How Apple's M1 Macs KILLED the Future of eGPUs! (R.I.P.)

eGPU support was DROPPED by Apple on their latest M1 chip-powered Macs like the MacBook Pro! Here's why I think Apple did this.. as well as why eGPUs will eventually become extinct!

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If you have an M1 Mac or MacBook, you'll know that eGPU's are no longer supported. If you're wondering why, I explain in this video.

I also go over the entire history of external graphics processing units, and then I explain the main downside to eGPUs.

I then go through why Apple doesn't and will not support them on Apple Silicon Macs.

And then I finish off with why I think they will DIE OUT completely, even on Windows machines.

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[MaxTechOfficial]

Do YOU guys agree with my conclusion? Let me know why or why not down below!
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[williamscott]

What I always find fascinating is so many of these tech youtubers have tunnel-vision when it comes to the laptop as a professional tool. They only look at it as a video editing rig....because they're all video editors, I guess. Newsflash: Most laptop users aren't video editors. Some of us are architects, industrial & mechanical engineers, designers etc, etc. I use an eGPU with a Quadro card because I'm a solidworks user. With that setup connected to my XPS 9310 (which obvs uses TB4), it's amazing how capable that machine is. So, maybe eGPUs don't have future in Apple ecosystem, but that doesn't mean they're dead.

[lordbachus]

People didn’t buy an e-gpu for video editing, but for gaming.... its only in the mind of most streamers that video editing performance is more important then gaming performance...

[prgrms]

For me, an eGPU in 2021 is still attractive. This is because I already own a laptop. It’s dramatic how fast graphics technology evolves - when I bought this machine in 2017 the 4GB card seemed more than enough. Today, not so. And yet, an eGPU and GPU can supercharge my laptop for a quarter of the price of either a new PC, or a new laptop. We might all be stunned when Apple’s new Macs arrive, but something tells me there won’t be won’t widespread support for Windows gaming on the Mac right out of the gate. As it stands, I’m glad the eGPU option is still around as an option for someone in my situation, but for anyone buying a new laptop or desktop today, the choice is obvious.

[bigonrock]

in conclusion the new rog 13 that comes with a 3080 egpu already fixed the bottleneck with a custom port connector

[raiyan]

Bought the MacBook Air because of you - best device I have ever bought! Thanks!

[dunningkruger]

What impacted the potential proliferation of eGPUs was the rarity of thunderbolt 3 ports on laptops. However, even with Apple dropping Mac support, the higher bandwidth thunderbolt 4 port will be ubiquitous on all 11th gen intel CPU powered laptops. This means a huge increase in the potential market (customers) for eGPUs. We may see Thunderbolt 4 optimized eGPUs becoming much more common.

[pinguinn_]

So because apple dropped the eGPU support all eGPUs are dead? No. You see, other laptop brands still exist out there. While apple holds a sizeable part of the market, just because they don't support them anymore, other brands still have their fair share of laptops with support. While it is a bummer to not have support anymore, but most people still have other laptops WITH support, so i think that eGPUs will not die out

[rudymoralesjr]

Apple not supporting eGPUs is far from the end of eGPUs in general. It's just the end for Apple users where that was important to them. Still benefits in other use cases and devices: content creation is not the only reason to have GPU power.

It makes it a hard pass for me getting a Mac anytime soon.

[goemboeck]

Video editing yes, but for a 3D motion graphics designer eGPUs were a godsend. GPU render engines seem to be trendy now, and Apple kicked the whole industry to use buggy-as-hell Windowses.

[cedricvillani]

These videos remind me of Bevis and Butthead kicking a 20k server. “Hehe why are you so slow, hehe uhh”

[dhruvkumar]

ROG flow 13 is perfect kind of laptop for an eGPU.

[earthling_parth]

Another reason to not get MacBooks, because Apple is anti-consumer and anti-right-to-repair. eGPUs are here to stay :D

[jrcnbsn]

The reason egpus are not good for what you showed is because of the overall bandwidth mainly, and latency secondly.
The thunderbolt 3 standard only contains 4 pcie lanes, which is a bottleneck for all the rest of the system and it causes latency because, as you mentioned, the same amount of data needs to travel the same route with a quarter of the bandwidth, so it takes more time, creating latency. BUT if intel releases thunderbolt 5 or 6 or whatever with the option of containing 16 pcie lanes, this latency will just disappear because the bottleneck i mentioned earlier won't be.
So the problem you mentioned is solveable! Especially with pcie gen 4, every lane has double the bandwidth of gen 3 so even with 8 lanes thunderbolt will have the bandwidth of 16 gen 3 lanes (4 times the performance it has now without too much complexity, eliminating any latency)

[romari]

eGPUs require drivers. Apple simply won’t spend the money to create drivers for them.

[carholic-szqv]

EGPUs are still limited by the thunderbolt bandwidth, fortunately its evolving with other technologies.

[peterreime]

It may well be dead for the Mac world, but in no way is it even close to dead in the Windows world, particularly in the business environment and for many people working from home, where it allows creative professionals to use portable ultrabooks with high quality high resolution screens (Gaming laptops are generally geared towards high refresh 1080 displays) which can then just dock with a eGPU station hot desk and get instant graphics performance and multi monitor support.

[RDHue]

It seems as if Apple doesn’t want to take the focus off the M1 by (easily) supporting eGPUs with simple OS-level support in Big Sur, or take the focus off the M1s 8 GPU cores. Apple may fear that allowing eGPUs (for now) might run the risk of suggesting that the M1 is in any way deficient. (FWIW, rumor has it that the 14 and/or the 16 inch M[?] MacBook Pros will have native PCIe 3 support…)

[llcn]

Shoutout to your Appleinsider days! You guys have come a long way!

[Kaldryf]

It's too bad, an eGPU module the shape of the Mac mini would be fantastic. Love my new M1 mini, but would really appreciate a bit more gpu power.