Gaming on a Mac hasn’t really been practical for… well… nearly 20 years; however, that
may no longer be true in 2018.
Apple recently released iMac Pro which is the first Mac in a long time with a legitimately
good GPU.
My base-model iMac Pro rocks an AMD Vega 56 and can run GTA V at 4K Ultra over 60FPS.
Now, that’s awesome, but it’s a $5,000 computer.
It should be able to do that.
Hope is not lost for the rest of Mac users, however, because two weeks ago, Apple officially
brought support for Thunderbolt 3 eGPU enclosures to macOS.
So you probably know where this is going… on the left, I’ve got the $5,000 iMac Pro.
On the right, I’ve got the cheapest MacBook Pro Apple sells at $1,300, a $230 Akitio Node
eGPU enclosure, and inside of that, I’ve got an NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti which I purchased
last year before the crypto apocalypse for MSRP: $699.
Good luck finding one for that price now.
lol.
The question is, can you really game on a Mac in 2018?
Let’s find out.
Now, because macOS doesn’t have any recent AAA games, we’re going to be doing all of
our gaming in Windows.
Luckily, Boot Camp remains a super easy way to install Windows 10 on a Mac.
Both systems, unfortunately, have some semi-janky hoops you’ll have to jump through to get
everything running as it should.
On iMac Pro, when I launched Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, I was getting an average of just
9FPS at 1440p.
That obviously shouldn’t be happening on a Vega 56.
For some inexplicable reason, Apple’s Boot Camp graphics drivers are outdated and horribly
optimized for Windows.
Furthermore, you can’t just install the Vega 56 drivers that AMD provides either because
Windows doesn’t recognize the GPU by default.
Luckily, BootcampDrivers.com is an incredible resource that provides modified versions of
the latest official AMD drivers for Boot Camp-ed Macs and boy, do they work.
After a quick and easy install, my iMac Pro was running Mankind Divided at an average
of 57FPS at 1440p.
Much better.
I mentioned Apple added official eGPU support for macOS in 10.13.4, and that’s true; however,
only AMD Polaris and Vega cards are officially supported.
NVIDIA thankfully provides macOS graphics drivers for most of their modern GPUs and
they do work; however, it’s not native plug-and-play support.
Sadly, neither AMD nor NVIDIA eGPUs are supported by Boot Camp.
At least, not officially.
My base-model 2017 MacBook Pro would boot into Windows with an eGPU just fine, but only
the external monitor worked… the MacBook’s internal display wigged out.
Luckily, the eGPU community is super active and I was able to get things working 100%
in a matter of minutes.
Basically, during a Windows boot, the MacBook deactivates the Intel integrated GPU if it
notices another GPU present.
This isn’t a problem for the 15” MacBook Pro because it has a second dedicated GPU
inside the laptop, but on my 13” MacBook Pro which only has Intel graphics, boot up
stalls if an eGPU is connected.
So, I had to create a USB drive that tricks the Mac’s EFI firmware into thinking it’s
booting into macOS even though it’s actually booting into Windows.
I may have just confused and terrified a fair number of you, but the whole process takes
just 5 minutes to set up and the documentation is excellent.
It’s super easy to get eGPUs working in Windows through Boot Camp.
And compatibility varies slightly by model, but basically every MacBook and iMac since
2011 are supported; however, it should be obvious that new Thunderbolt 3 Macs will far
outperform older Thunderbolt 2 Macs.
*phew* Okay, so now that both Macs are successfully booted into Windows and running at maximum
performance, how do they perform?
Honestly, in most games, they stack up pretty close.
In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the iMac Pro slightly outperforms MacBook Pro with a 4FPS
average difference at 1440p.
In the new Far Cry 5, the two machines are neck-and-neck at a very playable 64FPS average
at 1440p Ultra.
Of course, less intensive games like Fortnite, PUBG, and Rocket League all run remarkably
well.
Even at 4K.
The iMac Pro did have some slightly weird compatibility issues in certain games like
Far Cry 5 because the monitor basically pretends to be two side-by-side displays running at
2560x2880 because the iMac Pro’s screen annoyingly still uses a custom timing controller
from the original 2014 5K iMac instead of an updated embedded DisplayPort 1.3 connection
for full 5K bandwidth; however, this issue was really only a problem in menus and not
during actual gameplay.
I didn’t notice any screen tearing either, so that’s good.
Now are either of these systems going to outperform a comparably priced gaming PC?
No, but for the first time in a very long time, gaming on a Mac actually works well
and is a great option for Mac users wanting to play the latest PC titles without building
a dedicated gaming machine.
Unfortunately, we still need to boot into Windows for the latest games, but Vulkan has
recently made its way to the Mac, and that’s an exciting prospect for the future of gaming
in macOS.
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