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 Fusion and eGPUs

sakopp's profile image
sakopp posted Sep 30, 2024 03:02 PM

I use Fusion 11 on a MacBook Pro 2019 running Sonoma (macos 14). I have a Windows 10 VM where I run the 3DExperience Solidworks for Makers. I've been having issues with Solidworks speed since they made a recent upgrade. (Previously it was working fine.) Their only response was that the graphics card is unsupported. In other words, "We're not going to do anything to try to help."

What I'm trying to find out is, if I got an eGPU for my MacBook Pro, would Fusion be able to take advantage of it? And if so would my Windows VM (and Solidworks) performance improve?

Thanks

Technogeezer's profile image
Technogeezer

Fusion (on Intel Macs) can take advantage of an eGPU (to accelerate graphics, not to gain access to eGPU compute resources). Others have reported here that it improves graphics performance. But remember that physical GPUs are not accessed directly by a VM.  The guest will still see a  VMware virtualized SVGA 3D graphics adapter -- which is what I suspect that Solidworks is complaining is unsupported. Because the graphics adapter is the same, things might be faster but may not get around the issue. Especially if Solidworks is written to access GPU specific features on their supported hardware that are not available in the virtual GPU adapter. 

sakopp's profile image
sakopp

@Technogeezer Thanks for the reply. That helps. It might be worth a try.