External or eGPUs are not very popular with computer enthusiasts since most of them already have a powerful desktop PC or gaming laptop to give them the best performance.
A member of an eGPU forum recently paired a desktop RTX 4090 Founders Edition to work with ASUS Zenbook 14X Space Edition. It was reported that the card lost about 20% of its performance on average as an eGPU.
This statistic is of an overclocked GPU, i.e., over 249 MHz on GPU, over 1500 MHz on memory and at 133% power limit.
It is a significant difference in performance, but the ASUS Zenbook 14X is a small laptop with Core i9-12900H, not recommended for heavy usage. The system supports Thunderbolt 3, so it is a perfect match for Razer Core X enclosure.
This setup is a bit expensive as the GPU costs $1600 while the enclosure is about $300. If you are paying this much, might as well get a high-end gaming laptop itself.
Of course, externally accessed GPUs are no match for those installed directly. The most popular GPU enclosure is Razer Core X which uses the ThunderBolt 3 connector. There are no ThunderBolt 4 enclosures available, but this upgrade would not boost GPU performance.
eGPUs are usually suitable for those who own lightweight laptops and want to indulge in high-fidelity games or use the additional power for more complex workloads every now and then.
About Nvidia
NVIDIA Corporation is an American multinational technology company incorporated in Delaware, based in Santa Clara, California. They design graphics processing units (GPUs) for the gaming and professional markets, as well as system on chip units (SoCs) for the mobile computing and automotive market.
Best known for the “GeForce” lines of GPUs, they are a direct competitor to AMD’s “Radeon” series. NVIDIA has also expanded its offerings with its handheld game consoles Shield Portable, Shield Tablet, and Shield Android TV and its cloud gaming service GeForce Now.
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