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#External 3d graphics card for macbook pro pro#
Leif Johnson/IDGīenchmarks from a 15-inch 2017 MacBook Pro using Unigine’s Benchmark Valley on Ultra (fullscreen), both with the eGPU and without. It suggests you may still have trouble with certain made-for-Mac applications even though Apple appears to have designed eGPU support in such a way that official support shouldn’t matter. I’ve asked for further clarification, but Feral’s statement must refer to optimized support as the benchmark tests and general gameplay showed clear improvements when using the eGPU. Eventually Feral will make an announcement regarding official support. Shortly after this article went live, Feral Interactive contacted me to let me know it doesn’t support eGPUs in any of its games at the moment, although the studio is currently testing combinations of cards and GPUs. I’m almost certain I’d be blown away with the results on a $950 Radeon RX Vega 64, but we currently don’t have one. And this was only with the Radeon RX 580, a $401 card we had on hand here. Perhaps a different chassis would have helped.īut watching Lara Croft jump from snowy ledges and sneak through desert passages felt natural and fluid with the better graphics card (and better framerates). The Nvidia toolbar icon showed up, but the card itself never worked. I also tried using Nvidia’s web driver that’s partially designed with macOS in mind, thinking I’d hit on a way to make it work. The little processor icon didn’t show up. I plopped an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 into the eGPU chassis, connected it, booted, and nada.
![external 3d graphics card for macbook pro external 3d graphics card for macbook pro](https://bizon-tech.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/r/a/razer-core-x-gallery8-external-graphics-enclosure.jpg)
#External 3d graphics card for macbook pro driver#
If you’re wondering, I tried using Nvidia cards, but there’s no built-in driver support. Here you’ll find your gaming ambitions further thwarted by Apple’s lack of direct support for Nvidia cards. It makes some sense considering that AMD makes most of the graphics cards found in contemporary Macs, but it’s another low blow in a gaming environment where Nvidia cards win mountains of accolades.
![external 3d graphics card for macbook pro external 3d graphics card for macbook pro](https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/External-Graphics-Enclosure.jpg)
For those of you who can play with that kind of power, though, let’s move on to the supported cards. Unfortunately, that limitation likely knocks a lot of users out of the game right there.
![external 3d graphics card for macbook pro external 3d graphics card for macbook pro](https://bizon-tech.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/r/a/razer-core-x-gallery11-external-graphics-enclosure.jpg)
This is a bit of a bummer, but Thunderbolt 3 supports data transfers of up to 40Gbps, while Thunderbolt 2 supports 20Gbps. You can only pull this off without any technical trickery so long as you’re using a MacBook or iMac with Thunderbolt 3 support, which means you’re limited to using laptops dating from 2016 and iMacs dating from mid-2017. It works, that is, so long as you have the right materials. It’s really no different from disconnecting a drive. Apple prides itself on elegant simplicity, and in this case Steve Jobs’ favorite old saying remains true: It just works. (Getting it to work with games takes a few more steps, but more on that later.) Even better, I didn’t even have to restart. Within seconds, an icon resembling a processor popped up on the Mac’s top menu bar, showing that the Radeon RX 580 was, in fact, working. Once I slipped my Radeon RX 580 into an Akitio Node Pro chassis and tightened the screws, all I really needed to do was plug the Thunderbolt 3 cable into my MacBook Pro.