What GPUs work as eGPUs?
What GPUs work as eGPUs?
I'd like to put together an eGPU for my surface pro. It seems like you just buy the chassis and add a GPU. Is this true? Can you use any GPU?
9 comments
-
I am also interested in an egpu but not for gaming, just for running local AI models. Has anyone had any experience with this?
-
I think the best you can do these days is a GPU dock that you’re also using a power supply with. I’ve been looking into such a thing for my Lenovo Legion Go as it’s got USB4 and I rarely use the thing not hooked up to a larger display.
-
Its worth saying a GPU dock is just an eGPU. Often they use mobile GPUs and will make something more streamlined or portable. They often include a USB hub.
Most eGPU chassis are the same tech but often larger so you can install a larger desktop gpu, and have more space for cooling and even a dedicated PSU.
GPU docks have their own usefulness but you are likely to get more performance for the price by getting your own chassis and card, but less mobility and more bulky.
-
Maybe I was unclear. I was referring to what are essentially external PCIe slots that connect over thunderbolt or usb4. You plug a desktop GPU and power supply into ‘em.
-
-
-
I have a Surface Laptop 6 and a Razer eGPU enclosure with a Radeon 6600 XT in it and it works fine. The manufacturer will list what sorts of GPUs are compatible, assuming you get a brand name one and not some cheap no-name Amazon job.
Honestly if you have the money, go for a PC. The mobile CPU in laptops/tablets will your biggest bottleneck. Get a decent CPU, motherboard and PSU and the best GPU you can afford and it’ll probably out perform the Surface.
-
eGPUs have all but disappeared. 90% of the models available in 2019 are no longer available with no models to replace them. Even bigger companies like razer and coolermaster seemed to silently discontinue them and simply let the product webpages break down. I think power requirements of the last years of GPUs have also made them less practical and people aren't going to pay 500€ for an enclosure when that is simply approaching the cost of the rest of the PC.
There are even fewer thunderbolt4 but thunderbolt3 has a bit of latency results in slight performance loss, so finding an old model enclosure with thunderbolt3 might be your best chance of getting it. Different storefronts sometimes still have a few in stock you can buy.
Edit: Nowhere did I say "no eGPUs have been made" just that there are signifucantly less options than 5 years ago:
https://egpu.io/best-egpu-buyers-guide/
Look at the vendor pages for most of these models and see if you can buy them from tge vendor or an manufacturer-listed distributer and then try to find newer, actively produced eGPUs by the manufacturers (including the big names). For the vast majority they have stopped making them.
To frame it as an example: If you saw that 30 laptop manufacturers making 100+ models in 5 years went to 3 manufacturers making 5 models, you would say that is a very rapid decline.
-
The enclosure and the ports of your laptop are the bigger factor.
You most definitely want to do extensive reviews before spending money as there tend to be lots of edge cases and issues with eGPUs.
-
AFAIK, any. But expect performance lost due to bottoneck in bandwidth. Even the latest TB5 is only slightly faster than PCIe 2.0 x16. OCulink 2.0 can achieve PCIe 4.0 x8 which is way better, but Surface Pro have neither.
-
I think YouTube might be a good resource for this kind of thing.
I think any gpu would work, but check with the vendor of the enclosure. They might have limitation for size or possibly power.
I also think there is a 10% performance loss, but maybe newer thunderbolt versions have over come that.
9 comments