this is gonna be a fun one look at this
multiple
components on the table i'm undertaking
a little project here today well we are
this is a thing called the mantis
experiment with the idea of an external
graphics card
on your macbook pro anything that
supports thunderbolt 3.
it's referred to as an egpu an external
graphics unit the reason you would hook
something like this up to a laptop is to
get desktop
grade graphical performance on a system
that can be mobile
razer they have their own unit that you
can add to their
blade laptops which kind of operates in
a similar fashion but up until this
point there haven't been too many
options for people
on mac laptops there's a wide variance
of
macbooks some of them more powerful than
others some that can really benefit from
a setup like this this thing is not
really meant to go with you anywhere
acts as a hub for not just your graphics
but also
some other important peripherals this is
for
the graphics card three usb 3s an
ethernet port a thunderbolt 3
not just for data connectivity it also
can provide
the 87 watts of power that your macbook
pro
wants to charge this is a single cable
setup you simply detach that one cable
don't need to worry about a power brick
or anything extra
two more usb 3 ports so that's a total
of five
usb ports on this thing so you can keep
your peripherals connected to this
not have to worry about running out of
ports on the laptop itself now you
probably noticed this amazing
looking box over here graphics cards
always have the coolest boxes
a vegas 64 card these are the units that
are gonna ship
in the imac pro and therefore they
should work
on the latest mac os software without
any driver
well how much did i pay for this i think
i paid like 600 bucks maybe
i'm going to show you how this thing
works this side panel it just pops off
no screws just like that
the power supply unit that's for
mounting either a 2.5 inch hard drive or
an ssd
and the sata connector for that drive is
located right over here now i've heard
that this fan can be a little bit noisy
for some
of course you could swap that out and
then you have your graphics card slot
right here that's the important spot
some of you might not know but you can
also install windows you could do a boot
camp
situation on a macbook pro
look at that oh my jack attack
even you love something like that three
display ports and an hdmi
this thing will beef up the graphical
performance of your laptop
without being connected to an external
monitor
so we have the card installed over here
now and then
a single thunderbolt 3 cable which was
included in the box going to this
macbook pro right here now this one is
running mac os high sierra 10.13.1
there's a lot of talk about
compatibility issues with devices like
this
but on this version here we got a prompt
immediately
external gpu detected log out to begin
using the external gpu
it's charging up too so as of right now
we are running off that desktop
grade graphics rather than the internal
graphics in this macbook pro
[Music]
all right so you may have noticed i've
got a different laptop now i was using
wills
and now i'm using mine a little bit of
time has passed because i've been
playing with this thing tweaking it a
little bit i really wanted to place it
on my desk
and use it for a slightly more extended
period before
reporting back this graphics card setup
that i have here
about as native as you can get when
running 10.13.2
this card right here the vegas 64. it's
very power hungry this is a 550 watt
power supply in here how
is that really gonna work with this
particular car this card can want more
power
than what that's capable of so i've
actually gone ahead and ordered
another power supply an 800 watt power
supply to deal with this
i'd recommend going with the vega 56
instead of the 64.
it's a little less power hungry and
therefore slightly more supported
anyhow i've got geekbench up here on the
display i can actually test each gpu
independently to start off let's do the
intel hd
graphics 530 that's in my laptop here we
go
it's scoring 19642
on the opencl score macbooks without
discreet graphics without
their own amd cards just the intel
graphics are gonna benefit the most
from a setup like this because they're
working with relatively weak
graphics to begin with next up we're
gonna move to the
radian pro 460 let's see what this can
do
forty eight thousand two fifty one all
right now last up
and the most exciting amd radeon hd
vega 10xt prototype who cares what it's
called let's see what it can do
okay boom i've got as high as 170 000
on this particular score a huge
improvement here with desktop grade
graphics and the reason
why it will be meaningful for a lot of
users you want the portability of a
laptop but the graphics performance of a
desktop
this kind of kind of so there's a reason
that these have become popular
on systems like razer and now through
products like this one they're trying to
bring
a more universal approach not just for
windows computers but in this case
on mac as well this is still a bit
finicky it's not completely supportive
you're doing this
at the moment at your own risk there you
have it that's the mantis venus with an
amd
vega 64 working on a macbook pro
i think it's pretty cool and quite
frankly it's destroying the figures
that my laptop can produce on its own
i'll have the details down in the
description and also let me know do you
guys like this type of video
so did it get too technical or are you
into it would you like to see more let
me know with your thumb down below and
i'll catch you on the next one