Gaming I
We're using the standard high/ultra-high-quality settings from our benchmark suite. The primary observation is that, as expected, the baked-in NUC graphics flounder when bulldozed by the load. Even knocking them down to medium doesn't result in a decent games-playing experience.
Spending about £475 more - for the GearBox and Radeon RX 580 - makes the game playable at both FHD and QHD. We notice a significant lack of system oomph because the 1080p average framerate is not much higher than at 1440p.
Far Cry 5 also exhibits the same lack of subsystem muscle, which is a combination of relatively modest CPU and a lack of throughput via even Thunderbolt 3.
The salient point here is that, should you be rocking an Ultrabook or MacBook with integrated graphics, using an external GPU box is a sure-fire, if expensive, method of gaining gaming potential in today's graphics-intensive titles.
