Apple details eGPU support in macOS 10.13.4 High Sierra, notes no Nvidia support

The release of macOS 10.13.4 brings with it official external GPU support by Apple, but the company is recommending specific enclosures/chassis and cards, excluding ones some people might hope to use.

In a support page posted on late Thursday, the company suggests several AMD video cards. These include the Radeon RX 570 and RX 580, the Radeon Pro WX 7100 and 9100, and finally the Radeon RX Vega 56, 64, and Vega Frontier Edition Air. Suggested enclosures come from companies like PowerColor, Sonnet, and OWC — but others can work as well.

Support is not limited to any specific card vendor. As long as the card mostly complies with the reference specification, they are able to be used in an eGPU enclosure.

The list notably excludes any cards from Nvidia. Nvidia does have the "web driver" for its PCI-E that it updates after every macOS revision, but at present that isn't sufficient to run the cards in an enclosure, without third-party hacks applied, and even that can be problematic.

During the beta process, some cards that worked during Apple's initial testing of eGPU support are no longer supported, such as the AMD RX 560. Mac owners must also use Thunderbolt 3, since official support for earlier versions of Thunderbolt was also dropped in the beta period.

Apple notes that people can connect more than one eGPU, though people should use direct connections whenever possible instead of daisy-chaining. Apple's enclosure recommendations all have 87W of charging power available to the host machine, and 13-inch MacBook Pros from 2016 or later should always have eGPUs plugged in on the left-hand side to guarantee maximum bandwidth. Any VR headsets should be plugged into the eGPU.

To check whether cards are working properly, users should open the macOS Activity Monitor, then select Window and GPU History. Once a session is finished Apple notes that the new chip icon in the Mac's menu bar should be used to disconnect it.

The macOS 10.13.4 update also brought with it support for Business Chat in Messages, and a variety of bugfixes, such as for graphics problems impacting apps on the iMac Pro.

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39 Comments

macxpress 5910 comments · 16 Years

About 6 years ago

:( Apple should be supporting both manufacturers.... I think Apple is really limiting itself here. This I think could turn a normal 27" iMac into a decent gaming Mac and I think this would also allow Apple to do nearly any design they want and put whatever card they see fit in their Macs. If someone wants more, they can get an enclosure and a card. Most will opt not to do this, but at least the option would be there. But...were stuck on AMD's platform.

Mike Wuerthele 6901 comments · 8 Years

macxpress said:

:( Apple should be supporting both manufacturers.... I think Apple is really limiting itself here. This I think could turn a normal 27" iMac into a decent gaming Mac and I think this would also allow Apple to do nearly any design they want and put whatever card they see fit in their Macs. If someone wants more, they can get an enclosure and a card. Most will opt not to do this, but at least the option would be there. But...were stuck on AMD's platform.

I'm not certain that it's entirely up to Apple. AMD has Xconnect routines, specifically allowing for the hot plug and unplug. Those shipped in September for the first time.

NVidia has something similar, but not identical.

Mike Wuerthele said:

macxpress said:

:( Apple should be supporting both manufacturers.... I think Apple is really limiting itself here. This I think could turn a normal 27" iMac into a decent gaming Mac and I think this would also allow Apple to do nearly any design they want and put whatever card they see fit in their Macs. If someone wants more, they can get an enclosure and a card. Most will opt not to do this, but at least the option would be there. But...were stuck on AMD's platform.

I'm not certain that it's entirely up to Apple. AMD has Xconnect routines, specifically allowing for the hot plug and unplug. Those shipped in September for the first time.
NVidia has something similar, but not identical.

I understand...but it does seem like Apple wants nothing to do with NVIDIA at the moment. I know AMD is good and things NVIDIA isn't and visa versa, but I hope in the future both are taken into consideration.

macxpress said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

macxpress said:

:( Apple should be supporting both manufacturers.... I think Apple is really limiting itself here. This I think could turn a normal 27" iMac into a decent gaming Mac and I think this would also allow Apple to do nearly any design they want and put whatever card they see fit in their Macs. If someone wants more, they can get an enclosure and a card. Most will opt not to do this, but at least the option would be there. But...were stuck on AMD's platform.

I'm not certain that it's entirely up to Apple. AMD has Xconnect routines, specifically allowing for the hot plug and unplug. Those shipped in September for the first time.
NVidia has something similar, but not identical.

I understand...but it does seem like Apple wants nothing to do with NVIDIA at the moment. I know AMD is good and things NVIDIA isn't and visa versa, but I hope in the future both are taken into consideration.

Yeah, I don't want blessed configurations either. Things are already shady enough with the ridiculous price markups on GPUs right now.

Mike Wuerthele said:

macxpress said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

macxpress said:

:( Apple should be supporting both manufacturers.... I think Apple is really limiting itself here. This I think could turn a normal 27" iMac into a decent gaming Mac and I think this would also allow Apple to do nearly any design they want and put whatever card they see fit in their Macs. If someone wants more, they can get an enclosure and a card. Most will opt not to do this, but at least the option would be there. But...were stuck on AMD's platform.

I'm not certain that it's entirely up to Apple. AMD has Xconnect routines, specifically allowing for the hot plug and unplug. Those shipped in September for the first time.
NVidia has something similar, but not identical.

I understand...but it does seem like Apple wants nothing to do with NVIDIA at the moment. I know AMD is good and things NVIDIA isn't and visa versa, but I hope in the future both are taken into consideration.

Yeah, I don't want blessed configurations either. Things are already shady enough with the ridiculous price markups on GPUs right now.

If you needed a boot menu, could you just use the internal graphics card for that and then switch over to the eGPU afterwards or does it need to boot from the eGPU to work? If it doesn't need to boot from it, then I don't see any a blessed card would be necessary anyways.