MGA1: Minisforum's first OCuLink eGPU misses out on USB4 connectivity and SSD expansion
Minisforum continues with its regular spate of product releases, having opened orders for the EliteMini AI370 only a few days ago. Regardless, the company has now introduced the MGA1, which it is already selling in multiple markets.
In short, the Minisforum MGA1 is another eGPU built on AMD's Radeon RX 7600M XT GPU. Thus, the MGA1 has 32 Compute Units (CUs) in reserve that utilise AMD's RDNA 3 architecture. Also, the eGPU has 8 GB of GDDR6 VRAM running at 18 Gbps on a 128-bit memory bandwidth. This is true of One-Netbook's OneXGPU (curr. $569.99 - refurbished on Amazon) though, along with the following other devices:
In other words, the MGA1 will only perform about as well as its peers. However, it lacks a USB4 port for connecting external devices. For some reason, Minisforum has included a USB 3.1 Type-C port that supports 65 W Power Delivery in its place. Instead, the MGA1 makes do with OCuLink 4i, which provides a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface.
Moreover, the MGA1 finds itself with a pair of DisplayPort 2.0 video outputs, a single HDMI 2.1 port and three USB 3.2 Type-A ports that deliver 10 Gbps peak data transmission. Unfortunately, the MGA1 misses out on M.2 2280 storage expansion too. Nonetheless, Minisforum has sought to charge $559 for its first eGPU, making it about as expensive as its more versatile peers, if not more so in some cases.
Source(s)
Minisforum via VideoCardz
