Why buy an expensive laptop that can't game, then add extra crap to it just so it can game?

[Nicktrance]

as long as we can get lga2011 ultrabooks , im up with that...

 

but you don't need 2011 for gaming...

[onionring]

Exactly. So why buy a $1000 laptop? Why buy an expensive laptop that can't game, then add extra crap to it just so it can game?

a gaming laptop has other compromises than just cost, they re heavy, have no battery and are bulky.

a ultrabook has better battery, is thinner , lighter and many other things compared to a cheap laptop. in this senario your basically spending your desktop cpu/mobo cost on the laptop instead giving you a better mobile work experience but you re sacrificing some desktop cpu performance that you won t need while gaming (games are rarely cpu bound)

that is better than spending 2000$ on a gaming laptop you can t upgrade with a 1h battery life.

i know i don t need 2011 for gaming but i do some cad simulations than need cpu power i was just pointing out that egpus cannot completly remplace a desktop for tasks other than gaming.