Can the 2020 MacBook Pro 13" power dual screen high refresh monitors with eGPU?

[Dr. Howie Feltersnatch]

So later this year I am planning on getting a 13" MacBook pro and running it through an eGPU to power a dual monitor setup. (Most likely going to be using a Razer Core Chroma X).

I found this company called Eve Devices that is coming out with some really high end but affordable high refresh rate monitors.

If I use DisplayPort 2.0 when it comes out, will I be able to run a 4k 144 Hz monitor and a 1440p 244 Hz monitor to their full fps potential?

My concern is that the thunderbolt port will bottleneck the Hz I am able to get on either one of the monitors, but I have read conflicting things on the internet.

I plan on getting the top end RDNA2 card or the highest end NVIDEA card at the end of the year, so it should in theory be able to hit some of these fps targets on less demanding tasks, even though it might be a little overkill. Trying to game a little and futureproof for the next 5 or so years. 😅

 

[bill-p]

Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth is only a bottleneck if you have to do OpenCL or video encode/decode with mixed communication between CPU and GPU.

For gaming, the bandwidth is not that much of an issue overall, and sustained CPU performance should be your main concern then, as it is necessary for loading/decompressing/decoding high resolution textures and videos and game assets. And I gotta caution you that the 13" MacBook Pro, while a very good machine, doesn't have so good a cooling system that it can sustain reasonable clock speeds under sustained load. At least not for ultra high resolution and speed like that. Even my i9 16" can barely sustain 4K 60fps with an external GPU.

So I think 4K gaming will be throttled by the CPU for sure and I don't think you'll be getting much above 60fps, so having a display faster than 60Hz is pointless.

If you're still dead set on gaming at high frame rates, I'd say you might as well spend the money on a desktop system, and probably just get a MacBook Air or something for portable use.

 

[Dr. Howie Feltersnatch]

Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth is only a bottleneck if you have to do OpenCL or video encode/decode with mixed communication between CPU and GPU.

For gaming, the bandwidth is not that much of an issue overall, and sustained CPU performance should be your main concern then, as it is necessary for loading/decompressing/decoding high resolution textures and videos and game assets. And I gotta caution you that the 13" MacBook Pro, while a very good machine, doesn't have so good a cooling system that it can sustain reasonable clock speeds under sustained load. At least not for ultra high resolution and speed like that. Even my i9 16" can barely sustain 4K 60fps with an external GPU.

So I think 4K gaming will be throttled by the CPU for sure and I don't think you'll be getting much above 60fps, so having a display faster than 60Hz is pointless.

If you're still dead set on gaming at high frame rates, I'd say you might as well spend the money on a desktop system, and probably just get a MacBook Air or something for portable use.

thanks for the valuable insight I didn't know that.

I think I am going to still get the 4k monitor to use for gaming with my Xbox Series X.

If I want to game on the mac via eGPU, I will just use the 1440p instead and keep the 4k monitor as my side monitor.

If I do this I should still be able to get around 100 fps on the 1440p gaming with 4k open just as a web browser, correct??? This isn't going to cause my mac to completely melt lol???

 

[bill-p]

Yeah, 1440p should be fine. Even the 16" MacBook can handle some games at 1440p all by itself. Just that 4K is unknown territory, especially when it's above 60fps.