Gadgetory

hey guys this is Austin over the years we've done a lot of videos exploring whether or not you can game on a Mac spoiler alert usually the answer is yes but not all that well however its 2018 and some things have recently changed you know the last time we did this video we were trying it on a $200 MacBook and as you imagine for something that is so old the results weren't all that impressive but today we have a 2016 15 inch MacBook Pro in front of us as well as a whole host of toys that are fresh and ready to go it sounds like I'm describing a pizza I'm describing gaming computers because hi now the simplest way to game on a Mac is going to be to use a streaming service such as NVIDIA GeForce now now this is actually something that was able to work all the way down onto the $200 laptop and personally as far as I'm concerned it's one of the better ways of gaming here as long as you have a decent internet connection the way in streaming service like GeForce now works is that instead of running it on your computer which could be a problem if you're running a Mac and therefore it can't play a lot of games is that in stay that's going to be streaming it from the cloud now the main thing to keep in mind here is that you do need to have a good internet connection so especially when you're playing like high intensity games such as Fortnight for example having a good internet connection is going to be hugely vital all right we are in the game so there's a couple things that you are going to notice with a setup like this first of all there's going to be latency there's always going to be some latency so for this it's it's hard to tell just based on what looking at it I'd say maybe it's like a quarter of a second or so it doesn't seem to be too bad but something else that's going to be noticeable is the reduction in image quality because you're essentially just looking at a video feed as opposed to play in the game natively depending on your connection you will see some artifacts although to be honest this looks pretty close to a native set up right now as long as you have a good internet connection I really feel like GeForce now is worth a shot now the only thing you should keep in mind is that while it is free it's going to be in beta right now and so unless you've actually signed up in the past there's going to be a wait list so it might be a little while before you can actually get your hands on the service but for free especially if you want to be able to play games on the go on something like a Mac it really actually does make a lot of sense also was a sight note GeForce now is available on PC as well so you guys want more information on how it works and especially on the PC side of things I did do a full video at CES this you guys could go checkout continued on the streaming train we have one cast so if you guys are familiar with Xbox one streaming on a Windows PC it's really straightforward so basically as long as you have your Xbox and your Windows computer on the same network you can stream games from your Xbox to your PC and generally speaking when you're over a very short distance say you know a local Network latency is not going to be too bad and with one cast that brings that same functionality to the Mac I actually haven't tried this yet so let's give it a try the app is pretty straightforward you just need to install the drivers for your Xbox one controller which you're going to need and then once you login to your Xbox account we hit connect it should get us on to our Xbox yeah there we go so if I'm trying to scroll through here it seems to be just like I'm playing on normal Xbox alright we're in the game the first thing I'll say is that video quality is kind of so-so looks like there's more compression than there wasn't GeForce now yeah it does seem like there's a little bit more lag than there was with GeForce now the image quality is definitely not as nice now to be fair you should always expect some latency but considering that instead of running on a server who knows how many miles away I'm running on an Xbox it's only a few feet away that's a little bit annoying yeah I mean it's a $20 program which is definitely not going to be cheap luckily there is going to be a free trial so you can give it a try and if it sucks then you can bail on it but I've got to say I'm actually kind of disappointed I think I think we can do better now as with any computer whether it be PC or Mac the GPU matters when it comes to gaming now hiring Mac's such as the iMac as well as the MacBook Pro 15 inch that I have here I actually do have somewhat decent GPUs inside however when it comes to lower end stuff such as the 13-inch MacBook Pro the 12-inch MacBook as well as the MacBook Air they're all going to have integrated graphics and are going to have a lot more trouble gaming at least right out of the box now external Thunderbolt enclosures are nothing new but they've gotten a lot better and they've gotten a lot more well supported you can see something like an rx 580 can fit in a nice small package but on top of that this also will work on Windows all you need is a Thunderbolt 3 port and it should be good to go just keep in mind that you should connect your display to the actual graphics card as opposed to your computer it'll definitely help alleviate any kind of bottlenecks in the actual Thunderbolt 3 interface but once you get up it should be a seamless setup so to start out with we're going to be using the MacBook Pro 15 inch with its standard graphics card and we're going to be using a little game called rocket League so using my xbox one controller I'm curious to see what kind of performance tramatic get here I was able to actually crank the graphics pretty much all the way up and it actually is not going to be too bad so as some of you guys are probably aware steam is supported on the Mac and if you buy a game on Steam for Windows you are going to be able to play it on the Mac provided that there is another version this is actually not bad at all we're getting 68 frames per second or so here 67 Wow this is totally playable next up let's try to see what we can do with the actual gaming box connected so like I was saying earlier the set up is going to be really straightforward we've got Thunderbolt 3 into the box and then we've got the Box going DisplayPort into the monitor this is pretty nice and smooth although I've got to say the frame rate actually is not going to be a huge difference so as opposed to being in the mid 60's instead we're somewhere in the 80s oh there we go alright I will say one thing even though this is not making a massive difference rocket league is surprisingly playable on Mac I honestly really can't see any major differences and especially with a nice high refresh rate monitor the performance is really not going to be too bad so to put this whole setup to the test a little bit more we have Deus Ex mankind divided now this is a game that is well known to be very taxing but it's also an interesting title because it does support metal essentially the Mac OS version of something like DirectX 12 or volcán so for some context we're running this right now at 1080p very high settings on the natural GPU as you can see performance isn't exactly great we're getting summer in the neighborhood of well exactly 14 frames per second so move over to the gigabyte gaming box with the RX 580 inside and we can see something that's a lot more cinematic with a whopping 24 actually 25 frames per second now keep in mind this is obviously not going to be an ideal scenario we would really want to probably turn the graphics thing it's down a little bit but this does show that we're getting someone the neighborhood have about double the performance by plugging in an external GPU next up we have dirt rally this is a game that has some slight issues on Mac most notably when you have dual monitors so I had to bust out the keyboard and close the MacBook display so we're only running on one monitor but here running can a DP on Ultra settings on the MacBooks GPU we're getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 to 40 frames per second definitely playable it's not going to be the smoothest experience in the world if we plug into gaming box what we're seeing is there is going to be a little bit of a performance difference but it's actually not going to be that big so for certain scenes when you've got the full car in view it's going to be only a few frames per second higher now right now we're a little bit more in the 40s although even here look it's dipping to like 38 39 it's a little unusual I'm not sure if dirt needs an update to fully support it or something's going on here but a little bit better not by a lot though moving right along we have fortnight for what feels like the 18th time in this video so this is running on the MacBook and right now we're actually running it pretty decent settings this is going to be 1080p on high and at least in the sky here it's not too bad everyone starts jumping out and it starts tanking and wow that's okay I spoke too soon okay nothing like a whole lot of four frames per second ah there we go that's better so it seems like we are hovering around the 30 or 40 frames per second mark but man that's dead earning is not good but I actually do want to get a good sense of what the MacBook can do on the same settings is what we're going to be able to run with the RX 580 whoo that's uh oh yeah that's stuttering so with our rx 580 what we're seeing here is immediately a much higher framerate we're getting somewhere in neighborhood of 40 to 50 but weirdly we're still seeing that same stuttering issue I'm not really sure what that is I mean it doesn't feel like it's going to be a network thing it's not like a latency sort of issue because I mean I even get it sometimes I'm just sort of scrolling around here it's interesting generally speaking for tonight is a very well optimized game on everything from Windows PCs to iOS but here a Mac it seems like it's got some issues well okay so now that we've actually spawned everything seems to be smoothed out a little bit it's a weird issue because it doesn't seem to be related to sort of the power I mean right now this is totally playable again a solid 50 frames per second 1080p high I don't have any complaints oh but there go we start stuttering oh then that's brutal so as you guys can see gaming on the Mac has evolved the idea that you can use an external GPU really does make a big difference especially to lower end Mac's however the software support is def not fully there yet some curious what do you guys think about gaming on a Mac is it something you would ever try or is it something that's best left to trained professionals let me know in the comments below and I will catch you in the next one