Razer Core X
A big box with big graphical potential
It’s Clear tha t the C ore X can g ive an impressive b oost t o pro t asks
$299.99 From Razer, razer.com Features Thunderbolt 3 port, 650W built-in power supply, up to 100W to Mac
Back in March, Apple added support for external graphics processors (eGPUs) in macOS 10.13.4. Razer’s Core X is one of several enclosures you can pair with your choice of card to improve a Thunderbolt 3-equipped Mac’s graphics capabilities (Apple gives recommendations at bit.ly/macegpu).
The Core X’s 6.6x14.7x9.1-inch bulk means you can fit some pretty large cards, but you need to be careful not to exceed Razer’s quoted maximum. BlackMagic’s eGPU – announced as we went to press, and made with Apple’s help – is smaller, but you’re stuck with its Radeon Pro 580 processor.
Installing a graphics card takes only a few minutes. You turn a handle to unlock the case, then pull on it to slide out the internals. Remove a screw and backing plate, insert the card into the PCI Express slot, replace the screw to hold the card firmly in place, and connect power cables to the card – the last of those is the fiddliest bit of the whole operation.
The provided Thunderbolt 3 cable is unfortunately very short; you’ll want to replace it to distance yourself from fan noise if you use a MacBook Pro.
We ran our tests on our 2016 MacBook Pro 4GB Radeon Pro 460 and two eGPUs: a Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 570 (8GB GDDR5 memory, about $280) and a Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX Vega 64 (8GB HBM2, about $600). Their relative performance is shown in the charts opposite.
In Geekbench’s OpenCL and Metal tests, the RX 570’s scores represented 107.9 and 124.1% boosts respectively, over the Mac’s own graphics chip, while the Vega 64’s scores amount to 159.5 and 186.8% improvements.
We used DaVinci Resolve to test the benefit in professional apps (H.264 video export in Final Cut Pro doesn’t
use the eGPU). Our 2 minutes and 30 seconds project was laden with intensive effects. The RX 470 cut the export time almost in half, and the high-end Vega 64 reduced it to just over a third of the time taken by our Mac’s GPU. That’s a big benefit, but you need to check your apps have eGPU support, and for which features. But it’s clear that the Core X can deliver an impressive upgrade to professional tasks.
We saw impressive gains in Rise of the Tomb Raider’s built-in benchmark. The average frame rate from our Mac’s processor was below the comfort of 30 frames per second (fps), the RX 570 was just short of the 60fps ideal, and the Vega 64 reached an impressive 84.9fps – though intense scenes still reached a low of 8fps – and 78.1fps when we switched to the Very High quality. Temper your expectations of 4K gaming on the Mac at a reasonable price, though.
the bottom line. Huge potential to save time and boost performance on recent Macs, if your apps work with eGPUs. AlanStonebridge