(Nvidia describe these as 'web drivers' in that you have to download them from their website.) Nvidia's drivers do appear superior in many areas.

Apple also supply drivers for some Nvidia cards and again the same description would apply, however as noted in one of the below articles Nvidia also provide their own Mac drivers. It should be noted that for AMD video cards Apple are the sole source of OS X drivers and frankly the most polite term that can be ascribed to Apple's drivers is 'mediocre'. It may also only be possible with a very limited number of video cards, the now also old GTX 780 Ti seems to be mentioned often. It maybe you need to use the built-in video for the boot screen and the main display but you might be able to use a second video card via a Thunderbolt chassis for an additional screen and/or for GPU acceleration e.g. However I did find the following articles which seem to suggest at least partial success. 😉)Īs other posts indicate no video drivers for the Mac have been made 'Thunderbolt aware', therefore historically it has been felt this is not a workable solution. I am not 100% clear as to why it could be simply to enable 'plug and play' capability which in many cases will not really be an issue. In general the accepted wisdom is that any PCIe card needs to have 'Thunderbolt aware' drivers to function properly via a Thunderbolt to PCIe expansion chassis. Plus they're way more expensive - $500 on up for just the enclosure, without the video card. 😀 It's too bad nobody made a native Thunderbolt chassis like the ViDock that would work - chassis exist but nobody wants to say that a video card will work. So once everything is here, I'll give it a go. I think it's better just to have a Mac, and down the road if I want a faster GPU I can get one unlike a MacBook Pro or an iMac. Not waking on sleep, not fully using SpeedStep and so on. I've done so-called Hackintoshes before, but they've always been weird in the Power Management department. Cheaper than building a separate PC and shoehorning Mavericks onto it.

Maybe a year ago when I got the Mini I should have opted for a 21.5' iMac, but too late to worry about that. It's an expensive-enough proposition to buy all the hardware (total of $465). I was too cheap to pay for expedited shipping at all those places. Hopefully everything will be here by the end of the week. Sonnet EchoPro Express Card to Thunderbolt adapter (cheapest at B&H, paid $135)ī-Plus PE4L-EC2C (bought from M-Factors Storage) Based on this blog post I have ordered the following:ĬoolerMaster Elite 130 mini ITX case (also from Newegg)Ĭorsair CX430M modular 80+ power supply (again from Newegg) I have a 2012 Mac Mini that I'll be using. You can make the drivers Thunderbolt-aware for the current nVidia drivers.

Mac mini late 2012 external gpu