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- THUNDERBOLT VIDEO CARD FOR MAC PRO FULL
- THUNDERBOLT VIDEO CARD FOR MAC PRO PORTABLE
- THUNDERBOLT VIDEO CARD FOR MAC PRO PLUS
- THUNDERBOLT VIDEO CARD FOR MAC PRO WINDOWS
The M1 iMac is the better choice for most people, but the few who need the extra umph on the Mac Studio will deeply appreciate its M1 Ultra processor. Most people are not going to need the speed that the Mac Studio offers, but if you’re a creative professional, the iMac probably isn’t enough computer for what you need to do. The Mac Studio starts with 32GB of memory and 512GB of storage, with its top configuration maxing out at 128GB of memory and 8TB of storage. The Mac Studio also comes with dedicated video encoding and decoding engines, making it especially suitable for film work.Īs for memory and storage, the iMac starts with 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage, but you can configure it with up to 16GB of memory and 2TB of storage.
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Even very intense creative tasks, like editing an orchestral film score or processing a lengthy 8K video should go smoothly on that beast. Meanwhile, the top-spec Mac Studio has an M1 Ultra processor, which is basically two M1 Max processors smashed together with a whopping 20 CPU cores and 48 GPU cores. With more cores, the M1 Max can perform graphics-heavy tasks (like film editing or 3D modelling) way faster than the M1.
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There’s no doubting that the ViDock 4 Plus and the upcoming Thunderbolt version can provide considerably more processing power for laptops with crippled integrated solutions, but not significantly more than the PCIe Radeon and Nvidia cards found in modern laptops like the MacBook Pro.While the M1 Max’s two extra CPU cores don’t give the Mac Studio that much more processing speed over the M1, the M1 Max’s graphics performance is off the charts. In other words, the concept of an external graphics card certainly sounds appealing at first blush, but once you analyze its actual use cases you can begin to see why the ViDock is really the only product of its kind. It’s better to look at the ViDock as something that you would leave at the office, like the Sony Vaio Z docking station - but again, who plays Crysis at work? And if your job involves 3D graphics, you’re going to use a proper workstation, not a laptop. Now, you could carry a secondary monitor with you - but then you could just buy a proper gaming laptop in the first place. The ViDock doesn’t allow you to feed graphics data back into your laptop: you need an additional monitor (or two) to reap the benefits of the external, desktop-class GPU. Then there’s the need to carry an LCD monitor with you.
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THUNDERBOLT VIDEO CARD FOR MAC PRO FULL
A Thunderbolt version of the ViDock would alleviate this problem considerably, but even Thunderbolt only operates over 4x PCI Express 2.0 - and it isn’t understood whether an external graphics card would get the full 4x - bidirectional 16Gbps (2GB/sec) - or just 2x. The ViDock sounds like it could help on both counts, but there are two big problems: The existing ViDock uses ExpressCard, a socket that is only connected to the system bus by 1x PCI Express 1.0, which has a total throughput of 2.5Gbps - enough space for a graphics card that can beat an integrated GPU, but certainly not enough bandwidth for a modern graphics card like the GTX 560.
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For as long as portable computers have existed we have chased the laptop that is both powerful enough to play games and also light enough to carry without sustaining a back injury. There is no denying the allure of an external graphics card. Like the Thunderbolt Display it might also provide Ethernet and FireWire connectivity, which would be useful for MacBook Air or other ultralight/ultrabook laptops. The current top-of-the-range ViDock 4 Plus provides up to 225 watts and two six-pin connectors - enough to power an Nvidia GTX 560 - and presumably the upcoming Thunderbolt equivalent will provide the same wattage or even more. This would be a Mac-exclusive until 2012 when Thunderbolt ports begin to appear in Windows-powered PCs.Ī ViDock is simply an external case with enough space for a full-length, two-slot-high graphics card - or eGPU - and a convenient two-port USB hub.
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THUNDERBOLT VIDEO CARD FOR MAC PRO WINDOWS
Village Instruments already has experience with its ExpressCard-connected ViDock graphics card chassis, which provides extra GPU juice for Windows and Mac laptops, and the Thunderbolt version is expected to be the same kind of thing - but faster. Last week, as the result of a straw poll on Facebook, Village Instruments agreed to begin development of an external Thunderbolt-connected graphics card enclosure. This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page.