Quote:
Originally Posted by Guy McDude
why do you/we need a eGPU?
Cant the the Mini's TB ports handle the video monitoring?
thanks in advance!
|
Wrong question. Thunderbolt is a display connector (amongst other stuff), saying you have "Thunderbolt 3" tells you what display resolutions and display rates might be supported but tells you nothing about the graphics processing power actually available to draw those graphics. In this case the Mac Mini has no discrete GPU and is using the GPU in the Intel processor. While those have gotten a lot better in recent years it's still well below discrete high-end GPU performance. And while most folks likely won't need a discrete GPU, it's still a great question to ask does it help, esp. will high-end users benefit from one.
An eGPU uses the entire other part of Thunderbolt to connect a GPU over the PCI data link part of Thunderbolt.
The Mac Mini has two Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt chips so two complete separate Thunderbolt busses with two UCB-C rear-panel connectors on each bus. Hanging a eGPU on one bus will not affect audio on the other. Ideally testing to see what really helps will use an eGPU on its own dedicated bus. I like my Sonnet eGFX box, although I'm *not* using it with Pro Tools.