Is an eGPU worth it?

[lieutent]

I'm currently in the fortunate situation of having both a desktop (i5-8600/3060 Ti) and a good laptop for school (M1 MacBook Air). Reducing this all down to one machine that can be single-cabled into basically a desktop replacement sounds really nice as I'm a full time student and I have a 2TB 970 EVO I can put in it. I should also mention I already have a Razer Core V2, I bought one on eBay for $20 as broken and fixed it (cables needed to be reseated, absolute steal I know), and right now it's just a desk ornament. So the biggest tool needed for this I already have. 

 

I was looking at either the Framework with the 1165G7 or an XPS 13 with an 1195G7. Although I'm not sure if the 11th gen equivalent to the U series cpus are a good idea for this. I primarily play games like CSGO and osu!. The only problem I have is frame times have me worried on these G series chips about downclocking due to the power limit window they have. I know an H-series chip wouldn't have that issue to the same degree, but I can't find one that isn't either going to be really expensive, doesn't already have a dGPU, or has good battery life. At the moment in CSGO I'm used to maintaining 400fps w/ the lock consistently while playing faceit (exception of nuke and other new maps ). Would I lose that performance? I would be using the 3060 Ti I already own. 

 

Also battery life... Is it possible to get a laptop with an H-series chip and still hold over 7 hours of battery life while maintaining similar performance in games (and delay)? Before this I was using a Razer Blade 15 Advanced with an 8750H and a 2070 Max-Q and the battery life was atrocious. Not to mention I had to replace the battery 8 months into owning it. I know nothing is going to match the efficiency of the M1 Mac, but I'd at least like to get all-day when I'm not playing games, but when I'm using chrome, vsc, and microsoft office.

 

What's your guys' thoughts?

[SupaKomputa]

Lower power consumption : go for Ryzen laptop.

[lieutent]

1 minute ago, SupaKomputa said:

Lower power consumption : go for Ryzen laptop.

I actually didn't think of that. But I'm not very versed in AMD's mobile lineup, and recommendations?

[SupaKomputa]

Well, nothing beats M1 in power consumption, but ryzen cpu is relatively less power demanding than intel, especially in the high end.

There are "H" (high performance) series from ryzen like 5900H, but if you want more power efficient, go for a "U" model like 5800U (at the expense of lower performance).

For the full lineup read here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryzen (scroll down for ryzen 5000 mobile).

 

Also, no, egpu is not worth it.

The platform is no longer supported in the long run.

[lieutent]

5 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Also, no, egpu is not worth it.

The platform is no longer supported in the long run.

Not supported anymore? As far as I was aware there are still a lot of people who use that kind of set up. Even in very recent laptop reviews the phrase 'external graphics card' in regards to thunderbolt is brought up quite a lot. And as I've said, I already have a TB3 enclosure, a Razer Core V2, all thats missing is a compliant laptop. Getting that for so cheap is what sparked my interest.

[SupaKomputa]

Yes, egpu introduce 20-30% latency, so if you're using a 3080, it should perform around 3060 (it's a rough analogy, i know). I don't think it's worth it. Outside some of the first introducer of the platform (like razer), there aren't anymore brands making it (for the low sales).

[lieutent]

59 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Yes, egpu introduce 20-30% latency, so if you're using a 3080, it should perform around 3060 (it's a rough analogy, i know). I don't think it's worth it. Outside some of the first introducer of the platform (like razer), there aren't anymore brands making it (for the low sales).

Sure but that's due to the limitations in bandwidth. That 20-30% doesn't scale linearly. A 3080 would obviously lose a lot of it's performance due to TB3/TB4 and the fact its still on PCIe gen 3, and other factors, but remember, I'm using a 3060 Ti, I might lose 5-10% performance but that's negligible for the advantages it would give. Only problem is I can't have an M1 MacBook style device with all of it's advantages paired with an eGPU. That's why I came here.