Besides the the lack of certain I/O ports, the 2016 MacBook Pro has been a subject of criticism with its somewhat limited and under-performing gaming experience as compared with most of today's laptop standards. Fortunately for those who want to step up their laptop experience with Apple, the AKITIO Node provides some significant improvement through the help of an external GPU.
As shown in a recent post at 9to5Mac, Apple's latest laptop is actually capable of playing high-end games with some significant increase in performance speed. This is made possible with the help of the device called AKITIO Node, a decent GPU like AMD RX 480 and finally, taking advantage of the Thunderbolt 3 port.
As shown in the tutorial, setting up the eGPU node isn't as easy as it may seem, but with AKITIO's instance, things are a bit more complicated. However, the RX 480 GPU works almost perfectly with the setup, doubling the frame rates for the games played and even on higher settings like for "Rocket League."
Also, there are some shortcomings regarding the setup and these are even on top of the slightly complicated setup procedure. The AKITIO Node costs about $250 and the same price goes for the AMD RX 480 and other similarly tiered cards and possibly, even more. The setup is certainly going to be an investment, which already scales a huge portion of how much the 2016 MacBook Pro is already priced alone.
Another consequence is also the need of an external display, which could either be a monitor capable of displaying at least 1080p graphics or something similar. This ultimately defeats the purpose of the laptop's portability as the node itself is far from being portable at all.
It definitely boils down to the requirements and needs of the users. With the combined price of everything mentioned, a decent PC capable of doing almost everything, the external GPU aims to do, can be done with something more affordable. However, for those stuck with just the 2016 MacBook Pro or wish not to use something else may find some interesting quirks with the setup, especially those with video editing and frequent gaming sessions.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
