egpu 3060 TI Underperforming

scrubware · July 11, 2022

Hello! I'm new to the Forum.

I have a Framework laptop (i5-1135G7) running a 3060 TI in a Sonnet 550 Breakaway Box eGPU case.

The 3060 TI in question was lifted from an HP Omen prebuilt (though I don't know which one, I purchased it on Facebook Marketplace) and installed in my current setup.

In PassMark Performance Test, the highest score I got after 3 runs was 9763, which is only 48% of the performance of the average 3060 TI, which is provided as 20334. My highest speed is still 2.08x less than the average.

In case it's important, my CPU runs better than the average.

It's been doing this essentially since I got it, and I was pretty sure something was up but only decided to test it now.

Anyway, I'm left wondering what's causing the problem. Is it the eGPU (which should only have a drop of 10-30%)? The fact that it's from a prebuilt?

I don't think it's a cooling issue, my drivers are up to date (GPU and Framework drivers), I couldn't find a GPU BIOS switch anywhere, and I don't really know what's causing this problem. Having a 52% performance drop is kind of a big problem, especially in VR.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

jaslion · July 12, 2022

Sounds about right. You are on a pcie 3.0 x4 link at the best of times.

8 hours ago, scrubware said:

Is it the eGPU (which should only have a drop of 10-30%)

This is false. That was the case for back in the 1000 series days when a 1080 would perform about 30% worse. A 1060 was maxing out the bandwith back then.

In todays cards a gtx 1650 is about what maxes out the bandwith of a 3.0x4 link. A 3060ti is HEAVILY held back by such a slow pcie speed and the performance you are seeing is sadly correct. A 3060ti has no trouble fully using a pcie 4.0x4 link which is double the speed you can have so seeing 50% of the performance is pretty much spot on accurate.

Egpu was a fun gimmick 4 years ago but because of lack of pcie speed has become all but irrelevant nowadays. That and you can buy thin and light laptops for a decent price that do not thermal throttle and have high performance gpu's that will perform better than a laptop + dock and card.