After several years of poor health and finances...I'm back!!! 
IIRC the last rig I built, with solid advice from all you guys, was built around an EVGA hybrid 1080 Ti, which was a nice beast that I built for VR when the first Oculus Rift came out. I had to give up flying gliders 4 years ago due to having to take meds and I want to get back to flying, if only virtually. I'm completely behind on performance computing tech, so please bear with me. What I'm proposing is something that you guys are probably, quite understandably cos I love building specialised rigs too, so try not to be sick/punch me for my plan...
I've just bought a 2020 MacBook Pro 16" for work and it's powered by:
- 2.3GHz 8‑core Intel Core i9, Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz, with 16MB shared L3 cache
- AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 4GB of GDDR6 memory and automatic graphics switching Intel UHD Graphics 630
I've tested it using Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 on medium settings, on my crappy 23" £100 work monitor (1080p IIRC?), and the frame rate is playable. I didn't know about the concept of eGPUs until last week and i didn't know about the new NVIDIA RTX 30XX range, which look frickin amazing (60m transisitors per sqmm!!?!?!?). My questions are:
1) Is MS Flight Sim 2020 CPU or GPU bound?
2) Would an eGPU powered by an RTX 3070 supercharge my MBP or would there be bottlenecks all over the show, which would mean I'd be getting little benefit from the GFX card?
3) Same question as 2) but am i likely to be able to power the latest generation of VR headsets.
4) Any recommendations on which brand of 3070 is considered to be the performance/value leader?
mmmm - the more I write this the more I think I should take the chassis from my old rig and build a new one around an RTX 3070? However, *ideally* i'd supercharge my MBP with a RTX 3070 eGPU because I don't want to take up space with a new rig if I can avoid it.
Thanks everyone!! Jimbo
IIRC the last rig I built, with solid advice from all you guys, was built around an EVGA hybrid 1080 Ti, which was a nice beast that I built for VR when the first Oculus Rift came out. I had to give up flying gliders 4 years ago due to having to take meds and I want to get back to flying, if only virtually. I'm completely behind on performance computing tech, so please bear with me. What I'm proposing is something that you guys are probably, quite understandably cos I love building specialised rigs too, so try not to be sick/punch me for my plan...I've just bought a 2020 MacBook Pro 16" for work and it's powered by:
- 2.3GHz 8‑core Intel Core i9, Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz, with 16MB shared L3 cache
- AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 4GB of GDDR6 memory and automatic graphics switching Intel UHD Graphics 630
I've tested it using Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 on medium settings, on my crappy 23" £100 work monitor (1080p IIRC?), and the frame rate is playable. I didn't know about the concept of eGPUs until last week and i didn't know about the new NVIDIA RTX 30XX range, which look frickin amazing (60m transisitors per sqmm!!?!?!?). My questions are:
1) Is MS Flight Sim 2020 CPU or GPU bound?
2) Would an eGPU powered by an RTX 3070 supercharge my MBP or would there be bottlenecks all over the show, which would mean I'd be getting little benefit from the GFX card?
3) Same question as 2) but am i likely to be able to power the latest generation of VR headsets.
4) Any recommendations on which brand of 3070 is considered to be the performance/value leader?
mmmm - the more I write this the more I think I should take the chassis from my old rig and build a new one around an RTX 3070? However, *ideally* i'd supercharge my MBP with a RTX 3070 eGPU because I don't want to take up space with a new rig if I can avoid it.
Thanks everyone!! Jimbo