hey guys this is Vadim with max tech and this right here is the brand new 2020
MacBook Air it's actually the quad core i5 model which is really nice because
you not only get really good cpu scores but you also get a big improvement in
graphics because the i5 actually has the best integrated g7 graphics unlike the
i3 however there's one big issue with this MacBook Air that you don't have
with a MacBook Pro and that's the fact that while it does have a fan the fan is
actually not connected to the CPUs heatsink
so that means you can turn up the fan speed but it's not going to be
efficiently cooling it down as well as on the MacBook Pro so what we're gonna
do in this video is we're gonna be playing some games we're gonna play
Fortnight overwatch and call of duty modern warfare and we're going to see
the gaming performance of the MacBook Air by itself and then we're actually
going to be hooking it up to an e GPU with the AMD 5700 XT graphics card and
seeing if the quad-core MacBook Air is actually a pretty decent laptop to be
using with an e GPU for video gaming what we're gonna do first before we
start gaming is login to Windows 10 using boot camp and run Unigine s--
heaven benchmark and we're gonna be running the extreme preset of Unigine
Heaven benchmark 4.0 right off the bat you can tell that this benchmark is not
running very smoothly at all I don't know if you guys can hear these fans
right now but they're pretty loud and annoying the test finished we got ten
point three FPS which is definitely pretty bad the sixteen inch MacBook Pro
actually got a decent score forty seven point seven FPS so you could actually do
some gaming on that and we did but on this thing it doesn't look like it's
gonna be able to cut it I'll show you guys in just a couple of games here I am
an overwatch I've got it set to native resolution I want to try this out first
sixteen by ten I turned a lot of the settings down I
have graphics quality on low I'm gonna turn off anti-aliasing alright so this
is completely unplayable native resolution everything as low as possible
other than that and this is just absolutely horror
yeah this is completely unplayable alright so I just turned it down for
some reason it's not using the full screen I turn down the resolution
basically like four times smaller than it is supposed to now could actually
move but it's still unplayable and see if I could at least kill somebody here
hey I actually killed somebody so here I am trying to play modern warfare and I'm
getting this error code something about the graphics so that could be because
we're using integrated graphics and we're getting a very limited amount of
VRAM so modern warfare is not working at all right now so with that let's restart
back in Mac OS and play fortnight Here I am in the fortnight's settings
and for some reason to set everything to high I set everything to low I'm gonna
bring the 3d resolution back up 200% because I want the native resolution of
the MacBook show FPS is on and let's go ahead and get into the game alright so
here I am get around 1012 fps native resolution with everything set to low
yeah definitely not a good experience I just turned down the 3d resolution to
50% of native now getting around 20-25 FPS nowhere near 60
well definitely not a fun experience I mean at least I killed a guy so
obviously we already expected this to not do well by itself so let's hook up
the e GPU and see how that does all right guys so we got our a GPU set up
right here we have the razor chrome X II GPU enclosure we have the radio on 5700
XT inside of there and that all is hooked up to the MacBook Air everything
is good with that still got my mouse got a bluetooth keyboard now first I want to
show you guys if you look up here the each of you is working it's detecting it
Rx 5700 XT and by the way guys if you're interested in the e GPU setup or the
MacBook Air we have links down in the description below so the first thing I
want to do is test out the graphics performance I'm gonna go to metal in
Geekbench 5 let's test it out so we got our score back we have twenty thousand
six hundred and sixty eight that is a massive difference compared to the
MacBook Air by itself with that let's go back into Windows 10 and test out
Unigine heaven alright guys so I just tried everything to get the e GPU to
work in Windows 10 using bootcamp and unfortunately I did not get it to work I
kept getting this error code it's saying that the device the 5700 XT could not
find enough free resources to connect and work properly now that might be due
to the eight gigabytes of RAM maybe it'll work with sixteen but so far the
each view is not working in Windows 10 so let's switch back to Mac OS and play
some Fortnight here we are in Mac OS the e GPU is working thankfully we're gonna
try Unigine heaven with in Mac OS alright there you guys go that's what we
like to see eighty six point seven F PS with the e GPU set up in Mac OS now this
comes out to a total of around a thousand seven hundred and sixty dollars
with the eleven hundred dollar quad-core MacBook Air and the enclosure in the
5700 XT alright guys here we are back in the settings were at 1080p resolution
because this is a 1080p display frame rate on unlimited now the main thing
we're going to be testing out here is if the quad-core processor can handle video
gaming for a long session because the CPU heatsink is not connected to the fan
so we might see overheating and because of that we might
see lower performance even though we're connected to a really good a GPU all
right here we go guys we're in game and we're getting around look at that close
to 60 FPS it does drop down a little to 50 and it does have the occasional
framerate drop down to around 30 so that's a little bit annoying that could
be because of the CPU I'm not sure but let's keep testing so right now I'm
hitting up to 90 FPS but there are some weird glitches and stutters definitely
experiencing some issues yeah around 60 fps right now not bad but these glitches
every now and then are just really messing it up whoa since it wasn't
performing very well I'm gonna change the quality down to medium but I'm gonna
bring the 3d resolution back up to 100% to make sure it's still at 1080p so
we're back with medium settings right now I'm seeing the FPS hover at around
60 fps but there are some spikes like we saw before look at that one 30 FPS now
around 70 FPS right now it's actually not too bad on medium settings right now
but I am getting some dropped frames every now and then
help plate so although I was at around 70 FPS 60 to 70
at times it was nice and smooth I was experiencing issues where the FPS would
drop and spike definitely not a good experience it might be due to the
quad-core CPU overheating and clocking itself down we're gonna take a look at
that after we go down to low settings so low with 100% 3d resolution 1080p let's
try that out now about 80 fps 90 not experiencing those dropped frames yadi
alright so far everything's been smooth alright dude where you at whoa
what our bro oh snap curly at around 130 FPS it does go down a little bit but
honestly it's doing pretty well that
frame drop issue is gone now that we're at low settings feels really smooth the
graphics does not look good at all but hey it's playable it's very smooth yo
what's going on man I don't know where this guy went he's gone come on yes oh
come on bro so I actually had intel power gadget running in the background
monitoring the temps of the CPU the CPU was at 100 degrees Celsius the entire
time that I was playing 100 degrees Celsius and there's only one reason for
it the heatsink on the CPU is not connected to the fan so let's answer the
original question of this video can the MacBook Air do some video gaming while
connected to an e GPU because by itself it obviously you can't but connecting to
an each of you first of all it doesn't even work in Windows 10 but in Mac OS
because of that issue with the fan not being connected the temps are at 100
degrees Celsius the entire time and we've tested this eg PU before with the
same graphics card and it worked quite well with other Mac books like the
MacBook Pro but it does not work well here definitely go for at least the base
13-inch MacBook Pro which has one fan but that fan is connected to the
heatsink and it performs quite well for gaming so there you guys have it
hopefully you guys enjoyed this video and hopefully you learned something new
if you did tap that like button and click the circle above for some more
MacBook Air and iPad videos coming soon and be sure to check
out one of those two videos right over there one of them is actually testing
video editing on the 20/20 MacBook Air so if you're interested to see if it
actually works and if it's a good choice watch that video thanks for watching and
we'll see you in the next one [Music]