Zotac Amp Box & Amp Box Mini promise eGPU acceleration over Thunderbolt 3

Zotac has announced the Amp Box and Amp Box Mini, two upcoming eGPU enclosures that, in combination with a compatible video card, should boost the graphics performance of Thunderbolt 3-equipped MacBooks.

The standard Amp Box supports dual-slot cards up to 9 inches in length, and GPU power consumption up to 250 watts. It also adds three regular USB 3.0 ports, plus a single "Quick Charge" 3.0 connection.

The Amp Box Mini can also handle dual-slot cards, but only up to 7.8 inches and 150 watts. Similarly, while it has four USB 3.0 ports, none of them are Quick Charge-capable.

Neither enclosure will fit the biggest video cards, or higher-end models like the Vega 64, but they may nevertheless help speed up the MacBook Pro when attached to an external display, since Pros otherwise use mobile-sized or even CPU-integrated graphics.

Pricing has yet to be announced. Zotac is targeting a launch in the first half of 2018. Apple's full support for external GPU enclosures arrives in the spring of 2018, with limited compatibility with some AMD cards available now.

5 Comments

herbapou 14 Years · 2219 comments

About 6 years ago

Those things need to be able to support a GTX 1070 or 1080 to be usefull

hypoluxa 22 Years · 619 comments

herbapou said:

Those things need to be able to support a GTX 1070 or 1080 to be usefull

Agreed. Hopefully they offer bigger enclosures for the more pro level options.

macxpress 16 Years · 5914 comments

herbapou said:

Those things need to be able to support a GTX 1070 or 1080 to be usefull

NVIDIA cards suck these days on Macs. Their driver support is not that great. Yes, they may have a supported driver, but it has never worked that well for me. Its one of the reasons why I had to use macOS Sierra instead of High Sierra on my 2012 Mac Pro with an NVIDIA GeForce 970. The driver for High Sierra just did all kinds of weird stuff.

Mike Wuerthele 8 Years · 6906 comments

hypoluxa said:

herbapou said:

Those things need to be able to support a GTX 1070 or 1080 to be usefull

Agreed. Hopefully they offer bigger enclosures for the more pro level options.

Zotac has larger boxes for larger cards, and ones with higher power demands. These are just the newest.

cgWerks 8 Years · 2947 comments

hypoluxa said:

herbapou said:

Those things need to be able to support a GTX 1070 or 1080 to be usefull

Agreed. Hopefully they offer bigger enclosures for the more pro level options.

Those exist. Hopefully there will be a broad range of these boxes. I can imagine a whole range of users who might want to, say, use a MacBook, MacBook Air, Mini, or even base level MacBook Pros but add a GPU for gaming, etc. They won't necessarily need the top-of-line GPU, but usually need more than the integrated one.

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