I thought the point of these was to be able to stick whatever gpu you want inside them. I guess I could see someone wanting to get more life out of an old laptop using one of these, but who else would want something with a gtx 1050 inside?
The GPU is integrated into a TB3 dock at a total cost of $100 over a TB3 dock without a GPU. It does all the standard dock stuff (bunch of ports, ethernet, etc), powers your laptop, and because it has an integrated GPU can natively drive three monitors. All from a single cable.
It’s aiming at a different customer, that’s all. If you need a dock for your laptop, why not spend an extra couple bucks and get a GPU inside?
It’s more of a curiosity at $399, but imagine a standard TB3 dock cost $150 and this one cost $250 (as it should). That would be pretty attractive.
Yes. I want this. I’m trying to reduce the number of machines I have laying around and a docking station that magically turns my MacBook into a decent gaming machine would be awesome.
I haven’t looked into this stuff in a while, but would it be feasible to also attach an external hard drive so I don’t have to fill the tiny MacBook up with a bunch of games I’ll only play at home? Or would that hurt performance too much?
Sure, you can plug in a USB3 drive no problem. TB3 has 5 GB/sec (gigabyte, not bit) bandwidth, even SSDs aren’t that fast (~500MB/sec on a 850 EVO best case scenario), and videogames just aren’t that big.
I think probably the best deal is the HP Omen, if you have the space for it and can deal with its very gamer-y appearance. $270, TB3, will supply 60w to your laptop, gigabit ethernet, has a bunch of USB ports, and even has a spot for an internal 2.5" drive so you don’t need to use one of the USB ports for that. Great price for what you get. Then you can pop in whatever GPU you want.
http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/omen-by-hp-accelerator-shell-ga1-1000
Nice, thanks. I might wait until later this year and pick something up along with the next MacBook. Then throw away a bunch of stuff.
Intel will have released its royalty-free thunderbolt controller by then and hopefully prices will come down to more reasonable levels overall.
Hopefully Apple will add Thunderbolt support to the Macbook in the next version, making such a thing possible. Right now that lone USB-C port is USB-only.
Oh right, good point. I suppose I could consider getting a Pro but I really like the size of the regular MacBooks.
Once it’s free, I suspect they will include it. But then I would have bet they’d update the thing with two USB-C ports, and that didn’t happen, so who can tell what Apple’s gonna do next?
I wonder when Apple will come out with their slimmer, lighter external GPU.
Razor has a new external GPU:
$299 and OSX compatible, but no ethernet or usb ports.
The actual product page is here, you can buy this today for $299:
https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-core-x
They made it even wider to accommodate 3x slot video cards, and a 650w power supply feels like extreme (and maybe noisy) overkill. But the price is right!
Also that Omen is down to $249 from $299 originally:
https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/omen-by-hp-accelerator-shell-ga1-1000
Yeah prices are starting to get reasonable. Intel no longer charges royalties for third-party thunderbolt implementations, so they should come down even further once someone else manages to build one. This also means AMD platforms could offer thunderbolt. And I guess ARM/iOS/Android too, although I’m not sure why they would bother.
Well it took 4 years, but finally we’re starting to see reasonable prices for an eGPU enclosure you might actually want with Lenovo’s new product. 500w PSU, gigabit ethernet, 3 USB ports, 100w power delivery, 2 NVME slots, and a spot for a full-sized 3.5" drive, all for $249, in a nice-looking aluminum case.
You could find eGPU enclosures for that price or cheaper in 2019, but they didn’t have all the other ports and connectivity. The price and product is finally right. Heck, it’s not a completely unreasonable price as a premium laptop docking station alone.
Now it still doesn’t really make financial sense to go eGPU because you can basically build an entire decent gaming PC sans GPU for $400 or so and not deal with the thunderbolt performance impact (and you get an entire extra computer), but at least now that the enclosure you really want doesn’t cost $500 it’s not completely laughable.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15290/ces-2020-lenovo-goes-egfx-with-legion-booststation-box
These docks/enclosures are compelling. Maybe in a decade they will be a good idea for the masses. (Or maybe it’s wishful thinking and tech fanboiism.)
They’re super cool, but I don’t see laptops with eGPUs making financial sense for gaming anytime soon.
First, I don’t expect the price of building a new gaming computer (minus GPU) to drop much from today, so that’s that side of the equation.
Then when you look at the eGPU enclosures, you’ve got to figure their costs are something like $35 for the PSU, $30 for a metal case, and maybe another $40 for all the various electronics and whatnot, which doesn’t let them drop the price much below $200 and still make a healthy profit. Could probably get the case cost down to $5 using plastic, I guess.
Anyway, if you’re looking for a high-end docking station, they’re pretty good and much better priced now.