Portable laptop and an eGPU

Urgannagru

Urgannagru

Urgannagru

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10 Jan 2013
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Hi a bit out of the loop with technology at the moment but considering replacing my faithful Sony Vaio SVS13, a fantastic laptop that is finally showing it's age.
Had originally been planning on keep this laptop and building an AMD APU based system housed in an ISK110 to be used for media and a bit of gaming with a 720p projector I have. However with the bristol ridge release dragging its heels and lacking some of the power I was hoping for I'm thinking of replacing the laptop to one that can fill this role.
I've had a look at laptops with built in graphics cards but they seem quite expensive for what they are especially as I want to stay at the more portable end of the spectrum, until the Razer Blade stealth caught my eye. This path seems suitable for my use with the laptop itself being fairly cheap but the eGPU allowing it to be upgraded later on when money allows. However I have since found out that Razer's customer service leaves something to be desired and the release of the Core in Europe is a complete unknown so I'm looking at other options.


With that in mind this is what I'm looking for:

Size: 12"-15" the more portable the better, screen size has never been an issue to me at 13"

Battery life: 3-4 hours of standard office use, more is better but not at a greatly reduced price.

Compatible with thunderbolt 3 eGPU, I know this is a bit tricky to advise on when there are so few enclosures on the market.

Performance with out eGPU: Currently have an i7-3520m CPU so I'd imagine most chips these days will meet it even on the cheaper end of the spectrum. The tricky bit is ideally I'd like the onboard graphics to at least meet the gefore 640 le that I currently have so I can keep up same usage until I can afford the eGPU, not too clued up on Intel onboard graphics, potentially the HD620 seems better but I've heard Intels driver support often throws a spanner in the works.

Edit: Nearly forgot screen resolution doesn't really matter to me would prefer it around 1080p as I've never understood having anything larger on a small screen as it just seems to cause undue demand on the hardware
 
Are you hardset on eGPU?

Most new laptops have desktop GPU's.

You can get a gigabyte AERO with GTX 1060 that'll power through 1080p games?

And there are rumours of 14" notebooks coming soon with 1070 and 15" with 1080 by Q3.
 
MiSJAH;30494568 said:
Are you hardset on eGPU?

Most new laptops have desktop GPU's.

You can get a gigabyte AERO with GTX 1060 that'll power through 1080p games?

And there are rumours of 14" notebooks coming soon with 1070 and 15" with 1080 by Q3.
Click to expand...

My understanding is the GB Aero has the 1060M not full blown 1060 desktop counterpart.

Egpu are great if you get the full channel bandwidth; however I do not believe any do and in any case this still does not solve for bottlenecking by the Cpu that seem to be BGA'ed to the boards these days ergo non upgradeable.

Else if your mind is set on an egpu setup look at Dell outlet
 
MiSJAH;30494568 said:
Are you hardset on eGPU?

Most new laptops have desktop GPU's.

You can get a gigabyte AERO with GTX 1060 that'll power through 1080p games?

And there are rumours of 14" notebooks coming soon with 1070 and 15" with 1080 by Q3.
Click to expand...

Not hard set, but it does seem to offer some benefits over a laptop with a dGPU at this size scale, main one being cost I've found the most basic model of the stealth on the rainforest for around £600 and refurbished demo xps 13 9360 for around £850. Granted it's atleast another £600 for the enclosure and and a gtx 1060 but this way I can spread the cost and there's a possibility of upgrades in the future.
Another Pro to the eGPU is some of them also have space for a 2.5" drive, so I could keep the laptops drive for OS and more basic software and keep just hardware intensive games on the enclosure (in theory I'm not sure how badly this would effect performance with it taking a slice out of the thunder bolts bandwidth. Final plus is a minor one (and may not work as well as I hope) but the system may be quieter underload as I'd imagine the larger enclosures cooling options would be a bit more effective than those of a dGPU.

As said despite these advantages I'm not dead set on going this route, depends on if there are other more cost effective options, and whether there are any practical issues with eGPUs. On that front haven't found a huge amount of info but firmware and drivers seem to be improving in support for it, and the bandwidth doesn't seem to be too much of a bottle neck, taking a 10-15% chunk out of GPU performance but as of yet not putting an upper limit (ie. performance keeps increasing with better GPU's just not as well as with a dGPU.

Thanks for replying though is food for thought.
 
I've been playing with a MSI GS43VR 7RE (14") for a couple of days now and settled on it due to it capability to much current AAA titles (I'm playing Doom today at 90+fps on Ultra settings @ 1080P). It's very portable and compact compared to my 4 year old 15" Samsung. I have a 4 year laptop cycle and with the TB3 port will at some point connect a eGPU with what ever card is required, once a 4k quality VR experience is available. The more time I spend on it more impressive it becomes. *only thing I don't like is the track pad (but I use a mouse anyway). I'd looked at the Aero 14, Razor 14, Razor Stealth, Aorus X3 Plus V7, Dell XPS 13 and really pained over the decision from starting to look 6 months ago. I took on-board some stella advice from the OcUk Gurus and so far I'm not regretting it and feel future proofed for my needs over the next 4 years.
 
Ti-Andy said:
I think that would take some large leap in thermal technology in such small form factors but I'd like to see it.
Click to expand...

Eurocom already have a 1080 15" laptop in the Tornado F5, but it is much chunkier than an average 15" laptop.
 
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