Laptop with external GPU ?

[Rotterdams]

Lets say I buy a laptop with a external GPU and it works all fine.

I am gaming nonstop like happy nerd...woudnt the CPU overheat eventually? 

 

I thought about having a super thin laptop with a good last gen i7 CPU and SSD in it. With a external GTX 1070. But I am worried about the CPU during gaming sessions. What do you guys think about it?

 

And is it worth to use a external GPU ? Cause the new GTX 1060 and 70 cards are also pretty good. But is the difference big enough?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Egpu's have bad support currently, and will have issues with bluescreens.

 

Razer has a good solution that works well

 

Alienware has their solution

 

 

It won't burn out the gpu. I have used my laptop's cpu from rendering for years and its fine. 

[Misanthrope]

Depends on what CPU is on the laptop and what cooling solution is on the laptop. But actually in the case of many laptops actually yeah: Laptops are usually not build for sustained workloads and their CPUs usually pack less cores and are lower frequencies meaning they'd have to be working more to keep up with a desktop graphics card. 

 

There's also a fairly limited number of laptops that work with this kind of set up right now, I'd personally wait a bit cause it looks like:

 

1) More external GPU enclosures should be coming

2) Laptop pascal chips look to be an overall better solution being close to matching desktop pascal chips anyway.

 

So if you can just get a gaming laptop with a 1060 pascal chip on it and it's say, 85% of the desktop 1060 anyway that might be just more convenient than the enclosures.

 

In any case the external GPU enclosure thing it's still on it's infancy you should always be cautious about acquiring first generation new tech.

[mDox]

I have the Razer Blade Stealth and Razer Core. Works fine enough, better with external display. Certainly not ideal, especially at a cost of about $2,000 USD for everything. You could build a monster for that value. I recommend giving the eGPUs a few years to mature.

 

Edit: To answer you question about CPU heat - I haven't experienced any problems, yet. I do push that poor little Dual Core i7 pretty hard.

Edited September 1, 2016 by mDox

[Rotterdams]

8 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Depends on what CPU is on the laptop and what cooling solution is on the laptop. But actually in the case of many laptops actually yeah: Laptops are usually not build for sustained workloads and their CPUs usually pack less cores and are lower frequencies meaning they'd have to be working more to keep up with a desktop graphics card. 

 

There's also a fairly limited number of laptops that work with this kind of set up right now, I'd personally wait a bit cause it looks like:

 

1) More external GPU enclosures should be coming

2) Laptop pascal chips look to be an overall better solution being close to matching desktop pascal chips anyway.

 

So if you can just get a gaming laptop with a 1060 pascal chip on it and it's say, 85% of the desktop 1060 anyway that might be just more convenient than the enclosures.

 

In any case the external GPU enclosure thing it's still on it's infancy you should always be cautious about acquiring first generation new tech.

Sadly I need to buy a laptop when we enter december.

 

I am not fond of buying a thick gaming laptop.

And sadly the thin ones overheat. Which destroys the laptop within 2 years

Which happened to my Acer laptop sadly.

 

I am only worried about overheating issues really. I want to be able to game on a laptop without having any overheating issues.

 

And im not sure if I need a expensive CPU for gaming.

I will also be playing online\MMO games.

The new MMO games look great so I need more power.

 

My last GTX 960m coudnt handle new MMO games lol

[Misanthrope]

By that time we should have at least a few more models available though so if you can hold out say 2 more months for pascal laptops to be commonplace: if Nvidia delivers on what they promised you could have a chunky but not "gaming" chunky laptop with decent performance.

 

Remember the most popular enclosure for external gpus right now from Razer it's like 600 dollars without a GPU. That's far too much money for something that honestly still has a few kinks to be addressed and such.

[Shubham Yadav]

I have a Y510p which has an i7 4700mq inside which is I think a pretty good estimate for the last gen laptop CPU you are talking about. 

 

The CPU is a 45W part with 2.4 GHz base clock and 3.4 GHz boost(3.2 for all 4 cores and 8 threads).  

 

Under heavy load, the laptop stays at 3.2 GHz for about a minute, heats up to like 85 degree Celsius and then goes straight to base clock and stays there forever. Temps go down to 65-70 degrees and it boosts to 3.2 GHz every once in a while. 

 

What I'm trying to say is, you can expect about 60% performance of the high end desktop parts even in the worst case scenario. It's good enough to not bottleneck any GPU by considerable amount. And the recent Skylake ones are better. 

 

You should worry more about compatibility and bugs than the CPU. Also make sure it has a thunderbolt 3 connection. 

[Rotterdams]

47 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

By that time we should have at least a few more models available though so if you can hold out say 2 more months for pascal laptops to be commonplace: if Nvidia delivers on what they promised you could have a chunky but not "gaming" chunky laptop with decent performance.

 

Remember the most popular enclosure for external gpus right now from Razer it's like 600 dollars without a GPU. That's far too much money for something that honestly still has a few kinks to be addressed and such.

I woudnt mind paying 200ish but the razer core is too damn expensive. 

 

I dont know what kind of setup i should go for @december till then im waiting

 

[Pendragon]

3 hours ago, Rotterdams said:

I woudnt mind paying 200ish but the razer core is too damn expensive. 

P650RP6 or P650RS. 1060 and 1070 respectively. Neither of them have TB3. But running MMOs the 1070 should be fine for years to come.

 

Nothing Pascal that has a TB3 port is a) not huge b) cooled properly.

 

[Canada EH]

External GPU's suffer from the length of cable dilemma. Lots of loss, I think thats why they go with the "Thunder-something" cable.

[Pendragon]

29 minutes ago, Canada EH said:

External GPU's suffer from the length of cable dilemma. Lots of loss, I think thats why they go with the "Thunder-something" cable.

yea, not alot of TB3 cables are rated for long distances. Maybe some enterprise ones that cost HELLA. 

[NA_NotAvailable]

LinusTechTips should compare the New Alienware 17 with the External GPU. When i contacted Dell, they informed me that they upgraded the the external GPU to support a PCIe 4.0

 

So maxed out Razer with there external GPU with a Titan X pascal 

a 4k 15/17 inch Alienware external GPU (with PCIe 3.0 aka the old one)

A 4k 15/17 Alienware external GPU (with PCIe 4.0 aka the new one)

A 4k 15/17 Alienware with external Razer GPU

 

This is all crazy specs and maybe for the heck of it try it with that $4,000 GPU to check if its too extreme to even work.

 

It could determine where PC gaming is headed. Maybe someone will make a External GPU for laptops that support dual GPU's or maybe 4 gpus. 

[Pendragon]

3 hours ago, NA_NotAvailable said:

When i contacted Dell, they informed me that they upgraded the the external GPU to support a PCIe 4.0

Wat. I feel highly skeptical. As PCIE 4.0 has not even arrived on the motherboard side. They might have done it. 

[GR8-Ride]

PCIe 4.0 isn't scheduled to be finalized as a spec until 2017, so I HIGHLY doubt that Alienware is pushing out a fully compatible, PCIe 4.0 external GPU system.

 

They can certainly produce one that is 'based upon PCIe 4.0', but it's unlikely to future compatible with the final spec.

 

ASUS is supposedly selling their XG2 unit sometime soon, which is also based upon TB3 as the interface.

 

The Razer Core seems to have decent compatibility across the board, as long as the TB drivers are updated for whatever system you're plugging it into.   Folks have been testing them out with Intel's Skull Canyon NUC, MSI GS60/63, Dell XPS 15, and of course the two Razer Blade laptops.

 

The Razer Core is pricey, but given that's it's really the only standards based unit that is readily available on the market (plus the Razer product margins), it's easy enough to see why they get away with charging that much for it.

 

It does work well though.   I run a GTX 1080 in mine, and have no problems playing Doom at 4K at 60+ FPS (external Dell P2715Q with my laptop in closed clamshell mode, and both the laptop and Core in a closed cabinet in my desk).   Setup was incredibly simple on it as well....had everything up and running within 15 minutes of unboxing it.

 

 

 

Patrick

[Pendragon]

1 minute ago, GR8-Ride said:

It does work well though.   I run a GTX 1080 in mine, and have no problems playing Doom at 4K at 60+ FPS (external Dell P2715Q with my laptop in closed clamshell mode, and both the laptop and Core in a closed cabinet in my desk).   Setup was incredibly simple on it as well....had everything up and running within 15 minutes of unboxing it.

Definitely. It's good. But I hate that 25% performance deficit you get. Still don't understand why. 

[GR8-Ride]

I've seen the various results on that, ranging from 8-10% performance hit, to 25% hit.   It seems to depend on the resolution....less of a hit at higher resolution if I recall (CPU bound on 1080p on some games, perhaps?).

 

Without a desktop rig to compare identical GPU's at home (my reasoning for the Core is that I didn't want to build a desktop rig...), I'm not able to scientifically determine the root cause (or really, even speculate) the root cause for the performance hit.

 

I think Linus did some actual testing, even forcing a motherboard to have 4x PCIe in order to create a like for like scenario to the Razer Core.   I'll go watch that video again....see what he figured out.

 

 

 

Patrick

[baptistar the undying]

I have a T410 with a i5 2.5 Ghz, would getting a eternal be a solid option for gaming nothing crazy, think WoW. On the other hand would it just be better to buy a good laptop, I'm thinking of the new Asus series for gaming and keep the T410 for work?

[NA_NotAvailable]

5 hours ago, Pendragon said:

Wat. I feel highly skeptical. As PCIE 4.0 has not even arrived on the motherboard side. They might have done it. 

yeah I could have misinterpreted our conversation.

[Pendragon]

7 hours ago, GR8-Ride said:

I think Linus did some actual testing, even forcing a motherboard to have 4x PCIe in order to create a like for like scenario to the Razer Core.   I'll go watch that video again....see what he figured out.

Linus got less. Around 20% performance degradation. He ran it fully on the desktop MB. I ran mine against a Clevo 980.