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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D 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.
00:18It 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.
00:32There's stutter when you jump out of the bus, there's stutter when you're in combat, it's just not a very good gaming experience. I 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.
00:44But 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.
00:54So, 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'll bump it up even more, depending on the 13-inch model you have.
01:04So, 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.
01:16You plug it in, there's no setup, there's no drivers, there's no reboot even. It just works right off the bat. When you connect it, a few seconds later, an icon appears at the top of the screen saying that an external GPU is connected, and that's it.
01:28And when it's connected, you get a very significant improvement in performance for something like Fortnite. So, before, because of the frame rate spikes, it's actually very difficult to play properly in Fortnite.
01:37But 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.
01:49One 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.
02:02Now, 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.
02:08But if you're a 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 $600, you get the enclosure, the GPU, a carrying case, and all the cables and stuff.
02:20And 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.
02:33So a few of the 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.
02:42The other thing I'm seeing is that there's no boot camp 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.
02:53And 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.
03:01The other thing is that there's no NVIDIA card support, so if you wanted to swap this thing out with an NVIDIA card, it won't work, at least not officially. There's workarounds and stuff like that, but if you want easy mode, it's gotta be an AMD card.
03:12Now, 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 Final Cut, so that's Apple's video editing program.
03:22This connection does not work in Final Cut, 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.
03:30Now, I am pretty confident that over time, the support is gonna improve quite a bit, but it's just kinda weird to see Apple put out an official release for this thing while still being kinda half-baked for a lot of their services.
03:41So, a couple other things to note. The noise levels on this thing are really quiet. It 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.
03:50And 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 $500-$600 just for the case itself.
04:01This is $600. It includes the GPU. It includes, like, all the hardware that you'd need to make the whole thing work, and there's upgradeability, right?
04:08Not just for the card and stuff, but if you wanna upgrade your laptop in the future, you're still gonna have Thunderbolt 3 ports in the future. Like, there's just a path of upgradeability, which I like to see in something like this.
04:18So, external GPUs are pretty viable for MacBook Pros right now, and the support's just gonna get better over time.
04:23Alright, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it, and here's some Fortnite footage.
04:27This is actually my very first win, and I was on a freaking MacBook. Enjoy.