Convoluted MacBook gaming question

m0ckduck

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Jul 20, 2005
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I have a 2018 MacBook Pro (USB-A only) that my kids are allowed to geek out on. I've created a PC partition on the drive via Bootcamp so they can install some games that are PC-only and/or to get around laggy performance issues with certain games on the Mac side. At the moment, they are dying to get NBA 2K, but this won't fit on the partition by a long shot— the install size is much bigger than the file size I've allocated for the PC partition.

I'm considering getting a 1GB Samsung T7 Portable SSD to increase capacity on the PC side. So, I would install NBA 2K on the external PC-formatted drive. Is it reasonable to expect games to perform well when they are being read off an external SSD, connected via a USB C to USB A adaptor, all the while running on Bootcamp? Can a Mac running Bootcamp even read from a PC-formatted external drive? I'd be grateful for some guesses or perspective on these questions before I invest the time and money to set it up. Thanks.
 

Gdiguy

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Jul 15, 2005
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Do you know what type of USB ports they are (USB3? 2?)? What model is this exactly? I have a 2017 MacBook pro and that one has USB-C ports (and one Thunderbolt port), I'm kind of surprised a 2018 Pro would have USB-A only

The port speed is what I'm unsure of here; for years I ran a Windows virtual machine (in Parallels) off of an external USB drive with no issues (admittedly not for gaming, but never noticed any slowdowns), but that was always for sure off of USB3 ports.

You might also want to just buy a direct USB-A cable to the enclosure, as I'd also worry the USB-C -> USB-A adapter adds a layer of potential delay

Once you're in windows it shouldn't have any problem reading a PC-formatted drive
 

cgori

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Oct 2, 2004
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A 2018 MBP has 4x USB-C ports. The T7 SSD is USB-C. Why would you need a USB-A adaptor for this?
In any case, the MBP ports are USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps max). The T7 wants USB 3.2 Gen 2 to max out reads @ 1050 MB (== ~8.4Gbps), I have no idea what the dropoff will be at USB 3.1 speeds. Probably something like ~500MB/sec (== 4Gbps), which I would expect to still be adequate.
 

m0ckduck

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Jul 20, 2005
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Thanks @Gdiguy and @cgori.

Sorry, brainfart on my part— I got the machine in early 2018 through work, but the hardware is 2015 (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015). It's definitely USB A. If I'm reading the system profiler info right, it's USB 3.0 with speeds up to 5GB. See screenshot .
a direct USB-A cable to the enclosure, as I'd also worry the USB-C -> USB-A adapter adds a layer of potential delay
FWIW, the Samsung T7 comes with a direct Type-C to A cable, so it wouldn't exactly be an "adapter". I don't know if this makes any difference in the read speeds.

Appreciate any final opinions or guesses on this.
 

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Gdiguy

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Jul 15, 2005
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Ah, that makes more sense (and yeah I'm understanding the cable thing now)

I *think* it would be fine; in terms of actual raw speed it would be fine (it won't max out the T7 read speeds, but USB3 is capable of at least similar speeds as 'normal' spinning disk hard drives on SATA, and people play games off of those)

I say *capable* because there may be some overhead with USB3 (especially sending back and forth lots of tiny files as part of actually gaming) that makes that worse in the real world. From my reading (the Steam forums have a lot of threads on this sort of thing), USB3.2 this would definitely be ok, USB3.0/3.1 is usually fine but may have some hiccups