Is an External GPU Good For Gaming Laptops?

For the past few years, if you wanted high-powered graphics processing on a laptop, you were out of luck. Unless you spent a lot of money on one with built-in graphics, or you opted for an ultraportable machine with just enough space to squeeze in a desktop GPU, you were stuck with whatever performance was baked into the laptop. That changed with the advent of modern, high-speed external interfaces like Thunderbolt, which allow you to hook up a desktop graphics card to a laptop and use it with programs that need strong graphics power. These external boxes are called eGPUs, and they’re great for giving ultraportable computers the power of Nvidia or AMD graphics cards.

Essentially, an eGPU is a box that holds a PCIe graphics card and connects to your computer via a Thunderbolt or USB 4 port. The laptop sends programs that need powerful graphics to the GPU inside the enclosure, and it does all the work with parallel processing power. The result is much better graphics performance than the integrated GPU inside your laptop could provide, which can be useful for things like 3D and video production, gaming, and AI/machine learning.

But is an eGPU worth it? It depends on how you’re using your laptop. For the most part, it’s going to be best for people who need high-end graphics for specialized tasks on a portable machine. If you just want to play games, or if your job requires you to run complex software, you’re probably better off with a dedicated desktop.

Even with a good eGPU, you’re not likely to see huge differences in games that aren’t running at or near the limit of your laptop’s integrated GPU. But it’s possible to make a big difference in other tasks, and it’s a pretty convenient way to add extra power to an existing machine.

Another advantage is that if you’re looking for a versatile, lightweight device for work and travel, an eGPU can let you keep up with your gaming on the go without adding a lot of bulk or weight to your laptop. And with a growing market of older Intel-based Mac computers that support eGPUs, you can bring in extra graphics power to a laptop that may not have the latest and greatest internal graphics.

As for the technical limitations, a major drawback is that eGPUs only give you half of the full benefit of PCIe bandwidth, which can be an issue for certain tasks that need a lot of raw computing power. But the good news is that rival technologies are emerging, and it’s not hard to imagine a time when you’ll be able to get full desktop performance on a laptop with a simple, plug-and-play connection.