What e-GPU

[GiantEvilPig]

I have a lenovo Yoga 730 13" with an I5 8250u and I was wondering what the best graphics card I can use to take advantage of the thunderbolt 3 without a drastic bottleneck. Lenovo actually makes a dock with a built in 1050 for around $250-$300USD, would that be my best bet? Or should I get a dock and graphics separate? Thanks!

[emosun]

6 minutes ago, GiantEvilPig said:

Lenovo actually makes a dock with a built in 1050 for around $250-$300USD

thats not too bad , although i don't think thunderbolt 3 is nearly as fast as pci so it might bottleneck regardless of the gpu

[Firewrath9]

id say 1060 or 580, look at these options.

http://www.galax.com/en/galax-snpr-external-graphics.html

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CCK527Y?&tag=egpu2018-20

[Fasauceome]

2 minutes ago, emosun said:

thats not too bad , although i don't think thunderbolt 3 is nearly as fast as pci so it might bottleneck regardless of the gpu

thunderbolt uses PCIe x4, so it is as fast, there's just less bandwidth.

 

9 minutes ago, GiantEvilPig said:

I have a lenovo Yoga 730 13" with an I5 8250u and I was wondering what the best graphics card I can use to take advantage of the thunderbolt 3 without a drastic bottleneck. Lenovo actually makes a dock with a built in 1050 for around $250-$300USD, would that be my best bet? Or should I get a dock and graphics separate? Thanks!

The quad core, 8 thread processor could do with a better GPU, so if you wanted to get your hands on a 1060 or an rx 570, it's money well spent. 

https://www.amazon.com/Sonnet-Breakaway-Bundle-Sapphire-GPU-350W-TB3DEK/dp/B077K8KNDS

this type of eGPU looks pretty good.

[emosun]

Just now, fasauceome said:

thunderbolt uses PCIe x4, so it is as fast, there's just less bandwidth.

if theres less bandwidth , then it's not as fast

[Fasauceome]

1 minute ago, emosun said:

if theres less bandwidth , then it's not as fast

yeah but "not as fast as PCI" isn't accurate

[Guest]

I use a Gigabyte Gaming Box RX580 w/ my Yoga 720 as a portable VR setup. Works flawlessly. 

 

(Just don’t use the built in USB ports)

[emosun]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

yeah but "not as fast as PCI" isn't accurate

if pci is faster , then it's accurate

if you're going to argue about me not including the e for express then perhaps get your mind out of 1995

[TechMasterMind]

On 8/14/2018 at 5:18 PM, GiantEvilPig said:

I have a lenovo Yoga 730 13" with an I5 8250u and I was wondering what the best graphics card I can use to take advantage of the thunderbolt 3 without a drastic bottleneck. Lenovo actually makes a dock with a built in 1050 for around $250-$300USD, would that be my best bet? Or should I get a dock and graphics separate? Thanks!

Your CPU is actually pretty weak so that dock deal is perfect for you for the price BUUUT bear in mind the 2000 series from nVidia is coming within the week.

[TechMasterMind]

On 8/14/2018 at 5:18 PM, GiantEvilPig said:

I have a lenovo Yoga 730 13" with an I5 8250u and I was wondering what the best graphics card I can use to take advantage of the thunderbolt 3 without a drastic bottleneck. Lenovo actually makes a dock with a built in 1050 for around $250-$300USD, would that be my best bet? Or should I get a dock and graphics separate? Thanks!

Also to anyone who says a 1050 or even a 1060 will be significantly bottlenecked by thunderbolt 3 which is effectively PCI-e 3 4x (PCI-e 1.1 16x) please ignore them as a titan V is barely bottlenecked by PCI-e 3 16x as seen in this video:

16x so i.e. it was be able to cope with pci-e 3 8x. Considering a 1050 is roughly 4x slower than a titan V you should be fine.

[GiantEvilPig]

7 minutes ago, TechMasterMind said:

Your CPU is actually pretty weak so that dock deal is perfect for you for the price BUUUT bear in mind the 2000 series from nVidia is coming within the week.

I saw that, but I am not sure about their clanes of "50%" faster.

[TechMasterMind]

1 hour ago, GiantEvilPig said:

I saw that, but I am not sure about their clanes of "50%" faster.

I think you meant claims*? And yeah maybe but bear in mind it will be a smaller process and it's been two years and on top of that they've gained 50% the last two generations but none of that matters at all, the fact they will be new gaming cards and they have new features not only means they will be somewhat faster but they will be something that will drive prices down and also a bargaining chip where applicable.

P.S. Are you just trying to disagree with me in as many places as you can?!?

[GiantEvilPig]

5 hours ago, TechMasterMind said:

P.S. Are you just trying to disagree with me in as many places as you can?!?

I am not  it just seems too good to be true that the 2000 cards will have a similar price range as the 1000 cards right now and still be 2x faster. If this was true than the 1000 cards value should plummet right?

[GiantEvilPig]

Just now, GiantEvilPig said:

2x faster

*50%

[TechMasterMind]

4 hours ago, GiantEvilPig said:

I am not  it just seems too good to be true that the 2000 cards will have a similar price range as the 1000 cards right now and still be 2x faster. If this was true than the 1000 cards value should plummet right?

You avoided the question really badly but ok...

Well yeah that's the thing it dosn't matter if these cards are only 20% better bang for the buck or hell even the same bang for the buck.

On the simple basis that they are a) new and b) have new features it's both a) a bargaining chip where applicable AS I SAID BEFORE and b) will drive prices down somewhat - worth waiting a couple days for.

[RimsOnAToaster]

@GiantEvilPig As others may have eluded to here, the x4 lane bandwidth afforded by Thunderbolt 3 (or TB3 for short) isn't much of a bottleneck until the data throughput (measured in Gb/s) of the card you're using is greater than the 32Gb/s^† bandwidth allotted to TB3. If you want an idea of the performance you can expect with your laptop, check out this build log from eGPU.io's forums. If you want to learn a bit about eGPU performance before you make your decision, consider reading the rest of this post.

 

TL;DR: The best performance option for the money you'd spend is a GTX 1070 inside of the cheapest TB3 enclosure you can buy. The Lenovo Graphics Dock is a bad deal because it won't be upgradable in the future and a new GPU architecture is on the horizon.

Spoiler

^† TB3 advertises 40Gb/s but it reserves 8Gb/s for display use (which is useless for eGPU users anyways), so that's a thing to be wary of when scaling the performance from an x8 or x16 connection down to an x4 connection.

If you want to decrease your bottleneck as much as possible, what you have to do is crank your game's resolution to 4K, attach your eGPU to an external 4K monitor, leave the expansion I/O on your eGPU empty, and prevent your laptop from thermal throttling. Here's why:

Spoiler

• Higher resolutions increase the graphics card's workload, thereby lowering its throughput. If you can get that throughput below 32Gb/s, you won't see any bottleneck when compared to a desktop.
• TB3 can be used as a two-way street if your graphics card isn't using any of its own display outputs to send data to an external monitor. The way it does that is by splitting the 32GB/s channel into two 16GB/s channels while leaving that 8GB/s channel intact. This leaves your system with two x2 PCIe lanes, one to send data to the eGPU with and one to return data from the eGPU to your laptop display. This arrangement will probably bottleneck most graphics cards you can think of, so its best to use a separate monitor for gaming.
• Any of the expansion I/O your eGPU enclosure comes with such as USB ports, SD card readers, and Ethernet jacks will share that main 32Gb/s channel with your graphics card. By not using them and instead using the ones attached to your laptop, you can increase your graphics performance.
• Thermal Throttling is the bane of many laptop gamers' existence. Just keep it cool and you should be able to enjoy top performance.

 

What you probably want, however, is to maximize the performance/price of your future eGPU setup. That's why you're concerned about the bottleneck issue. While @Firewrath9made a good suggestion for a graphics card, the extra cost of an enclosure makes gimps their performance/price. I spent way too much time making a table outlining the the price/performance of various eGPUs mated to laptops similar to yours. Please check it out below:

 

eGPU Value, Ranked

Sources, in order of appearance in the table

 

What you have to decide for yourself first is this: Do you want to move to a desktop down the road or is the eGPU + Yoga 730 going to be your permanent setup for the next few years?

• If you want to move to a desktop next, spend as much as you can on a graphics card and as little as you can on a functional TB3 enclosure.
• If you want to go eGPU-only from now on, then buy an enclosure with a lot of expansion I/O and buy whatever graphics card you can afford with the remainder of your budget.

In either case, the Lenovo Graphics Dock isn't a good purchase. It uses a soldered-on GPU as opposed to a desktop card, a Max-Q card, or even an MXM card, which means that you can't upgrade it over time unlike most other enclosures.

[GiantEvilPig]

On 8/20/2018 at 11:21 PM, TechMasterMind said:

worth waiting a couple days for.

I did some thinking and I'm going to wait until the 2050 and 2060 drop and decide if I should get one.

 

On 8/20/2018 at 11:21 PM, TechMasterMind said:

and b) have new features

What features are you talking about? For me the UHD graphics are actually a huge upgrade from my last laptop so even something like a 1030 is powerful  but not future proof.

 

12 hours ago, RimsOnAToaster said:

If you want to go eGPU-only from now on, then buy an enclosure with a lot of expansion I/O and buy whatever graphics card you can afford with the remainder of your budget.

What did you mean by expansion? Things like SATA slots?