HiGame

For the past few years, AMD has worked on a new generation of external GPU technology that would use Thunderbolt 3 and offer a better experience. This push got a major boost when Apple announced back in June that the MacBook Pro line would support this functionality. eGPU support is still being built into macOS High Sierra, but it’s now in a sufficient state for testing.

9to5 Mac took a Mantiz Venus MZ-02 chassis for a spin to find out what kind of performance upgrade Mac users might expect from adopting a high-end GPU. The results are early — hardware isn’t properly identified, and the author may have made a mistake in his hardware configurations, given that he tested Rocket League with vertical sync enabled. While that’s a reasonable option when it comes to how you personally prefer to handle V-sync, it permanently caps performance of any solution at the maximum refresh rate of the monitor. If your GPU can push 500fps and you lock your frame rate to 60Hz, 60fps is all you’re going to get.

But, with that caveat in place, we can at least say the RX Vega 64 retains enough of its raw performance to smash through what the MacBook Pro 13-inch is capable of delivering. Unigine Heaven isn’t a great test these days — it’s old and synthetic — but it does show a MacBook Pro 13-inch barely breaking 10fps on its own compared with a smooth 65fps for the Vega 64.



Again, early driver support and imperfect hardware detection makes it clear that it’s still early days to be running out to bet on eGPU performance in Apple systems, but the long-term trend is positive. The chassis in question is expensive, at $400, but includes a power supply, can charge the MacBook Pro while gaming, and has SSD mounting brackets, USB 3.0 and gigabit Ethernet support, and a 550W power supply.

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