SlashGear 101: Mac Pro 2013. And indeed it’s likely to be cheaper to add extra room by plugging in an external drive. Two GPUs are standard on the Mac Pro 2013, recognizing the.

After last week’s exciting release of, I was looking forward to trying the top of the line consumer GPU with my MacBook Pro. That GPU is none other than the venerable GeForce GTX 1080 Ti — a $700 card with 11 Gbps of GDDR5X memory and a 11 GB frame buffer. Driver booster for mac.

Needless to say this card is one that will interest those looking to push their games to the next level. I took the time to install my EVGA GTX 1080 Ti FE inside of my external GPU enclosure.

After connecting the unit to my 2016 MacBook Pro via a Thunderbolt 3 cable, all it took was a simple shell script and a reboot to get the unit working with a (required in macOS) external display. Nvidia’s drivers are still in beta, and from my hands-on time, the experience is far from perfect in macOS.

That said, you can most certainly see the potential and performance differences between the 13-inch MacBook Pro’s integrated Intel Iris Graphics 550 GPU, and the beastly 1080 Ti. As expected, it’s also a lot faster than the GTX 1050 Ti that. If you’re looking to truly experience the power of such a card with the MacBook Pro, however, you’ll need to step into the Windows world, and run a Boot Camp installation. The GTX 1080 Ti + Windows turns the MacBook Pro into an insanely powerful and flexible gaming machine with just a single Thunderbolt 3 cable. Watch our hands-on video walkthrough as we explain. Pascal in macOS Here’s how I was able to get the GTX 1080 Ti working with my 2016 MacBook Pro. This same technique will work with any Nvidia GPU with Pascal architecture, such as the GTX 1080, 1070, 1060, 1050, etc.

Step 1: Install the GTX 1080 Ti or other Pascal graphics card inside of the Akitio Node, and connect the 6+8 pin power connectors. Step 2: Boot into macOS.

Step 3: Connect the Thunderbolt 3 cable from the Node to one of the Thunderbolt 3 ports on the 2016 MacBook Pro. If you’re using a 13-inch model with four Thunderbolt 3 ports, Apple recommends connecting to the ports on the left side of the machine. Video walkthrough for more hands-on videos Step 4: Connect to an external display from your graphics card via HDMI or Display Port. Step 5: Connect the power to the Akitio Node, and turn it on. Step 6: Open a Terminal window and paste in the following to download, patch the kernel to remove validation checks, and install the drivers. Disclaimer: While I trust Goalque’s script, you should always view the contents of the script by clicking the source link to verify its integrity. Proceed at your own risk.

Curl -o ~/Desktop/automate-eGPU.sh && chmod +x ~/Desktop/automate-eGPU.sh && cd ~/Desktop && sudo./automate-eGPU.sh Enter your password when requested and press Return. Follow the instructions presented in Terminal, and reboot your Mac when requested. After rebooting, you will see macOS on the externally connected display. You should also see Nvidia’s Driver Manager app running in the menu bar, and available in System Preferences. Special thanks to for providing such a simple-to-use script.

Here is what you will see when you run the Automate-eGPU script macOS Benchmarks We ran a few Benchmarks using Unigine Heaven, Valley and CineBench, and you can very obviously see the performance difference between the integrated Intel GPU and the discrete Nvidia GPU. Benches were performed at 1080p resolution on an external display. Even if you have a relatively weak MacBook such as the entry-level model without the Touch Bar, you can get big performance gains with this setup when it comes to gaming. Of course, a more powerful quad-core MacBook will perform even better, but all eligible models stand to reap serious gaming benefits.