External Graphics Cards (eGPUs) - What Everyone is Forgetting

eGPUs are always being marketed as the ultimate solution for laptop users, but companies aren't being fully transparent about the limitations of an eGPU setup.

In this video, I explain why an eexternal graphics card is not for everyone.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this so please leave a comment below. As always, if you enjoyed the video, please click like, share, and subscribe :)

Thanks guys.

Kevin

--- Connect With Me ---

[DavidHarry]

Alright Kevin.

Great video. I was recently looking into having a flexible setup of a laptop combined with an eGPU and came to the same conclusions you have. Even if I’d managed to get the right laptop, CPU etc. It was just going to be so cost prohibitive compared to a much more powerful desktop.

I’d recently built an i9 machine with an NVMe boot drive and 32GB RAM for under £1000, extra editing/storage drives, capture cards and GPU are obviously an extra expense. When I looked at something similar as a laptop spec the price was just insane and obviously not as powerful. Plus, the storage and capture options for a laptop are either limited or none existent and the GPU power with a laptop and eGPU combination would never be as good as a desktop.

You’re right, for certain people the laptop and eGPU will be a great option but if you’re doing serious editing/production work and/or high end gaming, you’re best option is a desktop system which will be cheaper and more powerful. I’ve no doubt that the laptop/eGPU combo will one day be as powerful, maybe more, as a desktop.

BTW. Talking about mobile gaming. Have you ever tried a smartphone connected via DEX? I recently bought a Samsung A90 5G for £350 direct from Samsung with a trade in of an old iPhone 5 for £50 and right now they’ve got a cash back offer for the same phone that works out at £320 without the need for a trade in. This phone is 6GB/128GB and weirdly not only has 5G but a Snapdragon 855. The Snapdragon basically makes it more powerful than any UK bought S10. It’s cameras aren’t as good etc. and it’s screen res is lower but is still a HD+ Super AMOLED. It’s basically a less specified but more powerful Note 10+ or similar, for almost a third of the price right now.

Anyway. It’s the first A range phone of Samsung’s to have DEX compatibility and with the 855 and its GPU it’s not only a great phone for gaming but when you dock it with a £20 Amazon DEX compatible interface, it becomes a serious desktop game machine for certain games that allow gamepad control. I’m proper old school and can’t play with keyboards and mice :)

Seriously, with certain games it feels like at least a PS3 but with 1080/60P. I’m just trying to find a good cooling solution for it as a desktop game machine. I’m not into playing on such a small screen or with touch but maybe in the future the smartphone will take over as the main gaming platform with the ability to dock and go mobile.


Cheers,
Dave.

[vampickle]

Continued listening because of the accent.

[danielprofio]

I've used an EGPU laptop setup now for 2+ years and it has been a versatile, awesome nightmare overall. I'm a photographer/videographer who also games in my freetime so i'm frequently switching between laptop/desktop and it's extremely efficient for my field work. But when it comes to gaming, there are only a handful of games that don't crash frequently. I'm tech savvy, I've done everything and have optimized a minimal setup with the most basic driver configuration and sill get issues under load in games. The bottleneck in an egpu setup is unavoidable and this bottleneck will behave very differently in video games. General rule of thumb is to strip away anything that increases this bottleneck (not only to the cpu but to the power supply).

Quick tips for people who have an eGPU: consider upgrading to an apple thunderbolt .8 cable, if your egpu has any ports other than the thunderbolt...dont use them, turn kernel DMA protection off, if your egpu comes with software that manipulates the lighting...dont use it, always install the most minimal version of your updated graphics drivers (amd allows the option to install the "driver only"). If your laptop comes with any internal graphics, turn it off in device manager when using your egpu, and finally I strongly recommend you do a fresh windows 11 install before you buy your new gpu.

These changes have made games that were previously unplayable, crash every few hours and have dramatically increased stability of my other games. I play plenty of titles on max settings without a crash for hours on this setup. I have also never had a crash within windows or editing/exporting huge video files. The crashing is only an issue while gaming.

Dont buy an EGPU setup unless you need one, and if you still want one, get ready to NOT have anything work properly out of the box. It will take lots of time and tweaks to get everything nice and stable.

[anadam]

You just saved me such a headache. I didn't think about this problem and you did an amazing job explaining the challenge and why an external eGPU would not work for me. For real, you just saved me money and time in returning everything as well as all that frustration. I feel a weight has been lifted.

[nclrdy]

Good points here. From my experience I noticed that gaming on a eGPU was okay at best. Typically lag spikes would occur often enough to frustrate anyone. With that being said I didn't originally buy the eGPU for gaming. I am a 3D artist, and at the time I had a gaming laptop with Thunderbolt 3. I decided to get a $200 (at the time) eGPU enclosure from Sonnet and a 1060 for it. My use case, and the best use case I have found is using it for extra GPU compute for rendering in CUDA accelerated applications. Or as a display adapter for 3D Modeling to handle extra poly counts. This use case works since its not having to update the screen non-stop like it would in games.

To me if you're a 3D artist and want extra performance from your TB3 enable laptop then go for it. I am about to do the same thing for my work office so I don't have to drag my desktop workstation around. But that is my two cents.

[Duckstalker]

There is no free lunch. Sure a desktop is always better, more powerful and cost less, but you can't bring your desktop to the coffee shop, or on the plane to your oversea trip. For some people, the portability and flexibility of the laptop and eGPU dock setup would worth far more than the 20% bottleneck.

[markgeoff]

70 % is more than enough of not using any graphics for video editing, since my company is limited with Thinkpad laptop

[janindu]

Wow you’ve actually just helped me save nearly £900 which would have gone into buying a razer core x chroma and an rtx 2080, but now it’s all going towards a tower. Cheers Kevin :)

[bepamungkas]

One thing to note is that for if you already have decent laptop and plan to build a decent gaming PC with limited budget, good but cheap eGPU adapter like TH3P4G3 from EXP GDC is a viable options. As long as:

- your local market have a decent demand for second hand eGPU adapter.
- you already have rough spec for your build.
- you're comfortable buying one or two part at a time. Rather than saving for one big purchase.

E.g with budget of roughly 350 USD a month I can buy corsair 1200w platinum + rx 6700xt + TH3P4G3 within 2 month. Enjoy decent gaming performance in my work laptop (T480) while slowly buying up other parts for my final build, with CPU and Mobo as last purchase to ensure future proofing. After which I plan to sell the adapter.

Granted, this is very specific case that came about due to our weak currency (IDR) making computer parts's price quite unstable.

[zakk-kaye]

I think I might get one with the intention of putting the gpu in a tower im going to have built eventually anyway

[TEXAS]

great video, and extremely ON THE POINT!
thankyou

[lgccyy]

Super awesome reminder! Glad I saw this before making the purchase! Thank you! This is an honest reminder amongst all the sponsored videos! In this day and age, we really need honest and earnest ppl like you! Thanks again! And, btw, where are you from? Is that an Irish accent?

[carlsagan]

Everything in this video is pretty right on. Minus ever being bottlenecked by 16 gb of ram. That just wouldn't happen. And as you go up in resolution you'd see more of a benefit. But yes, I agree it's generally not the best option for your money.

[testowykana]

I would say the best part about eGPU os that:
-you can upgrade the GPU when you upgrade your CPU/Laptop
-you can connect the eGPU to multiple laptops at home
-you can buy cheaper, used laptops that only have integrated graphics, so you save money in the long run.

The only negative side is the eGPU enclosure itself, its bulky, you can really carry it around. But for my use it's ok.

[adroasuncion]

Thank you so much for this! You have been such a big help :)

[eunisecreative]

i actually dont mind having my cpu being worse as the main reason i want an eGPU is for blender and blender tends to be GPU intensive

[pkerry]

From my experience with EGPU they run very well when you have a decent graphics card, decent cpu i7 (no less) and running it at resolutions of 1440p and 4k for some reason the performance dip is on 1080p there is a big gap on fps. But if you didn't have the FPS counter on you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a egpu and a inbuild PCIe graphics. Where you will see bad performance is if you get a shit graphics card if your Laptops dedicated gpu can outperform you egpus then you need to think about your graphics card choice. I use a macbook pro 15 inch though so the specs tend to be alot better than most PC slim laptops so I haven't had an issue in that regard. From the numbers though its still much cheaper to get a egpu with a decent graphics card than to buy a high spec PC for gaming and video editing etc.

[infopackrat]

Now we need the eCPU. Perhaps a combo. That brings up an interesting question. Could you add CPU power through PCIe?

[conan]

I have Lenovo P50 workstation with 32GB RAM and i7 it is a powerhouse and I agree that a eGPU will work wonders for me gaming on the go... Looking at the AORUS GTX 1070 GAMING BOX by the way as a light weight option to boost gaming and graphics when needed! Thank you so much for the info and your points!

[Komboss]

Spent 20 on a PSU, 50 on a 750ti and 25 on a exp gdc adapter for an old laptop, from Intel HD to 750ti on competitive games anyone will get 100 more fps or more