DIY eGPU MacOS Experiences

I found this on a C2C shopping website in China. Don't know how they did it.

 

What about ATI graphic cards?
I have an ATI HD5800 card, and it cannot be detected by Mac OSX 10.8.5 (mountain lion)
But I can get it work on Win 8 (EFI mode).
My hardware:
Saphire ATI HD 5800 (1GB) Graphic card.
Macbook pro 2011 early-type
Vidock 4 plus
Bplus TH05 thunderbolt <-> Expresscard

 

Upgrade to 10.9 Mavericks. OS X 10.8.4 and 10.8.5 had problems getting e-gpus detected. I have 10.9 working perfectly with my mac mini egpu setup.

 

Hello all!

Help! I have an older (upgraded) Mac mini which runs Mavericks OK except for streaming video and 3D graphics. I've been tinkering with trying to do a low-buck eGPU but haven't had much success yet. (My budget is limited - saving for a Mac laptop and in the meantime don't want to spend more than up-grading to a newer Mac mini or ???)

I purchased a no-brand passive mPCIe extender, and an mPCIe to PCIe adaptor (eBay)
- both are working OK afaik - WIFI worked the same with atheros card placed after the extender, and when swapped out with the mPCIe to PCIe adaptor I could detect and use a HDD through the adaptor's usb.

I also purchased an (AMD branded) ATI 5770 - was new - almost certain it was made for a PC maybe a Dell. [and it's connected to a PSU through 6-pin]

Can't get the Mac mini to recognize the card though! Not through Mavericks or Snow Leopard or even DOS when I attempted to flash it.


Any ideas?

 

Window XP under VMware saw: AMD PCNET Family PCI Ethernet Adaptor. PCI slot 33 [PCI bus 2,device 1, function 0] (nothing else in the Mini this could be afaik other than the card)

[oooops edit] Was [not] able to get ATI Winflash to do something last night, but not sure what exactly work. XP "forced" me to choose a generic [ATI] driver..... then [it gave me a command prompt and] typed: atiflash - s 0 my5770.rom 20000, the card's fan slowed or shut off and everything went black and could not reboot, not even w/ Mac OS DVD via Superdrive and/or in safe mode, then couldn't eject Superdrive to try w/XP disk.... But when I switched off power to the eGPU computer was OK.
Hope I did not wrongly flash the card without saving the original .rom.

Could the Mac mini be telling the OS that the mPCIe slot is network only? Profiler is set up as if... and so HOW does it do this? through PCI family kexts? Located some possible info @ PCI.org behind a $$$$ paywall. Golly... if I was just getting paid for my time working on this I could've bought a new Mac Pro ... already.

[PS. (for what it's worth) from console : (Error) DiskStore: Unable to create/find index location A344CCC6-9ED5-409B-9D2C-EC9FB1B798F9 0]

 

So what is the egpu hardware needed for the highest frame rate on a early 2011 MacBook Pro 15" ?


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