Compatibility

Please read this section very carefully.

Supported Macs

All Intel Macs that meet the following criteria are supported:

• Macs with Thunderbolt ports.
• Can run macOS High Sierra (10.13.4) or newer without any hacks.

If you use workarounds such as OpenCore Legacy Patcher (OCLP), eGPU support is not guaranteed as some of their workarounds can conflict with eGPU support. Some notable examples:

• Successful Case: https://egpu.io/forums/postid/96107/
• Unsuccessful Case: https://github.com/mayankk2308/kryptonite/issues/15

Workarounds like Big Sur Micropatcher and PurgeWrangler make direct modifications to system files and cannot be used in tandem with this solution.

If using Ventura/macOS 13, you are most likely using OCLP. There are 2 important limitations:

1. If running on a Mac with pre-Haswell CPU, Polaris or newer AMD drivers will not load for you, so no modern AMD GPUs can work. Example, 2013 Mac Pro. More details: https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/issues/998#issuecomment-1166340370
2. Need this workaround: https://github.com/mayankk2308/kryptonite/issues/34

If you don’t want to deal with Ventura and it’s issues, just stay on Monterey.

Supported GPUs

It is highly recommended to use certified compatible eGPUs with macOS. You can find the supported models at: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208544

Please also see: https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/definitive-macos-thunderbolt-egfx-compatibility-registry-faq/

AMD GPUs

At this point, Apple officially only supports AMD GPUs. Please follow the support link above for a list of models. Kryptonite also includes support for older AMD GPUs but not all are guaranteed to work. An example that works is the Radeon R9 Fury. Typically any GPU that works natively when installed in a Mac Pro's PCIe slot should work as an eGPU, but this is not guaranteed.

NVIDIA GPUs

There are various edge cases. Please read carefully.

Kepler (GTX 7xx) GPUs

These GPUs have drivers in even the latest versions of macOS, but:

• On macOS 12.x or later, these GPUs are not supported.
• On macOS 10.15.x or later, DisplayPort won't work on these GPUs. Workarounds are possible but not currently a part of Kryptonite.
• On macOS 10.14.x or older, these GPUs will function normally.

Maxwell/Pascal (GTX 9xx/10xx) GPUs

These GPUs require NVIDIA Web Drivers which are only supported on macOS High Sierra (10.13.4 to 10.13.6). On any new version of macOS, these GPUs can’t be used.

Turing/Ampere and other NVIDIA GPUs

Not supported in any way on any version of macOS.