2018 MacBook Pro w/ Razer Core X & AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 Steam & CS:GO Issue  

Did you set Prefer External GPU on the Steam app or the game itself in ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/ ?

Ah okay. I don't see Steam in my Library>Application Support folder.

In Finder press SHIFT + COMMAND + G. Once the “Go to the folder” text box shows up, paste ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/ in there and hit ENTER. Make sure you have the wiggly symbol in front of the path. 

So your name is on point lol thank you so much for your help! It worked and I'm in the folder. How do I go about manually setting the eGPU from here?

Posted by: itsage

Did you set Prefer External GPU on the Steam app or the game itself in ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/ ?

I set the preference on the Steam app and the desktop shortcut. Not in the folder path you sent me. While I'm in the common folder and it's sub-directories I can't find anything I can manually set a preference on. I figured it would be the csgo_osx64 because that's basically what's loaded when I double click the desktop shortcut, but I'm not seeing an option under Get Info.

I've been looking into this myself and I haven't found a way to internally accelerate cs:go on a mac right now except with a headless display adapter. As you said the csgo_osx64 "app" (launcher?) doesn't have the option to set egpu preference and when I try to add a .app extension (which gives the option to set egpu) then cs:go doesn't launch.

I'm sorry you're dealing with this too but glad I'm not alone. 😀

Yeah I'd recommend getting a headless display adapter if you're going to use the laptop screen.

That thing is cool lol. I'm not sure why I'd need that though. I'm totally new to this graphics card stuff and especially so on a MacBook. So far I've had no problems, Diablo III has been fine, save for glitchy particles and shading in certain areas. 

Details here it creates a "ghost" display that you can set as primary so OpenGL uses the external graphics card. Maybe if CS:GO is ever ported to Metal graphics on mac that will fix this but who knows if/when that'll happen.

Well Mojave was supposed to, at least I thought solve that problem with the internal display.

But, if the adapter will allow me to utilize my internal display while playing and let me use my egpu. That’s fine by me.

I  am curious though if itsage had a method for solving this issue. It seemed for a second like maybe there was a solution.

https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/state-of-egpu-for-macs-mojave-10-14-update/

itsage does a write up here, it’s really well done and informative.

Yeah there might be a solution I don't know about. I think Mojave does fix 99% of the internal acceleration issues but unfortunately this is just a weird edge case.

Well, FWIW though you’re able to play CSGO with your eGPU using this little adapter?

Yeah I have an external display that I usually use but with one of those adapters I can accelerate it when I don't have my external display.

Thank you so much for all of your help, that’s a solid solution for now.

Did anyone find a solution to this? Just got a Razer Core X and a ASRock Radeon 5700XT. Trying to make this work with CSGO, but it won't happen. Tried everything mentioned in this thread (short of using a headless display adapter) as I don't have one. But did anyone figure out how to make it work? 

PS. I'm on Catalina now...

@schoubye

No last time I checked it was the same. I got it working on the egpu by repackaging CS:GO as a .app but it blocked me from official servers until I changed it back. It should be valve's job to properly package the game on macos. I emailed them about it but never heard back. Until then, the only option is to use an external display or the old headless adapter method

@nu_ninja

Thanks for responding so quickly. So far I've only managed to make my egpu work with Heaven... Won't work with Starcraft 2 or CSGO which are the only games I play. Strongly considering sending everything back and getting my money back.

Quick question. If I get a headless adapter thingy -- do I need a special display port for that then? On my iMac I only have USB-C and USB ports. And on my macbook pro, I only have USB-C ports. So, I'd need both the headless adapter and some kind of converter? Or does the headless adapter plug into a standard usb port? Sorry, I'm a complete newbie with this stuff. 

Sorry to hear that, for Starcraft did you try the method in this thread? It can be tricky to find the root app that you need to check the prefer eGPU checkbox on. For the headless adapter, it plugs into the display outputs (HDMI, etc.) on the egpu card so the card thinks an external display is plugged in.

@nu_ninja

Ah ok, I see. Thanks so much for the help. Will take a look at that thread and get one of those display thingies.

@pudgy

@schoubye

I figured out a way to slightly modify CS:GO to get it natively working on the internal display in macOS (conveniently, by looking at the way Dota 2 does it). It's a very slight modification that shouldn't trigger a ban or anything, but a headless adapter would still be the "safer" option. Anyway here's the steps:

1: Go to game files location. Right-click on the game in the steam library and go to Properties > "Local Files" Tab > "Browse Local Files"

2: Create a folder called csgoFolder

3: Inside csgoFolder create a folder called Contents

4: Inside Contents, create a folder called MacOS

5: Go back to the original game folder and move csgo_osx64 to be inside csgoFolder/Contents/MacOS

6: Rename csgoFolder to csgo_osx64.app and set "Prefer External GPU" on it.

7: Edit csgo.sh and change line 28 from GAMEEXE=csgo_osx64 to GAMEEXE=csgo_osx64.app/Contents/MacOS/csgo_osx64

The game should launch normally and use the eGPU