External Graphics Cards (eGPUs) - What Everyone is Forgetting

I have a Lenovo P72 with a Xeon E2176M, 128GB RAM, and a Quadro P4200M (Max Q) and was able to play Cyberpunk 2077 but it's been struggling with Starfield. No matter how low put the settings or the resolution, it just doesn't seem to have the GPU power to have a good experience consistently.

I've been trying to determine if my setup makes sense for an eGPU and based on what you say here, it sounds like my situation is one of the better cases for one, yeah?

Do you think a six-core CPU would bottleneck card with an eGPU?
I got my laptop with a Intel Core i7-8750H in case I wanted to use an eGPU in a few years.

I am gonna use m.2 to egpu my m.2 slot is PCIe 3.0 x4 3 I know it’s gonna limit but is it bad as the thunderbolt

This guy talk so much sense.

I got i7 3rd gen 8gb ram with GT740m, I also like to try egpu for my laptop, I like to try RX 590 it will work?

One thing to note is that for if you already have decent laptop and plan to build a decent gaming PC with limited budget, good but cheap eGPU adapter like TH3P4G3 from EXP GDC is a viable options. As long as:

- your local market have a decent demand for second hand eGPU adapter.
- you already have rough spec for your build.
- you're comfortable buying one or two part at a time. Rather than saving for one big purchase.

E.g with budget of roughly 350 USD a month I can buy corsair 1200w platinum + rx 6700xt + TH3P4G3 within 2 month. Enjoy decent gaming performance in my work laptop (T480) while slowly buying up other parts for my final build, with CPU and Mobo as last purchase to ensure future proofing. After which I plan to sell the adapter.

Granted, this is very specific case that came about due to our weak currency (IDR) making computer parts's price quite unstable.

Something that's been on my mind as of the past 30 minutes is the thought of having an eGPU for my Toshiba satellite which uses a intel i5 4210U 2 core processor and is currently running manjaro linux (might switch distros or return to windows 10 if still possible). The gpu of choice would either be a gt 710 with 2 gb ddr3, pcie 2.0 and hdmi support or a gtx 1660s with 6 gb of gpu memory (can't recall further details because I don't have the box). The built in display doesn't work so I would have an external monitor in use running at 1080p 60 hz. I ran both options through a bottleneck calculator and the bottleneck for the gt710 went as high as over 40% whereas the 1660s didn't go over 6%. Would like your thoughts on if this could possibly be a good idea or if this idea would go terribly wrong :P

Out of Curiosity I have an Alienware M15 R6 with a RTX 3060 GPU and an 11th Gen I7 processor with 32 gigs of ram I was interested in an EGPU and you said you also have an M15 what would you say is the performance boost on your laptop? I Was looking into get an RTX 4080 with an EGPU but I am afraid that the bottlenecks that'll occur would not be worth spending $1200

But the PC will be ok ? won't burn 😂

really well explained. Thanks Kevin! Good idea, but I should stick to the workstation/gaming desktop.

great video, and extremely ON THE POINT!
thankyou

I have a ZBook with a m1000m quadro ... which is okay for light use ... but as I render in 3D and Davinci I am wondering if an eGPU with say a RTX 4090 would help with say Arnold GPU renders, or do I hit bottlenecks with that as well ?
Configuring a new laptop with that power is close to $6000 and even though pricing of GFX cards is insane atm ...it would still be cheaper , if it works that is

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I think things have changed drastically since this video was released. A gaming laptop from 2019 had a CPU which according to the benchmarks performs slightly worse than a CPU from a slim notebook from today.

I bought a gaming laptop at the end of 2019 with an RTX 2080 and a medium to high spec i7 chip at the time. I can manage 60 FPS in Fortnite with max settings and double that with average settings (not the best benchmark I know). I'm now looking at a laptop with no integrated graphics with a CPU that is 15% better than my old one (even though it's not the best one available today, it's still better than what I had due to advances in tech). The laptop is super light, thin with a great battery life (LG Gram 17). Even if I can get the same performance on my new laptop as my old one using an eGPU, I'd be happy enough but looking at the spec, I'm destined to get at least a 50% improvement using a RTX 3080. That's enough for light/casual gamers. It isn't an efficient way to operate but I don't think the CPU gap is an issue anymore for most people who have portability requirements.

I wish I watched this video before getting an eGPU setup.

It's just crap. DirectX 12 isn't working, drivers are a huge mess, and I get frequent crashes even if I'm not playing a game. And even then, the lag spikes from the CPU bottleneck make modern games unplayable.

Also this stupid thing has the loudest proprietary fan ever and doesn't turn off until I physically disconnect it.

First of all, yes you get bottlenecks. Why do people keep saying this. You always going to have some type of bottlenecks on any computer you buy. Certain games, software, cpu and gpu are not all ways optimized in sync. Thunderbolt is not going nowhere any time soon. It's all about future proofing. You can always take a GPU out the EGPU in put it in a computer later on. EGPU by itself only cost 299 and you pay for the graphic card. Graphic card cost the most, but it can be said if buying a Desktop. The point is every laptop have thunderbolt at least the intel ones. When buying a EGPU you are also buying a docking station & more graphic power. Sure, you may only get 70 percent performance out the card but it still your card and you can put it in a PC later on but it's all about portability. People crap on EGPUs, but they don't have a solution for the consumer market. Second- You don't have to restart your system after you reconnect your egpu once your drivers are installed - You are good to go.

I don’t understand why the egpu cases are damn expensive

Well, I have an 11th gen i5 laptop with 20gb ram with a crappy iris builtin graphics. I don't have a thunderbolt port but I DO have a usb-c. EGpu would be an excellent option for me, if I can find a solution. Not everyone who is trying to do this has an old as dirt laptop. Im upgrading my 2070 super and am hoping I can put it in an egpu for my laptop.

Good point.

I bought Razer Core X recently and connect to my Dell Laptitude 7390 with 8th i7 / 16 ram. There is great difference if I output the video to a external monitor from my RTX-3060 rather than only return video to my laptop display. The FPS has improved over a double even I played 3A gaming.

The critical point is, if you only return image to the laptop screen, I will increase the capacity of the TB3. Based on the factory advice, it will affect around 30% performance drop. So don't worry about the CPU bottleneck if you transit the video to an external monitor.

I can say, the eGPU is good to anyone if their laptop only have an onboard GPU but would like to enjoy gaming or high efficient on graphic works.

Your video is good for consideration before buyiing eGPU. However, the critical point is that you need to output video directly from the display card to an external monitor through DP or HDMI. Otherwise, you will not see the great improvement if you just return the image to your laptop monitor.

This video is a great help, although I'm also not good enough with technology to know whether or not these limitations apply to my specific situation...so I wondered if you'd mind me asking your advice?

I have a HP pavillion laptop that, since I installed an SSD has always been great for my needs until I started needing it to edit videos on Davinci Resolve. I keep running into trouble due to the GPU being stretched. My laptop came with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, which I imagine isn't the best for high end video editing.

All the advice I've been given tells me I should basically buy a good desktop computer for all my needs but all the ones I'm recommended cost over £1000 and I just can't afford that. I gather eGPU is still also expensive though I hope less so... but I don't want to splash out on that if it won't work.

I know it's quite a difficult question to answer, but what would your advice be?

Not everybody has the space or desire to have a large gaming desktop just to play some games. I have moved from desktops to laptops a decade ago, and yes I have a top of line laptop as I was a programmer before retiring. It has always been that the graphics card always becomes outdated long before the cpu does. My current drive has been upgraded to twice what it was when new and is faster. I have 4 times the memory and I can do databases and programming without a swet, but the built in graphics card holds me back. An egpu is the perfect solution.

I think more modular systems are definitely the way to go in the future.

Everybody makes it complicated

Aliexpress mining riser: 10$ (make sure it has 6 pin power connector and not sata or 4 pin for the riser board)
350w power supply:10-15$
Or dell 220W power brick: 20$

Then whatever gpu you want

You might lose 10 to 20% of performance but who cares still good

Disadvantages:
-cheap means no proper case so bad looks
-You have to turn off the laptop before you unplug ut and you cant just close it and go...

Thats it!

Cpu doesnt matter my friend is gaming on a 7 year old cpu
If you have 4 gb ram and decent cpu you're good

You just saved me such a headache. I didn't think about this problem and you did an amazing job explaining the challenge and why an external eGPU would not work for me. For real, you just saved me money and time in returning everything as well as all that frustration. I feel a weight has been lifted.

I would like to ask about the possibility of a cpu bottleneck, I assume you would just need a cpu that's as powerful as one that you would put into a desktop with the same gpu, or do you need a disproportionately powerful cpu to get the same performance out of an egpu? I have a convertible laptop with a Ryzen 7 and 16GB RAM, it can handle the Hitman games and anything less demanding on its own without issue but there's still some games that are out of reach for me.

glad I watched this video before I bought the razer egpu

Lenovo Legion BoostStation is on offer for 100

I've used an EGPU laptop setup now for 2+ years and it has been a versatile, awesome nightmare overall. I'm a photographer/videographer who also games in my freetime so i'm frequently switching between laptop/desktop and it's extremely efficient for my field work. But when it comes to gaming, there are only a handful of games that don't crash frequently. I'm tech savvy, I've done everything and have optimized a minimal setup with the most basic driver configuration and sill get issues under load in games. The bottleneck in an egpu setup is unavoidable and this bottleneck will behave very differently in video games. General rule of thumb is to strip away anything that increases this bottleneck (not only to the cpu but to the power supply).

Quick tips for people who have an eGPU: consider upgrading to an apple thunderbolt .8 cable, if your egpu has any ports other than the thunderbolt...dont use them, turn kernel DMA protection off, if your egpu comes with software that manipulates the lighting...dont use it, always install the most minimal version of your updated graphics drivers (amd allows the option to install the "driver only"). If your laptop comes with any internal graphics, turn it off in device manager when using your egpu, and finally I strongly recommend you do a fresh windows 11 install before you buy your new gpu.

These changes have made games that were previously unplayable, crash every few hours and have dramatically increased stability of my other games. I play plenty of titles on max settings without a crash for hours on this setup. I have also never had a crash within windows or editing/exporting huge video files. The crashing is only an issue while gaming.

Dont buy an EGPU setup unless you need one, and if you still want one, get ready to NOT have anything work properly out of the box. It will take lots of time and tweaks to get everything nice and stable.

Surface pro 8 + egpu does it work fine?

I've been wondering if can you edit 4k video in premier Pro with this or another eGPU?

With new advancements in thunderbolt 4, pcie 5.0 and usb 4 type c soon coming to laptops in 2022, would speed and bandwidth still cause issues? Price wouldn’t be an issue because it’s written off as business expense.

Nice explanation. I have a dell precision m2800 with an i7 4810MQ quad core and a Amd FirePro 4170m 2GB gpu with 16 gigs of ram.
Do you think that would be a bottleneck For an Egpu? Thanks.

There is no free lunch. Sure a desktop is always better, more powerful and cost less, but you can't bring your desktop to the coffee shop, or on the plane to your oversea trip. For some people, the portability and flexibility of the laptop and eGPU dock setup would worth far more than the 20% bottleneck.

Top notch information mate 😇

I have an old gaming laptop with an excellent cpu but the mxm gpu went bad.(I'm not sure if it's the card or the slot)

I'm not going to buy some fancy external GPU setup because I like the Frankenstein look.

Hi Kevin,


I have just over £1450 to get a laptop + an eGPU, I can get a pretty good pc for that price, but i prefer a laptop for movement purposes. What would you recommend?

With the GPU Shortage a 1080ti can reach £800. Not for a budget really. Also got to buy a mouse, some spray paint , monitor, monitor arm, lights and cables.
Let me know what you recommend

Assuming everyone needs a laptop for work, study, play, whatever, an eGPU setup is cheaper than buying a laptop and a desktop.
That is the reason Thunderbolt eGPUs have become so popular. A dedicated performance desktop is a luxury most people can't afford, and a gaming laptop has limited portability.
So at the end an eGPU is the best solution, assuming you already use an Ultrabook.
And a TB eGPU gives up 20% performance, not 70% as you claim.

Upgraded my Alienware M18R2 laptop. Has 2 680m's. Many games no longer SLI so i added a Titan X to my laptop with an external EGPU through the Express port. Direct pcie lane contact. Get 4x in the lane. Yes its not like it would be on a desktop but hell, i now have 12 gb of vram vs 2gb per 680m. Performance is actually great and can run 4k with 60+ frames per second. Now let me say this, the Alienware laptop i have is a full gaming laptop with the 3840QM extreme and 32 gb of ddr3 ram with one m.2 and 2 solid state drives. Not your average laptop

I have an all in one pc, would it be possible to use an egpu? Cpu is Ryzen 7 4700u

Okay, I'm a bit confused, would the CPU be an issue because it's possessing the the extra stuff from the egpu or would issue just be the CPU being less powerful than the egpu?

you mean that this setup make the laptop lifetime less ???

The CPU must match the type of GPU you plan to use - but as a miner - it really doesn't matter - we don't use the CPU much at all - we want the GPU and it's power! It's a win win for miners - if you have high end GPU's lying around - but the cost now - I wouldn't recommend.

Pls answer me
Is their any eGPU with type c any one

core i5 2.70GHz 7th with 8g ram ddr3 can get to a bottleneck or what??

Yes, it will make the CPU bottleneck, but for ENCODING for streaming, will be better

Is that an Orange Peli 1200 case in the background? :)

What if I’m just looking to stream on streamlabs from my x box at a good frame rate. I have an xps 15 btw with a GTX 1660 super