Bought it - Radeon Pro Vega 20

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Hey folks, I’m very excited to have just recently found the Mac Technical Support forums here. I am also very excited to have just bought the latest 2018 MacBook Pro with the Radeon Pro Vega 20.

Freakin’ expensive as heck, but I knew what I was getting into. I wanted to be able to game lightly on the go, but have a good egpu setup at home - all while sticking to MacOS. I played with Boot Camp for a while (on my old 2015 13" pro) and an Nvidia 1070. That was working well for a while, but I’m just sick of Windows and really wanted to get a good setup working in MacOS.

Just thought I’d post in here to see if anyone else has been playing with this Pro Vega 20. It’s been going well for me so far, but I have not tweaked my graphic options in WoW yet.

Here is the machine:(I attempted to insert a hyperlink here, not allowed apparently. That’s going to make this take a ton of time…)

macOS Mojave 10.14.2
2.6 GHz intel core i7
16GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Radeon Pro Vega 20 4080 MB

Here are the default graphical settings in WoW:(tried the hyperlink here too…ouch. If anyone knows a good way to post images here, lemme know. sheesh.)

Fullscreen (windowed)
window size - 3360x2100
res scale - 69% 2304x1440
monitor - Color LCD
AA - none
Vertical Sync: enabeled
Texture Res - High
Texture Filtering - 8x Anisotropic
Prejected Textures - enabled
View Distance - 5
Environment Detail - 5
Ground Clutter - 5
Shadow Quality - Good
Liquid Detail - Good
Sunshafts - Low
Particle Density - Good
SSAO - Good
Depth Effects - Good
Lighting Quality - High
Outline Mode - Good

Advanced tab:

Triple Buffering - Disabled
Reduce Input Lag - Disabled
MSAA - None
Multisample Alpha-test - Disabled
Post Process AA - None
Resample Quality - None
Graphics API - Metal
Physics Interactions - Player Only
Graphics Card - Auto Detect
UI Scale - 1.0
Max Foreground FPS - 100 FPS
Max Background FPS - 100 FPS
Contrast - 50
Brightness - 50
Gamma - 1.0

The basics: WoW chose “5” on the graphics quality slider by default, and for the most part I hover around 60 FPS. I notice that my frames will drop as low as 35, but its not predictable. It will happen when im just running through a zone, sometimes in combat, etc. It doesn’t happen often either, so I really just need to gather more data. I haven’t tried any instanced PvP or PvE yet, just basic questing and what not in BFA zones.

Anyway, when I was shopping around for this MacBook I found that it was really hard to find benchmarks or really much info regarding how the Pro Vega 20 might run with WoW and in MacOS. I guess the game is just getting too old or something. So, if anyone here wants me to run any benchmarks or tests or anything, let me know and I’d be happy to test some stuff out. I haven’t done much benchmarking myself, so I might need to know what software is needed and what not, but I’m happy to dig in if anyone is curious how its going with the Radeon Pro Vega 20.

Are there any other MacOS gaming communities I should know about? I’m familiar with egpu…io (… included because dreaded no-link rule), not much else.

*edited to include Advanced tab.

3 Likes
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You should be able to enable CMAA for a tiny little bit of extra jaggy reduction without any performance loss.

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Have you tried dropping down to 50 percent scaling? I’d love to know what kind of FPS that produces and if the image is too blurry

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Hey, sorry I haven’t gotten back to you @tmali. I haven’t had much time to game lately, but I will give it a shot asap!

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Just an FYI

You have Max FPS set to 100 and you have Vertical Sync enable. V-sync will limit your FPS to a multiple of your screens refresh rate which is typically 60Hz. This locks your frame rate to 60 fps. This is why you hover around 60 fps. Turn off Vsync if you want to push the fps higher.

I turned on v-sync the other day and I actually get a smother picture at 60 fps than I do at 100 fps.

1 Like
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Oh, dang! Good to know! I will give that a shot.

edit*

Some interesting findings here, @Tmali.

With Vertical Sync enabled and Scaling set to 50%, I stay pretty much at 60 FPS running around Dazar’alor.

With Vertical Sync disabled and Scaling set to 50%, the lowest my FPS gets (running around the same areas) is like 87.

If I leave Scaling set to 69% with V-Sync disabled, my FPS is all over the place, typically lower than 60, and it doesnt look very good. However, with the v-sync enabled and scaling reduced I get higher FPS and lose that chopiness that comes with disbaling v-sync. Everything is a maybe a little fuzzy looking though. Fuzzyness seems to increase while moving. Kind of hard to describe.

edit 2*

I had night shift enabled just now, and the fuzzyness was sort of hard to perceive. WIth night shift disabled, it is undeniably fuzzy. A little too fuzzy for my tastes, but idk, it wouldnt be bad in a BG or raid or something. It’s certainly playable.

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Slightly old info.

Vsync on metal uses dynamic syncing. it’ll CAP at monitors max refresh rate. but it isn’t stuck in multiples like 15, 30, 45 like old vsync. if your fps in an area is 52, vsync will do 52fps not down it to 30 like vsync of old.

vsync should always be on really. also there is no reason what so every do have 100fps on a 60hz display as the additional frames are literally not displayed. Game will always feel smoother with fps synced to refresh rate of display.

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I have recently bought one of the last Macbook Pro myself.

Here’s my specs:

Processor 2,9 Ghz Intel Core i9
Memory 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Graphics Radeon pro 560X 4096 MB | Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

Game plays very smoothly, but I’ve set it up according to the pinned post in this forum. I’m not an expert on computer specs, but let me know if I can help chip in here!

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I realize I’m resurrecting a thread here, but am looking at purchasing a 2019 MBP with Vega 20, and wondering about temperature. How hard do the fans kick in? What temp does the CPU reach while running WoW? My 2015 MBP reaches around 65-68 C. I get approx. 60 FPS on graphics setting 4, 80% scaling, and mostly Fair graphics settings. I’m hoping the Vega 20 would make at least some difference.

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Im actually in the market for the same 2019 MBP with vega 20 (unless the new 16 inch Macbook Pro releases in September and has a better cpu/gpu option) with the intentions to play Classic WoW while I’m traveling all the time for work. Let me know how your experience is.

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I don’t know if Apple will actually do it, but it’d be incredibly smart of them if they position the 16” model as the true workhorse MacBook with dramatically better cooling, stronger GPU, etc… I see it fitting into the MBP lineup the same way the iMac Pro fits into their desktop lineup.

1 Like
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Ahhh, I always have it turned off. Assume set min and max to 60 with vsync on… right?

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Don’t even use a max with vsync, fps won’t go over vsync. can set a min for tabbing out though to free up cpu/gpu when game isn’t in front.

Also apparently my character used on forums got reset :smiley:

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You actually still want to set the max foreground because there are situations where somehow the GPU will still try to render more than what vsync allows. It won’t show the renders, but it will do them. This forces it to not do so and thus keeps systems cooler. And not all displays’ EDID data is properly adhered to, which can also cause vsync failure, so having the max foreground set to your display’s native refresh rate is handy to have active.

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I’ve not used max fps in a long time. metal vsync locks framerate at refresh rate, it doesn’t render over or anything. Geralt is my character btw, my posting account just got reset when my browser got messed up other night :slight_smile:

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I can’t stand the input lag that VSync adds, so I always have it off and cap the framerate to match my monitor’s refresh rate. That stops 99% of screen tearing without adding the input lag.