confucious.3498

Follow up about the bug, I figured out a workaround.The bug can be seen here https://imgur.com/a/ADqneRL One image is running on a 5K display and the other is running on a 1920x1080 display. The workaround is to go into Display Preferences > Arrangement and assign the menu bar to the display that I want to run GW2 in.This lets it launch with the correct resolution.

Here's a report on the Blackmagic TB3 eGPU: My system is a thunderbolt 3 MBP:MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016)2.6 GHz Intel Core i716 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3Radeon Pro 450 2048 MBI have GW2 installed on an external SSD connected via thunderbolt 2. The eGPU is a Radeon Pro 580 with 8192 MBI put settings at autodetect for the eGPU which gave:Animation: HighAntialiasing: FXAAEnvironment, LOD Distance: MediumReflections: Terrain & SkyTextures: HighRender Sampling: NativeShadows: MediumShaders, Postprocessing, Character Model Limit, Character Model Quality: High I turned on High-Res Character Textures and Vertical Sync. Using an external LG 5K monitor (thunderbolt 3 connection) with the built in graphics running at 1920x1080, I can get around 25 fps in a sparse map and around 14 fps at the flax farm in verdant brink. Using the Blackmagic eGPU, framerate goes up to around 45 or so on a spare map and manages to hang around 30 fps in the flax farm. My methodology for measuring probably isn't the best as I'm eyeballing the FPS report on the options page. It does feel noticeably smoother with the eGPU, but there are still times when I'll have momentary hitches when rotating the camera around. I haven't tried anything more extensive like WvW or even Lion's Arch yet. Some gotchas for using the eGPU:1) The GW2 client appears to have some kind of bug if I try to run it on the external 5K monitor with the laptop monitor also open. The displayed area appears to be the main laptop monitor size and pushed to the bottom left corner with red screen for the rest. The mouse inputs are still responding as if it is a full screen clicking on menu items is a challenge. If I close the cover so that the external monitor is the only monitor, then everything works and is sized correctly. This was how I did my comparisons. 2) The eGPU by default will be used to drive the monitors that are connected to it. So if you just connect it, it will not drive the built-in laptop monitor. It's possible to change some OS settings to make it drive the internal monitor also, but I had a hard time evaluating if this was improving the framerate. It was certainly not as good as the external monitor, but it also seemed better than the low 14 fps that the options page was reporting. I don't know if this setup was causing the options FPS report to be inaccurate. 3) The eGPU comes with a really short TB3 cable (1.5 ft). It looks like in order to get the full bandwidth over TB3, the cable length can only be this long. A longer 3 ft cable has half the bandwidth rating. This made positioning the eGPU with my current desk setup a bit of a challenge. Overall, I'm pleased to be able to play GW2 this well in MacOS. I had been previously using an older MacBook Pro with bootcamp and the eGPU will let me retire that system (and reclaim some desk space).