Sonnet Announces New eGPU Docks With AMD Radeon RX 5000 Series GPUs and Support for Pro Display XDR

Seems like a lot of money for an almost two year old card..

Ugliest Bluetooth speaker ever 🤣

Presumably they wouldn't have bothered if Apple was going to end eGPU support in the next few months... I would imagine that they have some degree of insider knowledge...

That’s a big assumption. The ARM Transition is still likely going to take a couple years and Intel Machines will be in use for a lot longer.

Why buy this when you can get Razer Core X + other AMD card and be able to upgrade in the future?

Because these are the only eGPUs (besides the Blackmagic eGPUs) that allow direct connection of Thunderbolt displays (either a single LG UltraFine 5K or Apple Pro Display XDR, or up to two LG UltraFine 4K) where the Thunderbolt display is controlled by the GPU in the eGPU instead of the GPU in the Mac. Other methods of connecting older Thunderbolt displays (those that don't also support USB-C) to eGPUs are expensive, and may not allow all the features of the display to work.

Since the GPUs support DSC, it may be possible to connect two Apple Pro Display XDR displays using a Thunderbolt 4 hub or dock that has more than one downstream Thunderbolt 4 port. I haven't seen any reviews of the OWC Thunderbolt 4 Hub or Dock connected after another Thunderbolt 3 device though.

The reason these new eGPUs only have one downstream Thunderbolt 3 port is because the JHL8440 doesn't have any DisplayPort inputs. The JHL8540 and older Thunderbolt controllers have two DisplayPort inputs, but only two Thunderbolt ports (if the JHL8540 can be used in a peripheral, then one Thunderbolt port would be for upstream leaving only one Thunderbolt port for downstream). I'm guessing the size of the JHL8540 and JHL8440 means that you can either have two DisplayPort inputs or two Downstream Thunderbolt ports but not both. So the way to make an eGPU with multiple downstream Thunderbolt ports for multiple Thunderbolt displays is to connect two or three Thunderbolt 3 controllers internally to a JHL8440. Each Thunderbolt 3 controller has two DisplayPort inputs so you only need two controllers if the GPUs only support 4 DisplayPort outputs. If you want to add a DisplayPort or HDMI port then you could add a DisplayPort mux to switch the DisplayPort outputs of the GPU between a Thunderbolt controller input and the output port. The mux would be controlled by the hot plug detect pin of the output ports. There already exists multiple eGPUs that use two Thunderbolt controllers chained together (one for the GPU and the other for USB devices) so this would be a Thunderbolt 4 extension of that.

Who would pay that for such a terrible and old GPU in 2021? 🤣

I have a Sonnet Breakaway Puck RX570 and it works like a champ. Let's hope Apple adds eGPU support on the new M1s and beyond! Because the M1 graphics performance is good but not great.