'Gaming' VS 'Businuess' laptop's w/ eGPU

[Tankerer]

I've had bed experiences with gaming laptops in the past. You pay a premium to get nice hardware in a small package, then that package thermal throttles whenever you play games... So, I'm paying more to have less, physically and virtually! Why overpay for something that can't even reach it's full potential? Now my friend wants to buy a gaming laptop and I'm trying to give him better alternatives!

 

What is the consensus on the eGPU setup's via thunderbolt 3?

 

In theory, one could buy a normal laptop with a nice CPU for portable use case (YT/Netflix, spreadsheets/docs) then when you're at home, plug in the eGPU and get some great performance gaming with no GPU throttling or a CPU/GPU sharing the same inadequate cooling solution?

 

It sounds like the perfect solution, in theory.

 

But, when you unplug the eGPU, are the drivers gonna cause conflicts?

What is the best, non 'gaming' laptop to buy?

Can we get a laptop with 10980hk that isn't over $1000?

What's a good alternative with similar performance?

Shouldn't low/mid-end gaming be just fine on a CPU like the 10980hk?

[jaslion]

Well the issue with thunderbolt is bandwith. No matter how you put it a decently clocked rx570 basically maxes out the connection. So no matter if you put a rtx2080ti in there or a rx580 you will barely get any more frames as the thunderbolt connection simply cannot handle the bandwith that is needed. Why do you want a 10980hk anyways? The only non gaming laptops that have that cpu overheat like crazy or are so expensive that you might as well just get a gpu in there anyways.

 

If you really need the power just get a xmp core 15 amd version. The 4800h is an amazing cpu and pretty much matches the 10980hk in every way but consumes a lot less power and runs far less hot. This laptop also has a refresh rtx 2060 inside which runs at 110w of power which basically means it runs as good as a rtx 2080 max q. The only difference is the lower end raytracing components. This laptop also can cool itself really well and just does not overheat.

 

The xmg would be the best solution as it's very portable has pretty good battery life and gives better performance than a egpu laptop solution ever could with thunderbolt 3.

[Chris Pratt]

51 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Well the issue with thunderbolt is bandwith.

How's that? Thunderbolt 3 is 40Gbps, while PCIe 3.0 16x is 32Gbps. It might be an issue once GPUs start really pushing PCIe 4.0 bandwidth, but we aren't there yet, for sure.

[Chris Pratt]

Here's Linus' opinion on the best PC laptop right now, and it has Thunderbolt 3:

 

 

[Roswell]

One of the problems that you’re going to run into is that you’ll have a hard time finding a laptop with a non low TDP processor with thunderbolt that doesn’t also have a GPU in it. There’s plenty of low wattage chip models like that but they’re not that great for gaming.

[Tankerer]

I think we've collectively convinced him to just build a tower.

[jaslion]

19 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

How's that? Thunderbolt 3 is 40Gbps, while PCIe 3.0 16x is 32Gbps. It might be an issue once GPUs start really pushing PCIe 4.0 bandwidth, but we aren't there yet, for sure.

It's 40 Gigabits a second for thunderbolt and 32 GigaBYTES for pcie. Pretty massive difference. So 40 Gigabit a second is only 5 Gigabyte a second. That is in absolute optimal conditions however so give or take thunderbolt 3 is basically a x4 pcie 3.0 slot.