Irrelevant, it was an apples to apples comparison of how much performance improvement you can expect in a given processor in the same role from 2011 to 2017. i5-2500k from 2011, i5-6500 from 2016. Spoiler alert: it largely didn’t matter, because CPU performance is so obscenely good that Ye Olde 2011 processor is plenty adequate for gaming.
but again the i7 under performs and its being beaten again by the i5 and i3 as well.
The i3 again performs excellently and this CPU is one of the biggest surprises of this benchmark where at most times performed as well as the i7 or maybe even better
Multiplayer battlefield 4 1920 x 1080 high settings – average fps:
103 fps core i3
115 fps core i5
107 fps core i7
That was a few years ago, so the low end CPUs are faster still since that was written… point being even “low end” mobile CPUs have obscene performance. All you need is a monster GPU to unlock the rest of the story, which is where the thunderbolt 3 external GPU box comes in.
As for throttling, that’s fair, if the thermal design isn’t right. But that says more about the implementation of the laptop cooling solution than the actual CPU.
A large but unknown proportion of those 2500K results will be overclocked though. But single core performance is the one thing that the modern Intel ULV parts are pretty amazing at.
[quote=“wumpus, post:161, topic:77966”]
because CPU performance is so obscenely good that Ye Olde 2011 processor is plenty adequate for gaming.
[/quote]It depends on the game. I brought this up one year ago, and it will continue to matter. Also amusingly, I used that same chart you posted earlier as an argument against! (also somehow convincing stusser to upgrade CPUs)
[quote=“fdsaion 1 year ago, post:63, topic:77966”]
…A top of the line i7-6500U…has comparable single core performance somewhere around an old Sandy Bridge i3-2100 and a modern Pentium G3258 depending on what its doing…
…you’ll be able to turn up everything to max with a 980Ti for those games. You’ll just be at the same 30-40 fps as you would on low…
[/quote]Also add in modern MMOs to the list of shit that actually needs a strong CPU. Also unoptimized games like Path of Exile, though that one has greatly improved in the past few months (from unplayable 5-10 FPS on my original XPS 13 with a 5200U to easily playable at 30+), which assuredly exist and unfortunately will continue to exist.
Though I will say…Intel is getting there - 7500U looks good and is almost there as jsnell notes above. I think the tick into Cannonlake will make this worth considering.
It is remarkably simple internally; it really is just a power supply, some thunderbolt 3 bridge logic, and a PCI express slot. This thing should be like $250 max!
I have located 4 fans in total, one big 80mm at the botton, two smaller ones left and right of it and a really tiny one on the back of the power supply unit
I haven’t read this thread’s full content so apologies if this has been answered: isn’t the Razer Box’s bandwidth limited in its current incarnation? Thereby limiting its use of anything higher than a GTX 980 ti?
Yeah, it’ll work with any PCI-e videocard including those not released yet. Obviously as higher bandwidth versions of thunderbolt come out it will fall behind, but it turns out that doesn’t matter a great deal. Some. But not much.
OK, I got the Razer Core set up with the Skull Canyon NUC. I used a 1070 GTX which I was supposed to upgrade my pinball cabinet with, but for annoying reasons that are annoying, he didn’t include the modular GPU power cables. So I’ll be replacing that PSU, at least I get to upgrade from 80 Plus Bronze to Gold in the process. Anyways, so I had an “extra” 1070 GTX to play with, and a Razer Core external GPU box just sitting there, expectantly.
There are a few things that freaked me out.
There is no visible external power switch on the razer core. It doesn’t power on until you connect a TB3 cable to it. I was totally not expecting that. But once connected, it powers up and the Windows 10 Thunderbolt 3 drivers kick in and ask you to authorize the device, which I did (always authorize). Then it spun a bit, detected the new GPU, and suddenly I had multiple graphics card active on the same computer. I also installed the latest nvidia drivers just to make sure everything was ship shape.
It’s kinda … weird having multiple GPUs simultaneously active. I wanted to make the Razer Core display the only display, but you can’t really turn off the built in GPU – you can select “only use display 2”, that’s all. I got into several weird states where windows were “opening” on the other display and I had to mess around a fair bit to get things locked down to just one display. (Which reminds me, I did have an HDMI cable connected to the internal GPU, I should have disconnected that, might have helped…)
It’s not nearly as noisy as I feared it would be … what with the 4 fans, many of them tiny, plus the GPU fans. So that’s very good news! You can hear it but it never got obnoxious, and that was with a direct path to my ear. Normally there’s a small rubber sliding panel in front of the HTPC stuff, partially blocking it.
Here’s the most important bit: it really works! I was able to turn on 4k resolution and high detail in Rocket League, Trials Fusion, and Dirt Rally and performance was very snappy.
I predict these external GPU boxes could be amazing if they can get the prices down, simplify the boxes – the Razer Core is over engineered as hell, it’s way fancier and heavier than it needs to be – and ideally use fewer, larger, quieter fans.
Even with a no-extra-power-adapters-required 1050 Ti in this box, which I’ll need to revert to tomorrow once I get the PSU and I can put the 1070 in my pincab like I originally wanted to, external GPU is an easy performance win. A modern, $150 75w video card is gonna clobber a 45w-60w CPU with integrated GPU, no matter how clever it is. If they could just get the enclosure prices down to $150… or even bundle them together in one magic thunderbolt 3 box for $200…
You should get one to play with @stusser. They’re fun!
Yep the technology works. They just need to get prices down. I think $300 is a reasonable price, assuming the enclosure also includes gigabit ethernet, a couple extra USB-A and C ports, and audio-out so it truly functions as a full-featured laptop dock.
I planned to switch to a laptop and eGPU enclosure this upgrade cycle but it wasn’t quite ready for primetime. Next cycle it pretty clearly will be.
Given that PCI express video cards and thunderbolt 3 aren’t going anywhere, it’s not a bad idea to “invest” in one of these since – and feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong – they’ll be perfectly usable on any TB3 capable box for … heck… 5-10 years?? There are only going to be more and more Thunderbolt 3 capable boxes out there over time.
They’ll be usable for a very long time; I don’t see thunderbolt4 switching to a different connector as USB-C is perfectly capable, increasingly widespread, and non-annoying to use. Even if thunderbolt5 does switch, it will almost certainly be backwards-compatible with a simple mechanical adapter like TB3.
Hopefully someday this functionality will be built into motherboards, so when you build a gaming PC, it can also be used as an external GPU for your laptop. Just having the option to build your own eGPU using your own parts, cheaply, would be great. Wishful thinking.
Did you try a setup w/o an external monitor and just using your laptop monitor? I am curious how smooth that is. That’s my most likely use case because if I had a spot where I would be happy putting a monitor there all the time then I would also be happy putting the rest of a computer there, versus places where I would be willing to keep an egpu box fairly out of little kids’ reach and then plop a laptop down when I am ready to game.
I get the appeal if you use a laptop and want to dock and game at your desk. At least when prices come down, and as stusser notes, the enclosures are refined to offer ethernet, USB A/C and audio ports. What’s the use case of an eGPU w/ something like a NUC? If you’re gonna park the big eGPU box next to your stationary NUC, and taking the eGPU perf hit, how is that an advantage over a Mini-ITX SFF gaming HTPC? I mean other than the fact that we’re all tech nerds and like to play w/ new toys. That I totally get.
It’s covered in the (excellent) Linus Tech Tips deep dive video posted earlier. There is a perf cost to backhaul the image frames, for sure. Most useful on a laptop obviously where there is only one display.
Decoupling GPU from everything else, so you can independently upgrade it to whatever you want, for any kind of computer, laptop, tablet, even a phone…
The hidden narrative here is that even shitty low end processors are incredibly powerful now and are rarely the bottleneck when gaming. But GPU is a tremendous bottleneck… plus 4k is basically here, and that’s four, count 'em, four 1080p displays worth of work…
Thunderbolt 3 and PCI Express will be with us for a decade, I feel that’s an extremely safe bet on the future. Any eGPU box you get today will not be obsolete for a very, very long time in computer years.
Also a lot of people linked to this community:
Worth looking into as they are deep into this stuff… they said
