External graphics card with a laptop: How to choose the right one for your needs

In fact, it IS possible to upgrade the graphics card on a laptop. One way is to install an external graphics card or eGPU on your laptop. It is one of the most effective methods to remarkably increase your laptop graphics power.

You also need to prepare an eGPU dock and a desktop graphics card. Note that the graphics card is not necessary since some eGPU docks come with their own card. Manufacturers like Razor, Gigabyte, and ASUS has released this kind of products. Do some research on their official site and pick the one that looks good for you.

How to use an external graphics card with a laptop

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I have an HP Elitebook 8440p. I want to play GTA V but the graphics card isn't enough to play the game smooth. So, How can I upgrade or use external graphics card in my laptop. I am not a hard core gamer I just want to play games at low or medium settings. I saw a video on youtube of using an external graphics card but I can't understand that how to setup this external graphics card and how to use it.

You have a wifi and wwan mini-pcie slot in a compartment on the bottom of the computer. You have no Expresscard or other port that allows the eGPU to be attached without opening the access door. You need to find a min-PCIe type eGPU dock, and put it in the wireless or WWAN port. You buy a video card to put in the eGPU dock, a desktop power supply and an external monitor.

I am not a big advocate of this type of device, but they work. If you get a mid-level graphics card like say an nVidia GeForce GTX 750Ti and all these parts you can set up kind of a desktop gaming rig using your laptop as the CPU. Should be enough to play last gen games at low or medium resolution and decent frame rate. Might run $400 total for the hardware including a FHD monitor if you don't already have one.

You can use the latest graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia in the enclosure, including Nvidia Quadro cards for professional workloads. AMD has also approved the air-cooled version of the RX Vega 64, Radeon Pro WX 8200, and WX 9100 for use in the Breakaway Box. In addition to the 750W power supply, delivered to your GPU through two 8-pin connectors, the unit offers up to 100W of upstream power to charge your laptop.

If you want a GPU enclosure with the graphics card included, the Aorus RTX 3080 Gaming Box is the perfect option. Aorus has multiple models available, including ones that include the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 Ti. The enclosure is more than just a graphics card in a box, though.

The Mantiz MZ-03 Saturn Pro II is an external GPU enclosure with all the bells and whistles at a reasonable price. For $330, it comes packed with external connectivity in the form of five USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and an SD card reader (features even our top picks charge more for). It still manages to cram a 750W 80+ Gold power supply inside, too, offering plenty of juice to even the most hungry GPUs.

With nearly identical architecture to the previous generation, the 8th generation ULV CPU offers performance improvements by running double the number of cores, often at a more efficient reduced speed to maintain limits and thereby giving greater overall workload. These ultrabooks are the first revision with quad-core processors and should be future-proof for the next few years. Intel 10th generation CPUs have two different families with Comet Lake coming with a top 6-core option and Ice Lake with 4-core with on-die Thunderbolt 3 controller. At this time, the i7-10710U configuration was the highest performing, readily available ULV CPU. Considering external graphics card for laptop application though, the integration of Thunderbolt 3 controller on i7-1065G7 makes it the more appealing choice due to less latency.

As seen in the AIDA64 benchmarks above, OPI 4GT/s systems can extract the most out of Thunderbolt 3 eGPU. Keep in mind that Intel caps the throughput in these eGPU enclosures at roughly 22Gbps to preserve bandwidth for DisplayPort transmission over Thunderbolt 3. As external graphics adoption and demand grows, we hope Intel and partners dedicate more resources to optimize Thunderbolt 3 performance in general and external graphics use in specific.

Very informative article , but it does leave me with some questions. About the pcie lanes since there are 12 total if I was going to purchase a ultrabook 2-in-1 with a dedicated graphics card would it be better to get a SATA3 ssd instead of an NVMe(because NVME takes up x4 pcie lanes). I only ask because of the upcoming ASUS Zenbook Flip 15 (i7-8550u, 16gb ram ddr4, GTX1050) UX561UD. It gives the option of and HDD, sata3 ssd, or a pcie ssd instead. Does a sata3 ssd take up any pcie lanes? This leaves me to wonder if the advertised Thunderbolt 3 will be a full 4x pcie or it will be 2x pcie. Sorry if these are dumb questions I am completely new to this.

There are many different considerations when picking a laptop and Thunderbolt bandwidth is only one of them and if we would tell people to not bother with that unless X then their picking would be that much easier.

uhm just a small note before i begin, @4chip4 you above mentioned the hp 13t as a replacement for the x360, from everything i could find the hp spectre 13t costs the same (in europe!) has less battery and the screen moves less, also the flex seems to be more. the trade off is a few mm less thickness. Worth it? For most not i guess. I really like the idea of putting the ports at the back and having a thinner laptop that way, sadly the spectre 13 becomes quite large by having that and relatively thick top and bottom bezles making it notably deeper then the dell xps 13 at only 2mm less thickness, with lower performance (28 watt CPU xps 13) weaker thermals smaller battery lower buildquality and the same price tag (again i only know about EU and hp seems to have more of a premium price added then other companies) ? kinda sad as i like the idea ?

So lets talk about CPUs:theitsage mentioned in the original post that it may be worth the wait for the H CPUs, now that we do have a number of good laptops with them and had a bit of time, are there any conclusions or results someone can make about using one with an eGPU? is the 8750H actually better then the 8550U? (this discussion is also here: -gear-should-i-buy/i7-7700hq-vs-i7-8550u/#post-38998 just thought the buyers guide may be a better place to discuss or update if these CPUs actually do offer an advantage.)

seemingly manufacturers dont think a 8750H chip for eGPu use is beneficial or worth the effort either, as every single laptop with a 8750H on the market also has a dGPU (isnt that odd? is it really that niche?) You could build more portable devices without the dGPU and even manage that crazy heat of the 45W series far better with 2 fans and full length heatpipes to both sides of the CPU, so why isnt this done?

Here is another post strongly suggesting something is going on with the 8th gen CPU: _x_pro_i7_3d_mark_scores_razer_core/ the matebook is a 2x pcie laptop and also uses the weaker CPU, the performance drop is quite drastic overall and the score using a 1080TI (firestrike 12500) is similar to what we saw in the article on the XPS13 when using a 1070 eGPU (12175) so i really dont know what is going on there !? but it gets cazier, this system still outperforms the razer which has a 7th gen HQ processor (equivalent or better then the 8550U) and certainly the razer also has 4x pcie vs the 2x of the matebook x pro.

I heard that the internal graphics card is soldered on the motherboard so it's hard to replace it; but what about the external one?I have 2 graphics adapter in my laptop; one is the Intel (internal) and the other is an AMD graphics adapter. Is it possible to change the AMD card?

Generally you can not upgrade even the dedicated GPU which you probably mean when you use the expression "external graphics card" because it is almost always soldered to the main board as well. The only difference between integrated and dedicated GPUs is that the integrated GPU is usually part of the CPU chip and much less powerful than the separate dedicated GPU chip which usually also has its own memory. Some modern laptops support thunderbolt, though and you could use that to attach a true desktop external GPU in an enclosure using usually a USB type C cable. So it's basically a box you can connect to your laptop that requires its own power supply and that is typically the only reasonable way to upgrade laptop graphics.

More and more we're seeing thin and light laptops and Ultrabooks that are being marketed as both gaming and productivity machines, on the promise that you can attach external graphics to boost power when you need it at home.

However, it doesn't quite work that way. While an external GPU will certainly boost performance over the integrated graphics that a lot of gaming laptops offer, it's generally not enough to justify the hugely inflated cost that one of these bulky boxes necessarily brings.

But here's the issue. Especially when you take high-performance graphics into consideration, there's only so much an external graphics card can do. You see, typically when you connect one of the best graphics cards to a motherboard you're able to use the full 16 PCIe lanes for the GPU - Thunderbolt 3, as magical as it is, is limited to just two. 2ff7e9595c