#Mac pro 5.1 thunderbolt card driver#
#Mac pro 5.1 thunderbolt card portable#

Now there are hacks to getting cards to work externally however, they were based off of the old methods. So screw the bandwidth because many others have tried it with PCIE x1 via expresscard or the x1 slot beneath the laptop (windows long time ago) & anyway thunderbolt 2 is comin out so that there is double but regardless, you WILL see performance in general.

#Mac pro 5.1 thunderbolt card driver#

I talked to lucidlogix and they stated it WILL work provided the driver installs correctly and they wont because PCI Express dont play nice with thunderbolt sadly. The problem isn't the external enclosure or the virtuMVP software. You can use Nvidia Optimus software or LucidLogix GPU virtuMVP software to just offload the rendering of the integrated GPU onto any other discrete GPU ergo the external card. This isn't much a problem as macs can EASILY do boot camp. First off you DON'T NEED an external monitor unless it is on the Mac operating system.

It will be likely be a long time before there's a card that will run in the configuration you are contemplating. So, even if there is eventually a card that would work, with a Thunderbolt-enabled driver that was available for your Mac - you won't likely get much more performance out of it that you couldn't get out of, say, the GeForce 650M chip in the current 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro (mid-2012).įor practicality's sake, I'd suggest thinking about how if your current laptop's graphics capabilities don't suit your needs, perhaps you might consider upgrading. That kind of bandwidth - from 4GB/s on PCIe 2.0 x8 to 16GB/s on PCIe 3.0 x16 - is way over the ability of Thunderbolt. Yet.ĭon't also forget - Thunderbolt in its current state has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 10Gbps (that's gigabits), or 1.25 gigabytes, per second and is made up of a DisplayPort signal coupled with PCIe 2.0 x4.Īs you may be aware, most high end graphics cards on the market are PCI 2.0 (or even 3.0 now) and run best with an x8 slot or ideally, x16. Magma for instance, has a list of 'coming soon' cards on their site for their particular enclosure, but not a single graphics card.

All of the manufacturers of such enclosures have stated that there is significant demand for exactly what you're inquiring about here, and you might be best served to join some of their mailing lists to keep up with changes, i.e.

#Mac pro 5.1 thunderbolt card portable#

The dock’s front is designed for the easy connection of your portable devices, headphones and media cards, while the rear features a multitude of ports for your static devices so cables stay out of sight. Without that, the solution isn't going to work. With its 14 ports of connectivity thoughtfully placed, the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock delivers convenience while keeping desktops clutter-free. Unfortunately, there isn't currently a graphics card on the market that has a Thunderbolt-aware driver.