eGPU on Mini to Mac Studio - a step up in graphics performance?

[weirdsmith]

I've been asked to give one of my grandkids a computer for their birthday so I'm considering a Mac Studio so I can pass on my Intel Mac Mini with an eGPU, which currently drives 2X 4k screens. I got the eGPU because Lightroom became unusable when I got the 4k screens. What I'm trying to work out is whether the Studio I can afford will be an improvement, graphics wise, over the Mini:

The refurb Studio I'm looking at is:

Mac Studio Apple M1 Max Chip with 10‑Core CPU and 32‑Core GPU, 32GB unified memory​

The things I do that require graphics grunt are photography - Lightroom mainly - and the one game I play a bit, StarCraft II. With the current setup I get lag-free performance in photo editing and can more or less max out the graphics settings in SC2. I will be keeping the screens and driving them from the Studio.

I don't know a vast amount about GPUs and I'm struggling to work out how to compare the Radeon Pro to the M1 Max GPU. I'll manage if the Studio isn't a huge improvement in the GPU department for the things I do. I just don't want to go backwards in performance.

How should I go about assessing this?

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

You don't mention what GPU you are using. CPU wise it will be a huge step up.

 

[weirdsmith]

It's a Radeon Pro 580 8GB in a BlackMagic eGPU.

 

[pmiles]

M1 Max GPU is equivalent to a AMD RX 5700M which is an upgrade over the AMD Radeon RX 580.

 

[weirdsmith]

Thanks for that. I just went to order the refurb but they'd run out. Rang Apple and after a bit of mucking around where the guy thought they had some but they kept disappearing as he tried to secure one, he gave me 5% off a new one.

 

[weirdsmith]

In case anyone ever has a similar question…

Just set the new Studio up and…performance is considerably poorer on StarCraft II than the old setup. When I first ran it, I had to turn down a whole bunch of graphics settings and I am still getting much lower frame rates. And it gets really jittery and hard to play in complex battles. I had every setting maxed on the Mini + eGPU and it was so much smoother.

I knew it wasn't a gaming machine. I just hoped the overall performance would be high enough to make up for it, but that's not the case here. It's good on all the general purpose stuff I do, though not dramatically faster than the Mini at anything I've checked. I do like the lower power - maybe a third of the previous rig - and lack of fan noise, but overall it's not the major step up I had hoped for.

I'm pretty sure I'll return it. It's just too much money to have invested in a machine that does something less well than its predecessor. I did wonder if it might be just slow at first, while indexing for Spotlight and backing up and so on, but that all finished last night and it's the same.

 

[jav6454]

It's a Radeon Pro 580 8GB in a BlackMagic eGPU.

Do you know if these work on Apple Silicon? Likely the answer will be know from the last I read.

 

[weirdsmith]

Do you know if these work on Apple Silicon? Likely the answer will be know from the last I read.

It's still shown as Intel only:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HM8Y2VC/A/blackmagic-egpu

 

[pmiles]

In case anyone ever has a similar question…

Just set the new Studio up and…performance is considerably poorer on StarCraft II than the old setup. When I first ran it, I had to turn down a whole bunch of graphics settings and I am still getting much lower frame rates. And it gets really jittery and hard to play in complex battles. I had every setting maxed on the Mini + eGPU and it was so much smoother.

I knew it wasn't a gaming machine. I just hoped the overall performance would be high enough to make up for it, but that's not the case here. It's good on all the general purpose stuff I do, though not dramatically faster than the Mini at anything I've checked. I do like the lower power - maybe a third of the previous rig - and lack of fan noise, but overall it's not the major step up I had hoped for.

I'm pretty sure I'll return it. It's just too much money to have invested in a machine that does something less well than its predecessor. I did wonder if it might be just slow at first, while indexing for Spotlight and backing up and so on, but that all finished last night and it's the same.

Just to add a little perspective here... Blizzard literally has no Mac development team to speak of. Support has been dismal at best. It's up to Apple to provide updated drivers and fix bugs and they have an extremely poor record in doing so. Contrary to belief... it really hasn't been a priority at Apple. Blizzard can't fix issues with performance et al without some modicum of support from Apple. Doesn't help that they have gutted the Mac development team either. The writing is on the wall.

I wouldn't expect these issues to be fixed any time soon, if at all. You are now using a completely different GPU than your eGPU setup. So it has different issues, but they both have issues, graphics-wise. You're more likely to see an update on the new silicon hardware, however that being said, if it's not a priority at Apple, said fixes are likely to come later rather sooner. Older hardware is likely to never see any fixes at all... and will continue to degrade in performance as Blizzard continues to move forward... with or without Apple's assistance.

Remember, even if it is an older game, Blizzard is continually updating the backend that supports said games to match that of the current titles. They all use the same BattleNet interface regardless of how old the game is for example. As such, games that used to play well on older hardware tend to play less well on the same hardware because of changes being done on the backend. Eventually that hardware is incapable of even playing the old titles that they used to play. In other words, classic of 2004 is not the same as classic 2022... same is true for all their titles.