Hey, how's it going, Dave 2d here, so I don't play Fortnite very often if I'm playing games at all
It's usually overwatch but on the MacBook
There's no overwatch client at least not a native one so the game that I play the most on my MacBook is actually Fortnite.
But there's a problem it runs really poorly on their best MacBook Pro
So this is their 15-inch 2017 model Radeon pro 560
It's decked out, but it just runs really poorly at really low settings you can get near 60 frames per second
But there's a lot of stutter there's stutter when you jump out of the bus there's starter when you're in combat
It's just not a very good gaming experience
I don't know Macs aren't ideal for gaming anyways, but Fortnite isn't a particularly demanding game
It just still runs really poorly on the MacBook Pro, but then this came in the mail. This is the gigabyte gaming box
It's their new external GPU built specifically for MacBooks, and it cranks up the graphical power of your Thunderbolt 3 equipped MacBook Pro
So it'll work with the 15-inch the 13-inch and even the iMac on the 15-inch model
It'll bump it up by like double on the 13-inch
It will bump it up
Even more depending on the 13-inch model you have so this box is literally the smallest
External GPU I've ever used it's running an Rx 580 and because of the new Mac OS 10.13.4 the connection is
Really easy to set up. It's literally plug-and-play you plug it in. There's no setup. There's no drivers. There's no reboot
even it just works right off the bag when you connect it a few seconds later and
Icon appears at the top of the screen saying that an external GPU is connected
And that's it and when it's connected you get a very
Significant improvement in performance for something like Fortnite so before because the framerate spiked because it was actually very difficult to play properly in Fortnite
But now with the gaming box
You can get well over 60 frames per second on an external monitor now if I tweak the settings a bit I could keep viewing
Distance maxed out while keeping all the visual fluff down and I could still float around 70 to 80 frames per second
one thing to keep in mind though
Fortnite does run better in Windows games in general are just better optimized for Windows and
even for a huge developer like epic the Mac OS
client has lower frame rates than the Windows client with the same kind of hardware now obviously this isn't for everyone if you have a
gaming laptop or a gaming desktop
Then you don't need any of this stuff to play Fortnite or any game for that matter
But if your Mac user if you're kind of required to use it for work, or if you prefer Mac OS
This is a very viable option. It goes for six hundred dollars
You get the enclosure the GPU a carrying case and all the cables and stuff and the power supply in here is
450 watts so it can easily handle charging your macbook pro while it's connected even the 15 inch one and it's also a big enough
Power supply that if you wanted to in the future you could probably upgrade the GPU provided that that new GPU fit in here
So a few other things to note Mac OS supports multiple external GPUs
So if your device has enough lanes like the 15-inch MacBook Pro this thing can handle two external GPUs the other thing
I'm seeing is that there's no bootcamp support. I don't know if it's coming
I hope it is, but at launch we're not seeing official support
And we're also not seeing the ability to use the built-in laptop display, and this took me a while to figure out
It's right in the documentation
But if you don't have an external monitor plugged into that external GPU this setup won't work right now
It does require it the other thing is that there's no nvidia card support
So if you want to swap this thing out with an nvidia card it won't work at least not officially
There's work around some stuff like that, but if you want easy mode. It's got to be an AMD card now
There's one other issue. That's a little more prominent
It's the fact that software support is relatively limited right now this still does not work with Finalcut
so that's
Apple's video editing program this connection does not work in Finalcut and I'm also having issues getting this to work in Adobe Premiere
It'll load up, but the moment I drop in footage. There's an error now
I am pretty confident that over time the support is going to improve quite a bit
but it's just kind of weird to see Apple put out an
Official release for this thing while still being the kind of half-baked for a lot of their services so a couple other things to note
The noise levels on this thing are really quiet obviously depends on how close you keep this box to you
But at 2 or 3 feet away
It's a very comfortable noise level
And I also think that the value of this $600 box is not bad like a lot of external GPU cases are quite expensive
We've seen some cases that are like five six hundred bucks just for the case itself
This is 600 it includes the GPU includes like all the hardware that you need to make the whole thing work and there's
Upgradability right not just for the card and stuff
But if you want to upgrade your laptop in the future you still going to have Thunderbolt 3 ports in the future like there's just
A path of upgradeability which I like to see in something like this
So external GPUs are pretty viable for macbook pros right now
And the supports are is going to get better over time all right. Hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs
if you liked it subs if you loved it and here's some Fortnite footage. There's actually my very first win and I was on a freaking MacBook enjoy
