Hi all, wanting to ask someone that’s familiar with eGPU bandwidth and the differences between the OCuLink Dev Kit that’s been announced and what’s currently in the market
I’ve narrowed down my laptop choice to the FW16, since I need to dual boot. I really want to bite the bullet and order one but I’m also pretty much relying on the future eGPU setup being good to really fill out my use case.
For 1440p gaming on games ranging from pixel art to Baldurs Gate 3 and light Blender modelling, what should I know comparatively between the OCuLink Dev Kit and current eGPU docks?
Thanks!
In my experience with the Razer Core X, eGPU’s are a PITA to get working reliably. For some games it’ll work great out of the box, some games it’ll run worse than the iGPU (BG3 was one of those last time I tested it a couple years ago). I gave up on using the eGPU because even if it works as advertised when it works… it doesn’t always work and that troubleshooting was more pain that it was worth. I ended up buying a dGPU module and have been incredibly happy with that.
That said, a lot of that pain is supposed to be eliminated by occulink because as far as the computer cares it’s plugged in just as directly as a desktop GPU is to a motherboard. That’s my understanding anyways.
I plan to pick up the dev kit… but just be aware that it is a dev kit. Not a proper product, whatever that means.
The iGPU on the FW16 actually pretty good tbh. It’s faster than the Steam Deck at any rate, and the Steam Deck can play quite a bit of games. I use the iGPU for blender because it works fine and I’d rather have the battery life.
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I don’t know the specs off the top of my head, but occulink has the better bandwidth… but for games the bandwidth doesn’t really matter all that much. Technically the eGPU will only ever score the same or lower FPS because of this… but IIRC you can count the percentage points difference on your hand.
I’m mostly repeating what TechPriestNhyk said earlier, but Oculink is essentially simulating PCIe lanes, so your computer thinks it’s plugged directly into the GPU card (that’s why it’s not hot-swappable like USB). IIRC Oculink has more bandwidth than Thunderbolt 4 but slightly less than Thunderbolt 5 (although with the USB overhead it’s almost a wash).
If you shoot for the Ryzen AI 300 series CPUs the iGPUs are really rock solid now. I’m not sure about Blender but if you run BG3 on medium settings at 1080p or low to medium for 1440p and you’ve got either the AI 7 or AI 9 CPU it should be able to handle that no problem, and then you can save up later for the 5070 expansion if you want to tackle 2k or higher.
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Sweet! That helps a lot, on the topic of the Ryzen AI 300 series, besides the CPU benchmarks and iGPU is there any other difference between that and the 7040 series?
I’ve seen mention of “enhanced cooling” for the 300s when reading about the copper shim mod. I definitely want to have the best cooling possible for the machine to reduce fan noise so am a bit unsure about what’s going on there.
If you want a hassle-free cooling experience, the AI series is the safer bet. Not because of anything to do with the CPU, but because it ships the newer heatsink as you likely saw in the thread. I’ll leave it up to you whether the cost of a CPU upgrade or +~$40 for a PTM sandwich mod is more worth it for you. FWIW, the mod is easy to do and I’ve no inclination to order the newer heatsink for myself.