MBP 16" i9 w/ BlackMagic eGPU Pro (Vega 56) vs Mac Studio M2 Max or Ultra

[lwr999]

Hi all,

Trying to find an answer to this...

I have a 4 year old MBP 16" i9 that I use exclusively in clamshell mode with a BlackMagic eGPU (Vega 56) and XDR Pro Display

Using the MBP in clamshell mode feels like a waste and thinking of upgrading to an Mac Studio Max or Ultra

Obviously the eGPU won't work with Apple Silicon, so will have to go in the upgrade

Question : My need for an eGPU is edge case, but an important edge case. Every few months I'll get sucked into playing WoW and I really like the job the Vega 56 does in the eGPU. Is the GPU performance of Mac Studio M2 Max at least as good as the Vega 56 for WoW, or will I be taking a step back. Similarly, does anyone know the WoW performance I can expect if I spend twice the money and buy the Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra?

Thanks!

 

[bcortens]

Seems like the M2Max is quite a bit faster in theory Theoretical Comparison and others have played the WoW on their M2 Max MBPs with high performance User Example

 

[padams35]

General rule of thumb: for gaming/3D-rendering each M1/M2 core is as roughly equivalent to 2x Polaris/Vega cores.
So your Vega 56 could be loosely expected to rival a hypothetical 28 GPU-core M2 chip.

An M2-Max 30-core gpu should be a slight upgrade - or better since it also frees you from thunderbolt eGPU overhead.

bcorten's linked thread would be a good place to look for specific numbers.

 

[psingh01]

Here are some benchmarks with the M1 chips.

How Well Does WoW Run on Apple's M1 Pro?

Apple recently released a new line-up of Macbook Pros with Apple Silicon proccessors and Matthew Monizs video review offers a sneak peek at how the M1 Pro chip performs while running World of Warcraft. First, lets compare the new chips. M1 Pro comes with up to 10-cores and a 16-core GPU, up to 32...

www.icy-veins.com

WoW has native support for apple silicon. I’d expect an M2 Ultra should be a lot better than a Vega 56 through an egpu.

 

[lwr999]

Thanks all for the responses. Going to pull the trigger and get the Mac Studio Ultra

 

[leman]

If your only concern for the CPU is playing WoW, then a M2 Pro Mac mini would be more than sufficient. The M2 max should be able to do 4K-5K at 120FPS. Ultra is a total overkill.

 

[lwr999]

If your only concern for the CPU is playing WoW, then a M2 Pro Mac mini would be more than sufficient. The M2 max should be able to do 4K-5K at 120FPS. Ultra is a total overkill.

Thanks ... and completely agree. But I definitely need the Ultra RAM and SSD for my day job - so when I start to add that to the lower spec machines, it feels like it's not much more to upgrade to the Ultra. Put completely get your point

 

[dmccloud]

If your only concern for the CPU is playing WoW, then a M2 Pro Mac mini would be more than sufficient. The M2 max should be able to do 4K-5K at 120FPS. Ultra is a total overkill.

M2 Max (30 core variant) can easily pull that at the highest settings. Source: My personal experience running Shadowlands on this machine.