In this video, we’re gonna hook up AMD’s latest 5700XT graphics card to the base 13”
MacBook Pro using an eGPU enclosure, and then pitting that against the base 16” MacBook
Pro to see if this eGPU setup can outperform it in graphics-heavy tasks.
Now we already shared this info before but it got taken down, so we wanted to make sure
more people saw this video because the results that we found in our testing can seriously
save a lot of people money.
So if you’ve already seen it, feel free to help us out by tapping the like button
and watching it all the way through to help the YouTube algorithm. We’d really appreciate
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With the $300 Razer Core X and the $380 5700 XT, the total price of the setup comes out
to $1980, quite a bit cheaper than the $2400 16” MacBook Pro, which is currently on sale
for $200 OFF on Amazon.
Of course, the larger model gets better specs, like the six-core processor, double the RAM,
more storage, and all the other new features like the new Magic keyboard and much better
speakers.
The benefit of the $13” is that it’s a lot cheaper and more portable, weighing in
at almost a pound and a half less than the 16” Pro, and it’s quite a bit smaller
overall.
Now let’s see if it makes sense to buy the 13” Pro for portability when on the go,
and an eGPU for more power at home or in the office, while also saving a good amount of
cash.
Let’s start with Geekbench 5’s Metal graphics test. As you can see, the eGPU greatly increases
RAW graphics power, even more so than the 16” Pro’s more expensive 5500M 8GB graphics
option.
Next up, we tested GFXBench 5.0, and we got over double the FPS of the 16” using the
eGPU setup, and in the manhattan test, there was an even bigger difference, around 2.5
times the FPS.
We then tested the Unigine Heaven gaming benchmark on the extreme preset, and the eGPU performed
extremely well here, upping gaming performance of the 13” Pro by almost 8 times, and easily
outperforming the best graphics you can get on the 16” Pro, and even outperforming the
$5000 base iMac Pro.
So if you’re planning on playing some games on your Mac, an eGPU is the way to go.
We actually played Fortnite on macOS with this eGPU setup and compared it the base 16”
Pro.
Here are the recommended settings we got with the eGPU, 1080P with a lot of the extra settings
enabled, and we actually got an average of 85 FPS in game, with it very rarely dipping
just below 60.
We played with these exact settings on the base 16” Pro and we only got an average
of 14FPS, which is completely unplayable.
So back on the eGPU setup, we adjusted the settings up to 1440P resolution, but turned
off a lot of the extra graphics settings, and this time, we got an even higher 100FPS
average, compared to the 16” MacBook Pro which only went up to 20FPS.
Based on these results, it shows that processor performance and RAM don’t really matter
much for gaming, and it’s all about the graphics performance.
Next up, we tested Blender’s Quick graphics benchmark, and the eGPU setup wiped the floor
with the 16” Pro, mostly because the 5700 XT has 8GB of video memory, and that’s why
the 16” Pro’s upgraded graphics performed much better as well.
And now let’s get into video editing with Final Cut Pro X.
The first step is to select the external graphics option within Final Cut’s preferences to
make sure it’s using the eGPU.
In the graphics-heavy BruceX test, the eGPU is 42% faster than the base 16” Pro, almost
as fast as the higher-end 5500M graphics.
But in our 20 second 4K Stabilization test, it was actually more than twice as slow as
the base 16”, which means the system is being limited by something else, like RAM
or eGPU inefficiencies.
We then tested stabilization again with a 30s Canon C200 RAW clip, and we saw basically
the same results, with the 16” Pro being over twice as fast.
Next up, we exported a 5 minute 4K h.264 clip with added effects, which is the format that
most YouTubers shoot and edit, and surprisingly, the eGPU barely helped the 13” Pro, being
around 3 times slower than the base 16” Pro.
This result didn’t really make sense, since the last time we ran this test with a similar
eGPU setup, except with the Vega 64 card, the eGPU helped out a lot, taking only around
5 minutes.
We discovered that the new 10.4.7 version of Final Cut Pro doesn’t fully utilize eGPUs
like it did before for specific video editing tests, and that’s because the Metal engine
has been completely rebuilt with this update, and it needs further software optimizations
for eGPU support.
So we ended up downloading the older 10.4.6 version of Final Cut Pro, and we ended up
getting a much faster export time in the 5 minute 4K test, as well as the other stabilization
tests.
Moving on with the rest of our tests with the new version, exporting a 5 min c200 Raw
clip, the eGPU helped a ton compared to the 13” Pro by itself, but it’s still much
slower than the base 16” MacBook Pro.
And finally, exporting a 5 minute 4.5K R3D RAW Clip, the 16” Pro was yet again, over
twice as fast as the eGPU setup.
And throughout all of these tests, the timeline playback performance was better on the 16”
Pro than with the eGPU setup, running at higher frame rates and being easier to edit.
So from all of these tests, we can conclude that for video editing, the 16” Pro by itself
is the way to go.
The eGPU definitely sped things up for the 13” Pro, but even with the older version
of Final Cut where it greatly increased speeds, it was still quite a bit slower than the 16”
Pro by itself.
So my recommendation is that video editors simply go with the 16” MacBook Pro, unless
you absolutely must have a 13” model for portability when on the go.
And for anyone who cares about gaming performance, the eGPU is the only way to go, and the base
$1300 model’s slower quad-core processor and 8GB of RAM doesn’t really limit gaming
performance.
Just make sure to upgrade the storage, because the base 128GB is seriously not enough for
anyone who wants to game.
If you enjoyed this comparison, tap like & click that circle above for more videos like this
one. And you can click that video right there to see the older version of this video. Thanks
for watching, and we’ll see you in the next video.