Razer Core X
A big box with big graphical potential
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 16.8x37.4x23cm bulk means you can fit a pretty large card inside, 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 your graphics card into the PCI Express slot, replace the screw to ensure the card is held firmly in place, and connect internal 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 – just 0.5m long. You’ll want to replace it to distance yourself from fan noise if you use a MacBook Pro.
We ran our tests on a 2016 MacBook Pro. We tested with the Mac’s built-in 4GB Radeon Pro 460 and two external graphics cards: a Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 570 (with 8GB GDDR5 memory, about £300) and a Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX Vega 64 (8GB HBM2, about
It’s clear that the Core X can deliver an impressive upgrade to pro tasks
£550). 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.
Capable where it counts
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 2.5-minute 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 built-in processor. That’s a big benefit, but you need to check your apps support eGPUs, and for which features. But it’s clear that the Core X can deliver an impressive upgrade to professional tasks.
We saw excellent gains in Rise of the Tomb Raider’s built-in benchmark. In this, 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.