2014 MBP 15" Retina w/Akitio T2 (GTX 960) eGPU issue

[Irons324]

Hey everyone. 

 

Inspired by P-Mac's eGPU build, I decided to finally go ahead and build one. It was a toss up between building a Hackintosh beast or eGPU for my MBP, and I decided the eGPU for cost. I'm avidly against Windows as an OS so I'm using Sierra.  Long story short, I knocked it all together in about an hour and a half, ran the scripts and fired it up. No issues recognising the eGPU is there, it's running my 32" 720p TV I've been using for a monitor no problems. I essentially wanted some more oomph out of my gaming experience (I'm a relatively dedicated WoW player) so I was very excited to fire up the game and max out some settings.

 

However, booting into the game I was getting less FPS than what I was getting on the GT 750m. I had the settings tweaked to allow 60fps in low load situations. Using the eGPU I was getting around 40, and my recommended settings went from 4 to 1. The GPU also got hot FAST and the fans spooled up, which I read is uncommon. The MBP also starts ventilating quickly. I've used Cinebench to benchmark the setup and got 77fps within OSX. To me this seems like I should be able to run WoW at high settings on 720p... 

 

Tips for what I've done wrong in the setup, or what I can change or implement? Do I need to use Optimus? 

 

EDIT: I just ran the CPU benchmark as well and got what seems like a low(?) score, could this be affecting my setup?

 

Thanks all. 

Edited February 9, 2017 by Irons324
Forgot to add content

[Irons324]

Just an update, downloaded iStat, it says the GT 750m is active and loading FPS for system use, maybe OSx is still using the onboard GPU to try and work? The GTX 960 spins up and appears to be working when playing wow, however. 

[Irons324]

Also, from what I've seen on others eGPU setups for this MBP, the native display runs through the Intel Iris, whilst both screens on mine seem to be running from the GTX 960. 

I seem to have made things settle a bit, getting SOLID fps in WoW, even on high settings, but not much above 36-40 fps, 60 in some scenarios. On the 750m I would get lots of spikes and as soon as the game became GPU intensive i'd drop down to around 20 or less and get obvious screen lag. I guess it's working well enough, perhaps the 960 just isn't beefy enough to handle ultra settings. It does seem as though both screen are trying to be run, even with the lid closed on the MBP, which previously shut the display off and used only the external display. On mirrored displays I can still send the mouse over to the native display with the lid closed. 

Still open to thoughts guys, any tips appreciated.