Sorry misspoke:

Its the Razercore and inside is a GTX 1080

www.bhphotovideo.com

Who in the hell is selling $1000+ external card/interface at a garage sale?

I've yet to see anyone use one for anything other than gaming, which does not translate to video playback or editing by default.

Which is why I'm asking. So far during stress tests for the use of the card outside of Serato Video checks out, as well as the internals.

Considering Serato Video needs decent video ram, seemed like a decent buy, on top of its usage elsewhere.

Will you be taking it to gigs?

Yes. The flight case I use for my controller actually has enough room for the external drive to fit comfortably in side of the case itself. Obviously I would be carrying the external in my laptop bag, but at the gig I can mount it on to the inside of my case, with enough room also for ventilation. I do not want to go through creating the install until I know 100% that I won't run into any problems. So I figured it would be wise to reach out to the community first before I go through with anything further.

This is closer to just having a tower GPU spec wise. I see no reason it wouldn't work, Thunderbolt 3 is a freaking beast spec wise and as long as the video drivers work seamlessly Serato Video shouldn't know the difference.

I'd love to see someone go insane with Mix Emergency using it though.

Yeah. For the clients we get for the parties I work they come in with some HUGE video montage files and although my MBP is above and beyond what I would need right now, I wanted to find ways to add larger montage videos on the fly, and Serato video kind of struggled with them.

I was brainstorming options, saw the RazerCore, and figured "hell why not"

Worst case, I have an external for my desktop for gaming, best case, I have a external graphics card that opens up a giant door that MBP has struggled with.

Why not buy the new MBP with the 4gb GPU?

or better still just roll up with Mac desktop

Did a bit of reading about the Razercore and egpu with the MBP, I understand that you need an external screen to use them

Found this too bizon-tech.com

Those external boxes are still easier to transport and cost much less than a new.. and then you aren't dealing with the USB-C shenanigans currently going on.

You can feed a screen off of them (HDMI would probably be simplest route) but the GPU is mainly for offloading processing in programs that can use it.

Ok. This is godlike. The Bizon might we worth looking into for people who do not want to upgrade GPU without having to buy a new Mac all together. This is something that may be even worth DJs to look into.


So far worked it out on 2 gigs. I have is inside of my flight case, and I detach it carry it with me in my Backpack for transport. Setup wise, nothing is changing except I take out the Core, and put it into the incasing I created and plug it in via Thunderbolt.

I use this on my MacBook mid 2015 model had the equivalent of 1.5G vid ram.

It's great. Keep in mind I also have a 14inch preview screen I use for monitoring visuals going out to the crowd. So I have it going into the Core, out to a 1x2 splitter, one to the preview screen, then one out to my jobs setup (which is ANOTHER -.- splitter) then out to 2-8TVs depending on the Gig.

So far, its fantastic and it does not really add anything new or different. If the Bizon makes more logical sense, I may just sell the core and vid card combo and then get the Bizon, granted if it fits.


So far, I have no run into any issues, would I recommend it? NO. I need more time until I can fully recommend it or not. But as of right now, this could be a great alternative.

So you got the basic setup (the 599 version)??

Not too sure what you are asking. This is the mobile setup I use for private events:

But here is my setup:

MacBook Pro, Mid 2015
2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
16GB MhZ DDR3
Graphics: Intel Iris Pro 1536
GeForce GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5X (With Razer Core)

The Bizon, did you get the $599 video card?

Wait never mind I miss read, you didn't get the Bizon.

Sorry.

It's been a while now, so I figured I could report back on this:


External Graphics Cards are great. It takes a lot of pressure off of your system.

However, they are definitely not for everyone. I heavily modded my flight case to make it work, and its become very cumbersome and also very heavy.


Additionally, I don't see anything wrong with running Mix Emergency and Serato DJ without a external graphics card.

All of the music videos I use at the moment are 720p since its a good balance of stable performance and quality.

If I was video mixing effects and stuff, I would obviously go the full 1080p route, but since I video mix music videos almost exclusively, its a non issue.

I ran my 2015 MBP with 2GB shared graphics on 5 or so parties now with no issues. I was even able to run a 1080p 25(!) minute montage with non stills in the video without any problems.

I should mention this is all possible with mix emergency. Using Serato Video causes a severe drop in FPS (1080p 60fps videos ran at 55 or so in Serato video where Mix Emergency I am getting 80-88fps with the occasional drop to 60ish).

Mix Emergency just seems to run better than Serato Video, which is weird.

I think people using Syphon and running visual software would benefit the most! Nice to see it works in practice though.

Follow up.

I use an External for a lot of stuff now. Since this post, I use Resolume AND Mix Emergency.

Resolume is more graphics extensive than Mix Emergency, but both are fantastic.

Thunderbolt eGPUs are fantastic for us, especially if we want to continue the Macbook route.

I understand the 2017 macbook-pro can now support external GPU without hacking. think I read that on the release date.

PS
the top end 2016 and 2017 comes with 4gb video cards is that not enough for video djing?

In a perfect world, the 2016 model is everything we need, however Thunderbolt 3 ports are a huge drag and theres been numerous documented issues with the 2016 and 2017 models. Its not quite there yet.

If they had a Macbook with the same specs, with retrograded ports, it would be great.

Relative to what we do, this is probably still the best MBP available until the USBC/Thunderbolt3 issue is resolved:

www.apple.com