Are external GPU's viable now ?

[Combat squirrel]

As title - I've seriously been considering moving from my desktop machine to a laptop machine as my circumstances have changed - my use now will be in the office as and when I need (3 monitors), or out of the office.........I currently have a 6 core intel ivy as my main rig, but also have a really good haswell i7 laptop (big and heavy as its a 'desktop replacement machine') its got a 980m in it which is no slouch and fine for video editing, but i want to simplify my life and have one machine.

This machine has a thunderbolt 2 port - although realistically id need a new laptop with thunderbolt 3 for an external GPU.

In a perfect world id have a powerful laptop on the road then hook in with one cable in the office to a TB3 external GPU that was hooked up to all the 3 monitors in my office - my 980TI would be perfect for my needs.

Question is - are we there yet ? Iv seen a few things crop up but they soon vanish again..................I PERSONALLY BELIEVE INTEL AND NVIDIA HATE THIS IDEA AND DO ANYTHING THEY CAN TO STOP EXTERNAL GPU'S

So are we really getting there yet ? Its my ideal solution tbh ....... a decent laptop GPU but also desktop GPU when in the office, does the industry really frown upon this ?

If I can make it happen reliably - ill sell up everything I have apart from one of my 980TI's and simplify.

 

[Combat squirrel]

Surprised no one is into external gpus, thought they would be a good idea?

 

[D3K]

I was interested when I was interested in surface tablets.

Now I just don't care. Few have supported it, and everywhere I look I'm being forced into remote (cloud) delivery.

I feel this tech is as dead, if not more so, than usb 3.1

 

[Nasher]

The problem is nothing apart from a PCI-E slot has enough bandwidth for a GPU. So it's more of a make-do thing than something people go out of their way to do. Even with Thunderbolt 3 it will only run at x4 speed. So people building gaming PCs aren't interested.

 

[Combat squirrel]

The problem is nothing apart from a PCI-E slot has enough bandwidth for a GPU. So it's more of a make-do thing than something people go out of their way to do. Even with Thunderbolt 3 it will only run at x4 speed. So people building gaming PCs aren't interested.

Is this wrong? Pcie 3 4x is about 4gb/sec which is same as x16 pcie 1.0 slot.... Tb3 is 40gb second and a full 3.0 pcie slot x16 is... 16gb second..... So infact Tb3 is plenty bandwidth? Or is it 20gb sec tb3? (although I think tb2 is 20gb sec.).... Basically tb3 provides plenty bandwidth

 

[drunkenmaster]

Thunderbolt 3 isn't 40GB/s it's 40Gbit/s, as in 5GB/s. With PCI-E 16x being 16GB/s at the moment, 32GB/s next year with version 4.

Realistically afaik there are some seeming driver issues with the few benchmarks I've seen showing good performance in some games, bad in others. Bandwidth heavier games at a guess showing a much larger drop off with a Razer Blade(gaming laptop) + Razer core than desktop with the same GPU. Some games were 10% slower, others were 30-40% slower.


Thunderbolt definitely lacks overall bandwidth, though that isn't necessarily an issue, the biggest issue is likely a combination of slight overhead in latency of driver/controller for thunderbolt.

What I've not seen anywhere is anyone taking a desktop then using thunderbolt on desktop to compare internal/external performance.

The biggest downside is the external GPU enclosures... well, suck. Some I saw people struggling to get the PSU in the external box to turn on properly with the laptop, others are just insanely expensive, £300 for a box with incredibly minor components, power cable, pci-e slots, tiny 'mainboard' and don't even come with a PSU.

So where you can have a cheap desktop with the gpu internally, to go external you need an expensive laptop(anywhere near the same CPU performance/ssd performance will cost you insanely more on a laptop), then an insanely priced external box, then a PSU on top.

You're frankly better off financially just having a PC at home for gaming, then buying a strictly work, lower power laptop. Unless you're doing intensive processing for work, then get a cheap laptop with the screen real estate you require and a cheaper CPU option without worrying too much about performance.

 

[h4rm0ny]

Amazingly, the answer is yes. External GPU is now viable. It's just not done much, yet. AMD are promoting an open specification for external GPUs which I think will become the standard. Also look at the Microsoft's Surface Book. The computer parts in the "screen" can utilise the discrete GPU in the keyboard part.

There is the bandwidth to do this now if you have modern ports. No, a Thunderbolt port doesn't have the bandwidth of a PCI-E v3 x16 slot, but then a GPU doesn't need that much bandwidth. x16 slots have been oversold for years as a requirement. I haven't maxed out the bandwidth of my PCI-E v2 x16 with my GPU so I wouldn't max out the bandwidth of an PCI-E v3 x8. In fact, I'd be surprised if I've ever come even close to maxing out my v2 x16 slot.

I don't know whether or not external GPUs will take off in a big way. They make little sense for desktops but desktops are crashing in terms of popularity. These days its more about laptops and hybrids and both of these are moving heavily towards not being upgradeable. That makes a valuable market for external GPUs but its also a market that laptop and tablet OEMs may not want to promote. After all, they want you to keep buying and replacing your device. But with high bandwidth ports being a necessity to offer, they can't really stop AMD or Nvidia promoting external GPUs, so it's really going to come down to whether these two want to try and build such a market, imo.

 

[Brazo]

Given how good the latest 1060/1070/1080 mobile gpus are it would make very little sense to stick a desktop product that's only slightly better in an external box.

 

[Phixsator]

Given how good the latest 1060/1070/1080 mobile gpus are it would make very little sense to stick a desktop product that's only slightly better in an external box.

not to mention paying through the roof for the box itself to install the gpu in. They need to come down in price for this to be an attractive thing for people imho

 

[Combat squirrel]

Yeah modern GPU's are great but bonkers priced for a machine spec id want, £3000-£6000 !!!

Yeah I more wish/want a TB2/TB3 'box' to wack my 980TI in - some people have done this on TB2 even, and gained a lot, so it would be worth it up to about £200 for the box if it was TB2 compatable - my 980m isn't slow AT ALL, but it would be a huge jump upto even a TB2 connected 980ti.

But that box at the price prob won't happen :/ ahh well 980m will have to do! I infrequently play games anyway so its not a massive deal, the 980m is plenty for my video editing work.

 

[Nasher]

You can spend less than half that much and have a gaming PC that will run anything pretty well. A 980m isn't even close to a full sized 980 and your finding that good enough.

 

[Combat squirrel]

You can spend less than half that much and have a gaming PC that will run anything pretty well. A 980m isn't even close to a full sized 980 and your finding that good enough.

Yeah I know I already have a full size PC with 2x 980TI's in SLI, but my goal is simplification.

 

[David Bisset]

I struggle to see the point - it doesn't seem like simplification to me.

To be able to take advantage of a powerful external GPU you need a fast CPU. You've then got to either have a good dGPU in the laptop too causing the price to be astronomic and not using it when docked or an iGPU resulting in a very expensive laptop that's rubbish unless docked (and of course preventing the top desktop-class CPU options with x99 due to no iGPU there).

In your case where you're willing to spend loads and not focusing on the cost then there is some point, but for most I'd say just get a normal laptop then use a desktop at home as it'd be much cheaper. If you must have a powerful laptop then just use it at home too. The incremental gains seem like poor value for a niche solution that will likely have poor support as a result of it's rarity.

Still, for the sake of more options I'd be happy for it to gain some traction, even though I doubt I'd ever take advantage of it.

 

[z10m]

These days you can fit entire pc including a graphics card to a case that's similar in size to that gpu external box.

Spoiler

https://www.dan-cases.com/dana4.php

 

[Phixsator]

These days you can fit entire pc including a graphics card to a case that's similar in size to that gpu external box.

Spoiler

Spoiler

https://www.dan-cases.com/dana4.php

You should resize those pics or put them in spoiler tags.

But that case is sexy.. I love small form factor.

 

[DONOHUE07]

There perfectly viable now, Alienware, Razer, MSI and Gigabyte all sell them now, I myself will be ditching my desktop for a 1060 laptop and an external GPU dock in the new year

 

[alex_123_fra]

External GPU housings have been available for a while (e.g. graphics amplifier by Alienware). They allow for a fairly future-proof laptop system if you go for a really decent CPU that is overclockable and won't result in you being CPU-bound.

The trouble is, there is now less need for these sorts of graphics amplifiers since the Pascal cards came out as the difference between the laptop and desktop GPU variants is now very small. It is also fairly routine to now see overclockable desktop CPUs (i.e. 6700K) in gaming laptops. So the difference between a "normal mainstream" gaming laptop and desktop is narrower than ever in performance terms (not in price terms). If you feel your GPU is ageing in years to come, if you have a laptop with a 6700k, you can simply upgrade your laptop GPU in exactly the same way as you do your desktop.

If it comes to a price argument, external GPUs will be cheaper.

 

[Nasher]

Still the problem of bandwidth though. Unless you can plug it directly in to the PCI-E slot somehow, your going to be loosing a chunk of performance.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Still the problem of bandwidth though. Unless you can plug it directly in to the PCI-E slot somehow, your going to be loosing a chunk of performance.

Thunderbolt 3 has plenty of bandwidth.

 

[rtho782]

Thunderbolt 3 has plenty of bandwidth.

That actually depends.

If it's used to connect an external GPU, which is then connected to an external display, yeah it's just under a third of PCIe 3.0 x16 but it will do.

The issue comes using an external GPU to run the internal display over the same cable. Now we have that same bandwidth, but without compression we want to move 7.9GByte/sec back to the laptop for 1080p60, 32bpp.

That's 50% more bandwith than TB3 has, and we haven't left anything to actually run the GPU.