- UPGRADE GRAPHICS CARD FOR MACBOOK AIR THUNDERBOLT FULL
- UPGRADE GRAPHICS CARD FOR MACBOOK AIR THUNDERBOLT PRO
I’m interested to see if the later models such as the 670 GTX work with this setup. It works well and doesn’t consume as much power as the GTX 580. I have the GTX 570 in my desktop machine to edit uncompressed raw on using CUDA in DaVinci Resolve. The power supply is the same as that from a desktop PC and it is required by the NVidia graphics card. This allows the other adapters to sit somewhere convenient and not right next to your laptop.
UPGRADE GRAPHICS CARD FOR MACBOOK AIR THUNDERBOLT FULL
The tutorial points out you need to buy the full PE4L-EC060A package which includes a SWEX adapter to keep your external power supply turned on. This adapts the 10Gbps Thunderbolt port on the MacBook Air to 5Gbps ExpressCard.īPlus PE4L V2.1 ExpressCard to PCI-Express adapter ($70)
UPGRADE GRAPHICS CARD FOR MACBOOK AIR THUNDERBOLT PRO
Sonnet Echo ExpressCard Pro ($134 at B&H) In this tutorial posted at Techniferno by a forum user you need the following parts to get it working: The 2013 MacBook Air has a Thunderbolt port and USB 3.0 (as does my MacBook Air which is a 2012 model) and the solution is to attach an Expresscard adapter for 5Gbps 2.0 PCI bus speeds to the Thunderbolt port and a further adapter from Expresscard to PCIExpress, then a lot of fuss to get the laptop to use this external graphics board instead of the puny integrated Intel chipset. If and when they come along – hopefully they won’t be mounted in a shoebox lid… The more important thing here for me is that it PROVES high performance external desktop graphics can work via Thunderbolt and that laptops could soon get external NVidia or AMD solutions which you buy off a shelf and sit on your desk. This isn’t an accessory you’ll want to put in a suitcase and travel with! Which begs the question – why not just use a desktop? This solution involves running Windows 7 on your MacBook Air and a PCI-Express desktop graphics card sat on top of an adapter and an external power supply. If you need CUDA and ‘good enough’ graphics performance for Resolve I recommend the Macbook Pro Retina 15″ with NVidia 650M GT and 1GB of dedicated graphics DDR3. Well with $250 worth of parts it is possible to do already.įirst of all it is worth pointing out clearly that this solution is a total hack and not a dummy-proof way of adding powerful NVidia graphics and CUDA to your Macbook. Since the advent of very high speed ports like Thunderbolt many have speculated as to when external graphics adapter cards are coming to laptops.