Question 4060 Ti eGPU

[ezzeldinelmasry]

Hello,

I want to ask I currently have a Dell G15 5520 with I7-12700H, 3060 130W, 16GB DDR5 RAM, 512GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, and 1080P 120Hz Screen.

Now I play all games extremely well, even new and demanding ones like Cyberpunk 2077 is around 60~70 FPS with ultra high settings, DLSS set to quality, and Ray Tracing off.

But I would like to try pushing this setup even more, so I was thinking of buying a 4060 Ti and an eGPU enclosure and connecting it to my laptop via Thunderbolt 4 while using a 1080P external Monitor.

So I wanna know, will this get me more frames especially in games that support frame generation, or will the thunderbolt 4 limit the performance gains, I chose the 4060 Ti as it is running an 8x PCIe Gen 4 lane, and using an external monitor should make things faster, I also intend not to connect anything to the eGPU to make sure that all the bandwidth is allocated for the GPU, because honestly I am fine with 1080P gaming and I'm ok with the frames I have, if I'm gonna get 5~10 more FPS in gaming, I won't go through the trouble.

So this is my question, what type of improvement in frame rates should I expect with this setup?
Thanks,

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I think you're spending too much over 1080p gaming...you should be good as is.

 

[USAFRet]

Now I play all games extremely well, even new and demanding ones like Cyberpunk 2077 is around 60~70 FPS with ultra high settings,

So then leave it alone.

 

[turtletarget111]

External GPU enclosures cost as much as a mid tier card on their own, and you'll be paying top dollar for a better video card knowing the enclosure will kneecap its performance. I haven't seen any external GPU enclosures that support the Thunderbolt 4 specification.

If I'm mistaken, and you have come across one that supports Thunderbolt 4 speeds, that means the PCIe data lanes have doubled from Thunderbolt 3's 16Gbps to 4's 32Gbps. Given that external GPU enclosures with Thunderbolt 3 would typically see 30 percent lower performance compared to the same GPU in a desktop (sometimes more) it's fair to assume Thunderbolt 4 would see performance bottlenecking around 15-20%. All of that is to say it isn't really worth an 800 dollar upgrade. The 3060 to 4060Ti on its own is a 15-20% performance uplift, most of which will be lost over Thunderbolt's limitations. All of this is also assuming your Thunderbolt ports come directly from the CPU rather than the chipset, and your ports support four PCIe lanes instead of two, which will hinder performance even further. Your 3060 seems to be doing well, so you might want to stick with that card for awhile longer. Hope this helped, take care.

 

[stonecarver]

But I would like to try pushing this setup even more,

You have a pretty rocking spec laptop as is. Just enjoy it. If you need more grunt on the side make a dream machine desktop. 😛

 

[ezzeldinelmasry]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I think you're spending too much over 1080p gaming...you should be good as is.

So then leave it alone.

External GPU enclosures cost as much as a mid tier card on their own, and you'll be paying top dollar for a better video card knowing the enclosure will kneecap its performance. I haven't seen any external GPU enclosures that support the Thunderbolt 4 specification.

If I'm mistaken, and you have come across one that supports Thunderbolt 4 speeds, that means the PCIe data lanes have doubled from Thunderbolt 3's 16Gbps to 4's 32Gbps. Given that external GPU enclosures with Thunderbolt 3 would typically see 30 percent lower performance compared to the same GPU in a desktop (sometimes more) it's fair to assume Thunderbolt 4 would see performance bottlenecking around 15-20%. All of that is to say it isn't really worth an 800 dollar upgrade. The 3060 to 4060Ti on its own is a 15-20% performance uplift, most of which will be lost over Thunderbolt's limitations. All of this is also assuming your Thunderbolt ports come directly from the CPU rather than the chipset, and your ports support four PCIe lanes instead of two, which will hinder performance even further. Your 3060 seems to be doing well, so you might want to stick with that card for awhile longer. Hope this helped, take care.

You have a pretty rocking spec laptop as is. Just enjoy it. If you need more grunt on the side make a dream machine desktop. 😛

Thanks, everyone for your replies, I guess this whole idea of eGPU will be a waste of money.
Therefore, I'll just upgrade the RAM to 32GB and the SSD to 2TB.