Live With It: Sonnet Radeon RX 570 eGFX Breakaway Puck
Added 2020-04-22 22:59:57 +0000 UTCScott Johnson recounts his experience using Sonnet Technologies Radeon RX 570 eGFX. It connects an AMD Radeon 570 GPU to your eGFX-compatible computer with Thunderbolt 3 ports. Used on a late 2018 Mac Mini.
- Measures 6 inches wide by 5.1 inches deep by 2 inches tall.
- Provides 45W of Power Delivery—The Puck powers and charges your computer while connected, even when not in use.
- Three DisplayPort ports and one HDMI port, supports up to four 4K displays.
- MacOS High Sierra if using a Mac. (wont run in boot camp)
- Big improvements seen mostly in video and photo work. Premiere runs considerably better.
- Premiere runs considerably better.
- Plugged in and it knew what it was without any drivers or updates.
- Pretty decent bump in performance in gaming on the Mini. Depends on the game based on my experience.
If you want upgradability, this is not the way to go. Get an enclosure, like others Sonnet sells, and it will let you use any PCIe-based graphics card. AMD seems a llittle more mac friendly these days, but NVIDIA cards also work. More expensive but you do have more control over performance, and future proofing things.
Comments
Can't seem to find a RX 570 on Sonnet tech's website. Did Scott review the 560 or 570? Thanks! Y'all rock!
thatCharlieDude
2020-04-26 17:32:47 +0000 UTCI reached out to Sonnet and they said the 570 version is discontinued. If not, I would definitely get one. I may get the 560 version anyway, since the Mac Mini is sometimes surprisingly sluggish at certain tasks.
Alan Char
2020-04-24 00:37:52 +0000 UTCScott says: "I would say for sure you would see some loss of performance by going with the lower spec card, but not sure it’s half. And yeah, for some reason the puck I got is scarce right now. Although I thought NewEgg had it last week when I looked."
Roger Chang
2020-04-23 23:55:46 +0000 UTCScott, do you have any opinion on the RX 560 version? It's about half the price, but maybe half the speed? The spec comparison is confusing (as they usually are). Also, the RX 570 version seems to be out of stock everywhere.
Alan Char
2020-04-22 23:49:08 +0000 UTC
