Best eGPUs for Mac: Why you should buy an external graphics card | Macworld

Welcome to our guide to Mac eGPUs. In this article we explain the advantages of using an external graphics card with your Mac or MacBook, and round up the best buying options currently available. Once you’ve chosen the eGPU that’s best for you, you’ll want to read about
How to use an eGPU with a Mac.

Why do we need eGPUs?

Macs are often criticised for being overpriced and underpowered – especially when it comes to the kind of graphics performance that is needed for the latest 3D games, or for professional video-editing and animation software. But, in the past couple of years, Apple has started to recognise that Macs need a bit of a graphics boost in order to tackle tasks such as
virtual reality and
augmented reality. Apple has also announced a gaming subscription service that’s due to arrive later this year – which suggests that it’s finally waking up to the Mac games scene at last – and there are rumours that it’s developing a VR headset that will require plenty of 3D graphics power to run properly.

But, unfortunately, many Macs and MacBook models still rely on ‘integrated graphics’ to handle graphics, video and animation work. An integrated graphics processor is a small graphics chip that is actually part of the Mac’s main processor (CPU) – rather than having a ‘dedicated’ graphics card (or GPU – ‘graphics processing unit’), which is a completely separate graphics card that works alongside the main CPU in order to give graphics performance a much bigger boost. And, of course, none of the current Mac range has any internal expansion slots that would allow you to install a new GPU in order to upgrade your graphics performance (although Apple has recently been dropping hints about a new ‘modular’ Mac Pro design that is due later this year).

Recognising that this lack of internal expansion is a real weakness, Apple has come up with a different solution – one that is only possible now that the latest Macs and MacBook models all have super-fast Thunderbolt 3 ports. If you’ve got a Mac with Thunderbolt 3 that is running High Sierra or the latest Mojave version of the macOS, then you can now connect your Mac to an eGPU – or ‘external GPU’ – that allows you to have a powerful new graphics card that sits outside the Mac.

Update: The new M1 Macs with Apple’s Silicon processors will not support eGPU – read more here:
M1 Macs will not support eGPU.

What’s an eGPU?

As the name suggests, an eGPU is a type of graphics card that gives your Mac a real performance boost for 3D graphics. To be precise, an eGPU actually consists of two components that you normally have to buy separately.

The first, of course, is the graphics card itself, also known as a GPU. However, current Mac models don’t have any expansion slots inside them that would allow you to install the GPU into the Mac itself, so you have to install the GPU into an external box – often called an ‘enclosure’ – that sits outside the Mac.

The enclosure is just an empty box that contains a PCIe expansion slot, and a power supply for the graphics card. You can then simply insert your new graphics card into the expansion slot inside the enclosure, and then connect the enclosure to your Mac via one of its Thunderbolt 3 ports.

(There are lots of Windows PCs that have Thunderbolt 3 these days too and, in fact, many of the eGPU enclosures that are on sale at the moment are designed by PC manufacturers for their own gaming PCs and laptops.)

What are the advantages of an eGPU?

One great advantage of using an eGPU is that you can have a slimline laptop that you carry with you when you’re out and about, and then plug it into an eGPU when you get home or back to the office – instantly turning your lightweight laptop into a heavyweight desktop computer capable of running high-end graphics software or the latest 3D games.

The bad news is that most eGPU enclosures are simply sold as empty boxes – ‘unpopulated’ – with no graphics card inside them. This means you have to budget a minimum of £250/$300 just to buy the empty enclosure on its own, and then add the cost of your new graphics card on top. The process of installing the graphics card can be a little daunting as well – especially for Mac users who haven’t come across eGPU technology before.

There are a few eGPUs that are sold with a graphics card already installed inside, such as the
Blackmagic eGPU and
Sonnet Puck that we review here. These are more expensive than ‘unpopulated’ enclosures, but they’re very quick and easy to install, and give you an instant ‘plug and play’ upgrade that doesn’t involve any work with a screwdriver. However, the graphics card is fixed inside the enclosure, so you can’t replace it and upgrade to an even faster graphics card in the future.

Which graphics cards are compatible with eGPUs?

In order to use an eGPU, you’ll need a fairly new Mac that has Thunderbolt 3 ports that can be used to physically connect the external enclosure to your Mac. Apple recommends that you have Mojave running on your Mac, but it is also possible to use an eGPU with Thunderbolt 3 Macs that are running the older High Sierra (although it has to be version 10.13.4 or later).

The choice of graphics card can be tricky, though. Most eGPU enclosures have a standard Thunderbolt 3 interface, so they can be connected to any Mac or PC that also has Thunderbolt 3. The PCIe expansion slot inside the enclosure is also a standard component, so it should allow you to insert any graphics card made by AMD or nVidia, the two big companies that dominate the GPU market these days.

Unfortunately, Apple and nVidia don’t seem to get along these days, so the macOS currently only works with a limited selection of graphics cards from AMD. Apple’s website currently
lists these GPUs as being compatible with macOS:

• AMD Radeon RX 470 and RX 570
• AMD Radeon RX 480 and RX580
• AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100
• AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
• AMD Radeon RX Vega 64
• AMD Vega Frontier Edition Air
• AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100

You should also remember that the high-end Radeon Pro and Vega graphics cards require a lot of power, so you should always check with the manufacturer of your eGPU enclosure to make sure that its internal power supply is suitable for the graphics card that you plan to use (most manufacturers do have this info on their web site, along with a list of compatible graphics cards).

Sadly, this means that the enormously popular nVidia range of graphics cards is still off limits for Mac users, although hopefully this will change in the future (the brave souls at
egpu.io have actually found ways of using nVidia cards with Macs, but this generally involves some scary hacking).

But if your choice of graphics card is still limited, there’s an increasing range of Thunderbolt 3 eGPU enclosures now available that will work with both Macs and Windows PCs. Several big-name PC manufacturers make their own eGPUs, such as the
Asus and
Razer enclosures that we review here. There are also specialist companies, such as Sonnet and Blackmagic, that just focus on making eGPU enclosures and other upgrade products for Macs and PCs.

This technology is still new to the Mac, so hopefully there will be more developments – such as support for nVidia graphics cards – to come in the next year or so. In the meantime, here’s our round-up of the best eGPU enclosures that can turn your Mac into a real graphics powerhouse.