eGPU or Inyel NUC?

[ambision]

Play DCS on a laptop with eGPU or with Intel NUC?

I need some help guys;

I work at a night job (I'm a M'urse- male nurse ;-) with tons of hours to kill and I love DCS.

I have a laptop that has X4 PCI lanes open and willing to connect to an external GPU with a Thunderbolt 3 port.

 

Some questions:

1. I have heard that regardless of the GPU ability, there is a PCIe or CPU bottlenecking.

2. Therefore, given my specific specs, what kind of GPU should I opt for? 1060, 70, 80… etc.'

3. I can also buy for the same price (through an intel employee) the latest NUC - which one would do the work better?

4. Can DCS even run on these alleged setups anyway?

 

Details:

• My laptop: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga 2nd gen specs: [20JD004UUS]

- 7th Gen Kaby Lake, 2 cores 4 threads, Intel Core i7 7500U @ 2.7 GHz, 4MB Cache, 15W

- 8 GB DDR3 SDRAM @ 1866 MHz

- SSD PCIe NVMe 512 GB Flash Memory

- two USB 3.1 Type-C ports, both supporting Thunderbolt 3 with 4PCIe lanes

 

• Possible eGPU's I can Buy:

- Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 Gaming Box for 700 USD

- Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1070 Gaming Box for 650 USD

 

• Possible Intel NUC I can Buy:

- Hades Canyon NUC Premium VR Mini Desktop Gaming PC for about 700-800 USD from an Intel employee benefit

(Intel i7-8809G, 16GB RAM, 2x500GB NVMe RAID, AMD Radeon RX Vega M GH, Windows 10 Home)

 

 

Any help from personal experience and benchmarking data would be immensely appreciated.

 

Thanks guys!

[BaD CrC]

Hi ambision,

 

Your ThinkPad X1, although pretty cool, is an ultra portable if I remember well and as such is not exactly designed for heavy gaming. It doesn't matter much if you hook an external GPU up. You will be limited by your CPU, your RAM quantity (aim at 16Gb min) and possibly your SSD if you are using all DLC maps and many aircraft modules, and you are flying on both release and openbeta version.

 

I have an intel Hades Canyon NUC8i7HVK with 32Gb RAM and a Samsung 960 Pro 1To and it is running DCS World 2.5.2 real smooth assuming you are using a monitor. For VR, well, it's not so great with DCS and I can't recommend it.

 

Another option is to sell your thinkpad X1 and buy a Razer Blade laptop (2017 or 2018). I have a 2017 version and DCS runs without a glitch on it. It is incredibly powerful with its GTX1060 6Go and 7700HQ i7, looks gorgeous with its black aluminum body, is very thin and super easy to bring anywhere you want (and I am in the plane every 2 weeks).

[ambision]

hey there Bad CrC,

thank you very much for the detailed and elaborate response. I really appreciate it. I think of maybe opting for the aforementioned NUC because selling the thinkpad now is not an option. I use it for studying ant note taking with the built in pen + onenote.

I was actually very interested to know what the thinkpad machine can turn out with a 1070 egpu. but I think you are right - it just not cut to the task unfortunately.

 

what kind of fps\settings does your NUC put through?

[Raviar]

@ambision, I have almost same situation on the hardwa, thinkpad x1 and egpu, did you get egpu ?

[ambision]

@ambision, I have almost same situation on the hardwa, thinkpad x1 and egpu, did you get egpu ?

Not yet. I'm reluctant to buy it without any benchmark info.

Do you have some information and fps + resolution details?

 

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

[David OC]

Play DCS on a laptop with eGPU or with Intel NUC?

I need some help guys;

 

I work at a night job (I'm a M'urse- male nurse ;-) with tons of hours to kill and I love DCS.

 

That sentence is a little funny....:D Nurse and hours to kill LOL :)

 

While playing DCS and nursing, don't confuse the life support beeps or flat line when monitoring with the RWR in sim, because that could ruin your mission completely.:D

 

 

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