Apple's new M1 Macs won't work with external GPUs

[steven36]

The new Apple Silicon powered MacBook Pro can't use an eGPU, and maxes out at 16GB of RAM.

 

 

 

Today Apple showed off the first Macs powered by its new M1 CPU, with a new Mac mini, MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. It touted impressive performance marks for the new machines and promised excellent battery life, however they won’t come without any compromises. As Paul Gerhardt mentioned in a tweet, tech spec pages for the new machines reveal that none of them are compatible with external GPUs that connect via Thunderbolt. According to Apple Insider, it has confirmed none of the machines will support eGPUs.

 

Only some people would require add-on oomph in any case, but Apple’s support for external graphics cards gave it some extra gaming cachet and informed creative professionals their needs would continue to be met. Now, they’ll have to wait and see if things change for higher-end models as Apple Silicon spreads throughout the company’s PC lineup.

 

There’s also been some focus on the fact that the 13-inch MacBook Pro M1 models only include two USB-C ports onboard instead of four, but whether or not you think that’s enough ports, it’s consistent with the cheaper Intel models it replaces. A more striking limitation is the one we’ve already noted, that the MBP is limited to 16GB of RAM — if you think you’ll need 32GB then you’ll have to opt for an Intel-powered model.

 

Source

[tommiy]

And here is an even further rub. I have a maxed out mid 2017 MBP that cost approx $4200 at the time. Expensive. 6 weeks ago the trade in price from Apple was approx $1000. After yesterdays announcement Apple now reports that the machine is worth $0 and that I should rejoice that it can be recycled and if I provide my details they will send me an envelop that I can return the MBP to them for free. Now, Apple are still selling Intel MBP that you can max out. The prices are higher than i paid, but why would you even consider this when the answer is as soon as your Apple Care expires the device is worth $0. I think this is a ploy to force everyone to consider a lower spec memory and buy the arm version and if you can not then fool on you for not accepting that a $5000 machine is valued at nothing after 3 years. Really, they are just getting worse from a customer perspective. I actually purchased a new Dell XPS as my daily driver because Apple could not get Catalina to be stable even after replacing my logic board. Simply it now has 5x the number of kernel panics than my XPS in a period of 4 weeks. Apple does not just work any longer. It remains to be seen with what happens with Big Sur release today. Enough of my rant but the Apple decline seems very significant from a consumer aspect.