How much does an eGPU enhance the performance the 2017 iMac 5K?

“What gains are to be had by adding an eGPU to the 2017 iMac 5K?” rob-ART morgan asks for Bare Feats.

“If you are using your iMac 5K to edit video with DaVinci Resolve, you can get a big boost with 1080p playback with Noise Reduction by adding an eGPU with a secondary GPU,” morgan writes. “However, there is little to be gained with playback or export of RED 4K/5K video since the on-the-fly decoding of RED is CPU intensive.”

“LuxMark results reveal the potential of apps that can use multiple GPUs to render OpenCL based projects,” morgan writes. “Ditto for Blender. And the only way to add a second or third GPU on your iMac 5K or MacBook Pro is with an eGPU box.”

Check out all of the benchmark results in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Note: Equipment benchmarked includes:

• Dual GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11GB) GPUs one in the Sonnet eFGX Breakaway Box and one in the AKiTiO Node eGFX Box but using only the iMac 5K’s built-in display.

• Dual GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11GB) GPUs one in the Sonnet eFGX Breakaway Box and one in the AKiTiO Node eGFX Box with one GPU connected by dual DisplayPort cables to an external Dell 5K display

• One GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11GB) GPU installed in Sonnet eFGX Breakaway Box but using only the iMac 5K’s built-in display

• One GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11GB) GPU installed in Sonnet eFGX Breakaway Box and connected with dual DisplayPort cables to an external Dell 5K display

• One AMD Radeon RX 580 GPU installed in Sonnet eFGX Breakaway Box and one AMD Radeon RX 480 GPU installed in the AKiTiO Node eGFX Box

• One AMD Radeon RX 580 GPU installed in Sonnet eFGX Breakaway Box and connected with dual DisplayPort cables to an external Dell 5K display

• 2017 iMac 5K with 4.1GHz Quad-Core i7, 64G of 2400MHz DDR4 memory, Radeon Pro 580 GPU (8GB VRAM), 1TB PCIe based flash storage

SEE ALSO:
What you can’t yet do with the Apple eGPU dev kit – July 7, 2017
Benchmarks: AKiTiO Node Thunderbolt 3 eGPU for Apple’s new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar – February 2, 2017
Nvidia 1080ti with new drivers in external enclosure quadruples MacBook Pro native performance – April 17, 2017
Nvidia releases macOS driver with support for Titan Xp and GeForce GTX 1000 Series – April 12, 2017
NVIDIA to release Pascal drivers for macOS – April 7, 2017