Probably because it's the wrong tool for the job. If you want to play games, a Mac is easily one of the worst ways to do that.
The eGPU method of bolting functionality onto a platform which doesn't want it is only neat on a technical level at best. It is essentially the world's biggest dongle.
> The eGPU method of bolting functionality onto a platform which doesn't want it is only neat on a technical level at best.
It's neat on every level. To quote the article:
> "…you are now able to take a top-of-the-line gaming GPU, seat it inside an external box, plug that box into your computer, and—using a single high-bandwidth cable—push the necessary instructions to render 4K games at 60 frames per second on the card before (over the very same cable!) pushing those frames back to your notebook's built-in monitor without introducing any perceptible latency."
I know God intended for us to use PCI cards by opening up cases and inserting them into slots on a motherboard, but it's incredibly cool to be able to just plug one in like a USB device.
But "just plugging in one USB device" wasn't even what happened in this post. The amount of steps described inside literally were 10x what it takes to just build a PC, boot it, install games and play ️
For me, it's a dongle that does exactly what I want: max graphics power at home for games, less weight and better battery life when out and about for writing and light browsing.
The only reason I don't have an eGPU yet is that most of the market still seems to be making weird compromise-driven design decisions, like sharing a single Thunderbolt controller between the card and any added USB ports.
Not if you're bored to tears of AAA games. Plenty of nice indies available cross platform. And for benchmarking etc I see Aspyr has ported a Battlefield of Honor of Duty title...
Won’t disagree with the “wrong tool” characterization, but there are many situations where using the right tool (a dedicated windows pc or game console) comes with many other problematic side effects.
I do all of my gaming on a Mac with an eGPU and find it convenient and practical for my needs. It is much better (for my use case and constraints) than my previous solutions of hackintoshes, dedicated windows PCs.
A dedicated windows pc is a pain. I have separate windows installs but rebooting to win to play a game is also a huge disruption since all my other stuff is on Mac OS.
Thus, I've ignored games that don't run on Mac OS for a while. In spite of buying one or three on sales.
I actually feel bad about never finishing Witcher 3... ;)
I'm playing through Witcher 3 for the second time... on a PS4 Pro. For $400, it's an AWESOME and HASSLE-FREE gaming experience. (Based on my experience, and what I've heard announced, the PS5 will be a day-1 purchase for me.)
Sure, it won't look QUITE as nice as running on the $8,500 rig my son now uses for Fortnite and Minecraft, but it still looks GOOD. AND you don't get surprised by Windows 10 random breakages and forced updates. AND you don't have to put up with needing to register accounts to download your mouse, keyboard, and video drivers.
Whatever bad things can be said about gaming on a Mac, I'm DONE with gaming on Windows. No mods? Whatever. No problems.
The original purchaser paid that. Lightning hit it. I replaced the mobo, and 3 of the 4 hard drives. I've had it for 10 years, upgraded to an SSD, and upgraded the video card 3 times. I played on it for years. It's now my kid's box. My point is that this all Windows is useful for, for me, now.
Oof - I left it unfinished for more than a year. Finally got around to picking it up a little, maybe a month ago, and got completely hooked until I finished it + DLCs. It was a true gaming delight - the DLCs are amazing as well, and, as a whole, it's easily the best game of all times for me - and I believe I played almost every significant RPG ever...I found it so much more worth my time than movies or playing anything else.
The eGPU method of bolting functionality onto a platform which doesn't want it is only neat on a technical level at best. It is essentially the world's biggest dongle.