OTOY Forums

Is there any experience with running OctaneRender on external GPU, specifically with MacBook Pro Retina + Sonnet Echo Express SE + Geforce Titan, or similar? What are pros and cons? Are there better configurations than the above?

Thanks.


--8

OK. I'll take it as a no then.

--8

Dont panic! its just a very specific question that would be difficult to answer, since most of us havent been in such situation.

Theorically, it should work, as it recognize the GPUs in your system, but no hard evidence yet for your specific case. If you already have the setup, why dont you give it a try?

things like expanders work nicelly, though there are some problems with thunderbolt, gpus & macOS. - read through forum, there is already a lot talked 'bout that - You'll find information faster than anyone is going to rewrite You everything here.

cheers

p.s. I do have a dream from while ago hooking ultraportable device like MBA & some expansion box with one or two hi-end cards, but it seems it is not so easy as they say.. Plug and play with GPU through thuderbold on macOS..is a problem.

Hi, iirc nobody test Octane with a thunderbold external graphics card case like:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2 ... case-deb/1
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7040/comp ... ilverstone

This device is in alpha status so at moment nobody knows.

Cheers, mib.

I believe the Sonnet box you listed doesn't have enough power to support the Titan, it's also not the right size as the Titan is a full-length, double-width card.

From all that I've read so far, the hardware is all in place, we just need Thunderbolt-aware drivers for the graphics cards in order for them to work as you described. Lot's of speculation going on that with the launch of the new Mac Pro and Mavericks, the stars might finally align...

In the meantime, I believe this is the closest I've seen to success:
http://youtu.be/koE5r0Kg1Rc

Yes, that box is too small for the Titan, however Sonnet Echo Express Pro seems to be able to accomodate the Titan.

Here are two confirmed cases using external GPUs on macs with the instructions on how to modify the drivers, so that OS X would recognize external GPUs:

http://mediapros.co.uk/portfolio-view/t ... olterizer/

http://www.coreyrobson.com/post/5245166 ... ostly-well

These guys used Quadro 4000 2GBDDR5, GTS450 1GBDDR5, and GT240 1GBDDR5 cards in Sonnet and Magma boxes.

Here is another report on using low cost thunderbolt/PCIe adapter with Titan, however, although it runs on a Mac, it seems the operating system was Windows:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1594407

So, it seems there are some options already, we just need to try them with Octane.

--8

3 months has passed. Does anyone know the updates about thunderbolt solution with extra GPUs to work with Octane Render?

Jason

Any news on this?

I think this is a serious task.
Maybe we have to look at professional box, like Cubix.
In fact, this is the only case that tell us about mac and thunderbolt.

At the end, I think would be more suitable to get a PC.
And who is speaking is a mac user since 1984...

L.