Apple’s New M1 MacBooks Will Not Support eGPUs

With the new M1 chipsets in Apple’s new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, Apple claims that they will be using an 8-core GPU in them that apparently will give them a 5x boost in performance compared to their Intel-based predecessors, but how well they will actually perform in the real world remains to be seen.

Will they be powerful enough to beat out dedicated GPUs from the likes of NVIDIA and AMD? We’re sure that this is a concern that some gamers and professionals might have, but unfortunately, it’s a take-it-or-leave-it kind of situation. This is because according to AppleInsider, they have confirmed that the new M1 laptops will not support eGPUs.

For those unfamiliar, eGPUs are basically external GPUs. This allows users to attach an external GPU enclosure to their laptops if they need that extra boost in graphical processing, and is an alternative to choosing a higher-end laptop that comes with its own discrete GPU. It also has the added advantage of supporting desktop class GPUs which tend to be more powerful than their mobile variants.

Apple’s MacBooks have supported eGPUs for a while now and has given MacBook owners an alternative to fully speccing out the laptop. We’re not sure if this is just a limitation for the first M1 computers, or if Apple does not plan to support eGPUs entirely in the future, so we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, early adopters of the new M1 MacBooks will have to take this into consideration.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Computers
Tags: Laptops, m1, macbook air, Macbook Pro