Best Laptops for eGPU - April 2020 Ultrabook Buyer's Guide  

Not too familiar with benchmarking with AIDA64 but starting up a game and reran HWINFO, low and behold the connection is full speed. Looks like the Thinkpad X1 Tablet 3rd Gen is a good option. 

I worked with an extremely helpful person over on the notebook review forums that owns a Samsung Notebook 9 15" version with the MX150 dGPU and confirmed that the dGPU is in fact configured in x2 PCIe mode and that the x4 PCIe root port that has nothing connected to it seems to be the TB3 port. Things are getting exciting. Isn't every i7-8550U laptop that has 4-lane Thunderbolt 3 also OPI 4GT/s? I thought the 8th Gen U CPUs all used OPI by default for their 12 lanes. Intel's spec sheets seem to state this. Not sure why a 4-lane TB3 port would not use 4GT/s OPI with these CPUs. Has that been the case on any existing notebooks with these 8th Gen U CPU?

The proof:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/upload_2018-8-16_14-46-18-png.162570/

I see that the HP Spectre x360 with an i7 processor has been mentioned in this list. I would like to buy an HP spectre but my budget allows me an i5 model only. Can someone please confirm if it would be eGPU compatible or not?

@sudeepam_pandey The HP Spectre x360 i5 model should work with an eGPU.

@itsage, that is good to hear, thank you for helping. 😀

"Intel released 8th-generation 6-core (hex) Q 45W CPUs. These come packaged in laptops with larger chassis to accommodate more substantial cooling systems, coupled with bulkier power supplies to drive them. A bigger package that packs a bigger punch. It’s definitely worth the performance advantage if you can trade portability for performance."

Can someone clarify if that is indeed the case? I've read in several places that despite the expected performance gain, 8750H based systems don't perform as well as 8550U based ones in eGPU scenarios. And if so, what might be the reason? Something related to the dGPU or perhaps a lack of optimization?

Thanks in advance =]

@itsage is that pic a V1 core with a Ref Vega 56?

Posted by: Ziggity

"Intel released 8th-generation 6-core (hex) Q 45W CPUs. These come packaged in laptops with larger chassis to accommodate more substantial cooling systems, coupled with bulkier power supplies to drive them. A bigger package that packs a bigger punch. It’s definitely worth the performance advantage if you can trade portability for performance."

Can someone clarify if that is indeed the case? I've read in several places that despite the expected performance gain, 8750H based systems don't perform as well as 8550U based ones in eGPU scenarios. And if so, what might be the reason? Something related to the dGPU or perhaps a lack of optimization?

Thanks in advance =]

The power supply may be big like on Razer Blade 15 advanced model and Zephyrus S with 1070 maxq, but the cassis is not bulky like old gaming laptops body. It because both laptops supports factory overclocking feature that needs big wattage, 230 Watt ac adapter. Both device only weights around 2Kg, not too heavy but compared to 8550U laptops with lower cpu tdp yes it’s heavy. On some scenarios that I saw, graphics performance on ultrabook is better, i saw xps15, MSI stealth gs65, Blade 15 Graphics score on benchmarks like 3Dmark is lower than ultrabook. I assume that TB3 route architecture is different than ultrabook most probably due the existence of dGPU. Though it’s not hugely different. MacBook Pro 15 and Alienware with dGPU has also similar great graphics score with ultrabook like Blade stealth or MacBook Pro 13, since I heard TB3 connects directly to cpu unlike most gaming laptops (with higher tdp cpu) that go through pch first. But physical performance on 8750H that around 80% faster covered that downside. So I prefer playing games with 8750H egpu setting than ultrabook (don’t have 8550U, but 7500U) even graphically it’s better.

@eightarmedpet Yes that was a reference RX Vega 56 with the Core V1.

@itsage wahoooo. Good to hear. Mines in the post... Vega no 2.