What graphics card should I purchase for X-Plane11?

Question

Hi guys, bit of a rookie to the whole EGPU scene. Currently I have:

- MacBook Pro 2015 13inch (3.1GHz Core i7 16GB RAM)
- Razer X Core 
- Apple TB3 to TB2 Adapter
-  TB2 Cable (Cable Matters)
- 23inch AOC External Monitor

I am wonder about what graphics card to get to run X-Plane11 with high graphic settings?
I have purgewrangler set up and ready to use with an AMD graphics card, but am also open to the idea of an Nvidia graphics card.

Any advice appreciated. I did not buy a Windows PC as I need a Mac for various other things and wanted an all-in-one laptop.

Answer 1

I think you should get a gaming pc like the one i have

I have a ACER NITRO 5 with GTX 1050 GRAPHIC CARD and everything else is more than awsomme for X PLANE 11

Hope to answer your question.

Good luck!

Marco- pro flight simmer

Answer 2

Hi Blocker35,

I am not from Laminar Research; just a flight simmer from downunder using a windows based system.

From the information provided, your system appears to be OK to run X-Plane 11.  Be aware though XP11 is extremely resource hungry generating heat in the CPU and GPU necessitating good cooling.  With the use of the 23 inch screen you acknowledge the fact the 13 inch screen will not provide a good image size to view XP.

To run XP you need a dedicated graphics card.  An integrated motherboard with a screen connection will not work.  What type of card?  You should seriously consider using a NVidia card instead of an AMD card for best effect and result.

What model?  It depends of what you can afford.  I would suggest you have a look at the following link at   https://www.youtube.com/user/col2mab/videos from Michael Brown from XForcePC in the USA.  Michael builds windows based systems predominantly for X-Plane.   His business is recommended by Laminar Research as the only supplier of PCs suitable for XP in the USA.  Despite the fact he is a windows person he has produced a number of video comparing video cards between AMD cards and NVidia cards and between models.  I further suggest you look/view several of the videos and then decide on the model according to budget.

Good luck.

Glenn

Comments

Hi Glenn, thanks for your advice. When you say a dedicated graphics card, is a egpu suffice, or is this an integrated motherboard?. How would you play X-Plane on the Mac as the standard Intel graphics cards do not make the cut.

Thanks!

---

Hi Blocker35,

I am a Windows based user and flight simmer.  Not a Mac user for anything.

An integrated system is where the graphics display for an external screen is constructed as part of the motherboard and cannot be removed or replaced whereas a dedicated graphics display is connected to the motherboard and can be easily removed/connect and or upgraded.

Not knowing what an eGPU was/is I consulted Dr Google for a definition and found the following explanation at https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac/best-egpu-mac-3673105/  Yes for my interpretation it is a dedicated graphics card.  Read on.

Because I have read several problems in this forum associated with Macs and eGPUs I clicked on the orange tag associated with your original question to ascertain if a solution had been found and viewed the following link found at https://questions.x-plane.com/13770/egpu-setup-and-opengl-extremely-low-fps

As the answer supplied in the last link is just over 12 months old I would suggest you contact X-Plane direct at [email protected] asking if a solution has been found making reference to the last link. 

Glenn