In summary, the advantages of an eGPU include: It can accelerate apps that use Metal, OpenGL, and OpenCL (although unfortunately Apple has depreciated support for OpenGL in the latest versions of macOS).

Best For Gaming 2017 Mac Advertising Disclosure

How To Play Among Us On Mac Advertising Disclosure Contact Advertising Sponsorship Privacy Policy 5 Best eGPUs For Mac of 2020 MacHow2 Last Updated: September 11, 2020 To enable your Mac to handle the demands of Virtual Reality (VR) games or Augmented Reality (AR) and work with a VR Headset on your Mac, an External Graphics Processing Unit (eGPU) is essential.

We found that the best eGPU for Mac is the Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box which is officially endorsed by Apple so you get rock solid Mac compatibility with amazing performance.

Even if youre not interested in getting an eGPU to connect a VR headset to your Mac, an external graphics enclosure is a modest investment that makes a massive improvement to the performance of your Mac.

Best For Gaming 2017 Update The Graphics

In the past, the only way to upgrade the graphics performance of your Mac was to update the graphics card but this isnt always possible on all Macs and its a complicated process.

However, with the advent of super fast Thunderbird 3 connections on Mac and advancements in macOS, you can now connect powerful external graphic upgrades like eGPUs without opening up your Mac.

Any Mac with a Thunderbolt 3 port running macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 or above can connect to an external graphics processor unit including macOS 10.14 Mojave and 10.15 Catalina.

Especially if youre into gaming, an eGPU opens up a whole new world of gaming possibilities on macOS.

Although there are other innovative gaming solutions like NVIDIAs GeForce Now, they dont compare to the advantages of having an eGPU box connected to your Mac.

An eGPU allows you to play graphics intensive games at maximum frame rates just as if you were playing it on a PC even on older Macs.

Apart from gaming, if you use demanding applications such as graphic design tools, CAD programs or do lots of 4K video editing on your Mac, an eGPU makes a huge difference especially when it comes to rendering images and video.

Not all eGPUs are compatible with MacBook Pros, iMacs or Mac Minis though.

You May Also Like: The Best VR Headset For Mac Does The Oculus Rift Work On Mac Valve Drops Support For SteamVR On Mac Quick Navigation Advantages Of Using An eGPU System Requirements For eGPUs On Macs 1.

Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Puck Radeon RX 570 (Best For Mac Mini) 3.

Razor Core X (Best For 4K Displays) What About The Blackmagic eGPU Pro External Graphics Cards For Macs Why You Cant Use NVIDIA Cards With eGPUs On Macs Using a VR Headset eGPU on a Mac eGPUs Charging Your MacBook Thunderbolt Cables For eGPUs macOS Catalina eGPUs How To Make Apps Use Your eGPU Advantages Of Using An eGPU An eGPU is basically an external unit that houses a powerful graphics card which will allow your MacBook Pro or iMac to deal with graphic intensive applications.

Since the arrival of Thunderbolt 3 ports on Mac and the release of macOS High Sierra, Mac users can suddenly super charge the graphics capabilities of their machine with an external graphics unit.

An eGPU unit turns your humble MacBook Pro or MacBook Air into a powerful desktop gaming system or 4K video editing system capable of competing with the very best.

Advanced 3D graphics platforms such as NVIDIA CUDA, which are way beyond the capabilities of current Macs, suddenly become accessible with an eGPU.

It also means that highly demanding games can be played at maximum resolution on Mac something that current Macs struggle with or cant handle.

In fact, development of VR games has been so slow that the Steam gaming platform recently announced that it is dropping support for VR games on Mac.

This decision will probably be reversed once eGPUs become more widely used and newer Macs become more capable of handling VR out of the box.

Its also likely that Apple will launch its own VR gaming platform either as part of Apple Arcade or in the Mac App Store.

Just as exciting is the fact that eGPUs open-up the world of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) to Mac users.

The great thing about an eGPU is that because its external, you can leave it at home for gaming or VR use and still enjoy the portability of your MacBook if you want to take it with you somewhere.

Best Mac For Gaming 2017