Apple iMac and MacBook owners constantly bemoaning the gaming performance of their machines is ready to become a thing of the past thanks to a new external GPU designed specifically for Apple rigs.
The bull.box, which is currently crowd-funding on Kickstarter, connects to the Apple iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air using a mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt 2 port and provides that extra bit of a oomph missing from many Apple systems.
In a similar way to the Alienware Graphics Amplifier, the box sits next to your Mac and is powered by a DC supply that only kicks in when the bull.box is connected to the computer. Inside the box, the manufacturer promises an Nvidia GTX 960, GTX 970 or GTX 980 GPU to run the show with a sliding scale of pricing depending on the feature set chosen.
The box doesn't just support OS X and can be added to a Windows 10 PC or any other version of Windows and the creators are already working on future developments in the port department with USB Type-C and Thunderbolt 3 expected to be available in April 2016.
When it comes to pricing, the boxes don't come cheap. For the entry level bull.box 1.2 960 complete with Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 it costs £399 (around $624, or AU$850) for a model that has a Mini DisplayPort 1.2 and Thunderbolt 2 port. By taking your spending up to £449 (around $703, or AU$957) you get the same GPU with Mini DisplayPort 1.3, Thunderbolt 3 and USB Type-C connectivity. Top of the range is the bull.box 1.3 980Ti that features an impressive Nvidia GeForce GTX 980Ti plus the latter range of ports mentioned above for a MacBook-esque £999 (around $1,564, or AU$2,129).
Big power boost
On the performance front, it boasts 95 times the power of a MacBook Pro with an entry level Intel Iris Pro chip that doesn't have a dedicated GPU and even performs at a far higher level than the MacBook Pro with GT 750M chip.
Delivery of the bull.box 1.2 could commence as early as December with the bull.box 1.3 arriving in January 2016, though it is contingent on the Kickstarter reaching its £99,000 (around $155,053, or AU$211,030) target that currently sits at just £1,195 (around $1,871, or AU$2,547).
