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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here.
00:05So I've always considered myself an enthusiast or at the very least a fan of external GPUs.
00:11And this video was originally going to be kind of like a showcase of some external GPU
00:15enclosures that works with High Sierra, the new upcoming Mac OS.
00:19But as I tested things and I got into the thick of it, the video kind of changed course.
00:24Okay, High Sierra.
00:25This is the upcoming version of Mac OS.
00:28It's in beta right now, but external GPU support is really solid.
00:31The Razer Core was one of the more popular Thunderbolt 3 enclosures.
00:35This is running the TI-82 controller.
00:37This does not work in Mac OS High Sierra.
00:40So there were workarounds for this kind of stuff in Sierra, but that doesn't work in
00:43High Sierra.
00:44The enclosure that I used to test most of this video was this thing, the Mantis Venus.
00:48Now I'm actually running new firmware from Intel to get 2200 Mbps of PCIe bandwidth.
00:54The older firmware had potential limitations because of the ports.
00:58Okay, inside the Venus, there's a big enough power supply in here to power and charge even
01:02the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
01:04It can feed 87 watts, I think, to whatever it's connected to.
01:07And there's actually a connection in here for a SATA drive.
01:10So off of a single Thunderbolt 3 cable, you get power to your MacBook, you get external
01:14GPU capabilities, and you get a drive in here for backup or storage or whatever you want
01:18to do.
01:19So I'm going to jump right into the thick of it.
01:21External GPU support in High Sierra is basically plug and play.
01:24It's running very early drivers on a beta OS, but everything works really nice.
01:28The 10-series NVIDIA GPUs run decent.
01:31The AMD GPUs like the RX 480 and RX 580 are really reliable.
01:35But like any external Thunderbolt 3 GPU, you automatically lose about 10-15% of the performance
01:40just by nature of the connection.
01:42The other thing is I highly recommend running this thing with an external display.
01:46You can connect it using like a ghost connector to run it onto the internal display, but I
01:50really don't recommend it.
01:51It's a 15-20% hit.
01:53So here are some native Mac games running on a 1080p external monitor.
01:57And if you look at these numbers, it doesn't look bad, right?
01:59It's way better than anything you'd get from a stock MacBook GPU.
02:03And as long as you're putting a powerful graphics card into the enclosure, you can get some
02:06strong frame rates for games.
02:08But then when you compare this Mac setup to a Windows setup, the difference is substantial.
02:14You need to get a significantly more powerful GPU for the Mac just to keep up.
02:17And that's my whole issue.
02:18Even with great support, good drivers, and expensive hardware, performance isn't great
02:23in macOS.
02:24The only way to get good external GPU performance here is to run bootcamp Windows.
02:29And I noticed the same thing in Adobe Premiere.
02:31The external GPU helps a lot.
02:32I mean, it's so much better than the Radeon Pro, but the same external GPU gets better
02:37performance in Windows.
02:38And it's been like half a year since I benchmarked external GPUs on Macs.
02:42They've become much easier to set up.
02:43There's no more scripts, and the whole thing is just a lot more reliable.
02:47But performance is exactly the same, and I'm convinced at this point that this is as good
02:51as performance is going to get for these cards, which quite frankly, sucks.
02:55So one of the biggest issues with external GPUs is pricing.
02:59The enclosures themselves aren't cheap, and then the GPUs you need to put in them are
03:02pricey as well, especially with all the crypto mining happening.
03:05So you're looking at $400 or $500 for the enclosure, and then at least $300, maybe $400
03:10for the GPU inside there.
03:11I mean, you could go lower, but then the whole thing isn't really worth your time.
03:15Then you need an external monitor.
03:16And those are a couple hundred, maybe a little bit more, and if you want to go something
03:19higher end, like you're pushing $600, $700, at the end, this whole setup, just for the
03:24external GPU stuff, can easily break $1100 or $1200.
03:28And at that price, you can build a gaming PC, or you can get a solid gaming laptop for
03:32the money.
03:33See, if you're investing in an external GPU setup, but you're forced to run bootcamp Windows
03:37for performance, I feel like you should spend that money on a dedicated Windows setup instead.
03:43External GPUs have always been very expensive already for Windows laptops, but then on Macs,
03:48that price-to-performance ratio is just even worse.
03:50And it's not Apple's fault, none of this is Apple's hardware, it's just that many games
03:54and applications are optimized for Windows and just perform better there.
03:58Now, maybe the next generation of GPUs will make this better, like maybe Volta or Vega
04:03will just make this somehow more cost effective, or maybe enclosures will come down a lot in
04:07price, but there's something inherently wrong with this whole Thunderbolt 3 connection.
04:12Maybe we need Thunderbolt 4, maybe we need more bandwidth available, so that you're not
04:15losing so much performance when you're piping it through.
04:18I'm not sure what it is, but right now, for MacBook users, unless you absolutely need
04:22this thing in your workflow, like you need something for work to make this happen, this,
04:27mm-mm, it's just not cost effective.