
- #MAC EXTERNAL VIDEO CARD THUNDERBOLT HOW TO#
- #MAC EXTERNAL VIDEO CARD THUNDERBOLT FOR MAC#
- #MAC EXTERNAL VIDEO CARD THUNDERBOLT MAC OS#
- #MAC EXTERNAL VIDEO CARD THUNDERBOLT DRIVERS#
Should this take more than 5 minutes? Each time I’ve ended up doing Force Quit eventually and then my Mac Air won’t reboot unless I reload the OS from HD Recovery. I’ve tried this 2 or 3 times now, and each time I tell Kext Wizard to rebuild cache, it seems to go unresponsive.

Manangel suggested I use Kext Wizard to rebuild my cache. (By the way, when I check “About this Mac > More Info > System Report…” and look under Thunderbolt, it sees my Echo Express III and one of the Ports even shows “Device Connected”. When I check “About this Mac > More Info > System Report…” and look under PCI Cards it says, “There was an error while gathering PCI card information.” I edited the 3 files as described above (assuming I inserted the code correctly and in all the right places) but my computer still doesn’t recognize the GPU.
#MAC EXTERNAL VIDEO CARD THUNDERBOLT MAC OS#
On Mac OS X, games like Batman Arkham City and Starcraft 2 are perfectly fluids on 1600 x 1200 on a 11 inches 2012 MacBook Air with a big GPU (a Quadro K5000, equivalent to a GeForce GTX 660/670), even with details at their maximum. Obviously, some tasks and games are limited by the bus (which is here equivalent to two PCI-Express standard lines, 500 MB/s) but it is much more efficient than the integrated graphic card or even – with a good GPU – the dedicated graphic card of the MacBook Pro. The Thunderbolt barely disable graphic cards in practice.

In my case, it worked with all the GPU tested.īe careful, the operation has to be repeated at each minor system update (e.g the move to 10.8.5). Once this is done in the three files (beware, there are several occurrences in IONDRVSupport.kext), just reboot and the card should be activated and operate. In this file, look for sections beginning with CFBundleIdentifier and add just before, the two following lines : You have to get each file, open the package (secondary click -> Show Package Contents) and open the file ist with a text editor that supports editing system files (for example TextWrangler, in its version not from the Mac App Store). System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleHDAController.kext System/Library/Extensions/IONDRVSupport.kext The first two are related to the display, the third one is dedicated to the support of the sound via HDMI or DisplayPort. Then take care, if the computer cable is disconnected while on, the kernel panic is to be foreseen.įor NVIDIA graphic cards, there are three files to edit. But it is quite easy to add what is needed in the pilots to make them Thunderbolt-compatible, even if the hotplug is not supported.
#MAC EXTERNAL VIDEO CARD THUNDERBOLT DRIVERS#
The reason is simple : you normally need drivers adapted to hotplug to work on Thunderbolt, and GPU drivers are not. Mac OS X, by default, simply does not support Thunderbolt GPU drivers. Overall, with a mid-range graphic card, you can manage for about 500 $.įirst, with OS X Yosemite, type this command and reboot, it’s important to load modified kext. The ViDock enclosure can be replaced by a BPlus PE4L, it’s cheaper and as effective. AMD cards work, but with big graphic bugs, so I’d advise you not to use it for the moment.Īttention : use only a Kepler or a Fermi NVIDIA card, not a Maxwell card (GTX 750 or GTX 970). For everyday use, I installed a fanless GeForce GT610 (low cost) only to manage screens.
#MAC EXTERNAL VIDEO CARD THUNDERBOLT FOR MAC#
In my case, I use a ViDock 3 enclosure (an ExpressCard enclosure, already used on my old MacBook Pro), a Sonnet Thunderbolt to ExpressCard adapter (the Pro version, PCI-Express 2.0 compatible) and a Thunderbolt cable.Ĭoncerning the graphic card, any recent NVIDIA model – I tested a GeForce GTX 260 from Zotac, a GeForce GT120 from Apple and a Quadro K5000 for Mac – works.

If you use OS X Yosemite and NVIDIA Maxwell cards, click here. This is not easy and there are a few issues, but it works pretty well. This is the holy grail for some: it is possible to use a Thunderbolt graphic card on a Mac.
#MAC EXTERNAL VIDEO CARD THUNDERBOLT HOW TO#
Today, a tutorial: how to use a Thunderbolt graphic card on Mac.
