An eGPU (external GPU) is exactly what the name suggests—a GPU that sits outside a computer and uses some sort of external connection to send and receive data.
With an eGPU, you can connect a more powerful GPU to a laptop or mini PC that would otherwise have no way to access this hardware. It sounds like a sweet deal, but for gamers in particular, eGPUs simply haven’t taken off. Why?
eGPUs promised desktop-class power without the desktop
If it sounds too good to be true…
From a gamer’s perspective, an eGPU could be a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Imagine you have an ultrabook laptop or handheld PC with a potent modern CPU. You could be out all day at work or school, doing normal stuff that a computer in that class can handle with ease, or playing games at mobile-friendly settings.
When you get home, you connect your computer to a box hooked up to a monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse. Inside this box is a powerful GPU much better than anything you can get in even the beefiest gaming laptop. Now your laptop’s CPU can run at its best, plugged in to the wall, and you can enjoy gaming as if you had a desktop PC.
Quiz
The Legacy of 3dfx
From Glide to the grave — test your knowledge of the company that revolutionized PC gaming graphics forever.
HistoryHardwareTechnologyIndustryInnovation
In what year did 3dfx Interactive file for bankruptcy and sell its assets to NVIDIA?
Correct! 3dfx filed for bankruptcy in late 2000, and NVIDIA acquired its key assets — including patents and engineers — for around $70 million. It was a stunning fall for a company that had dominated the GPU market just years earlier.
Not quite. 3dfx filed for bankruptcy in 2000, not the year you chose. NVIDIA swooped in to purchase their intellectual property and hire their talent, effectively ending 3dfx as a competitive force and accelerating NVIDIA’s own dominance.
What was the name of 3dfx’s proprietary graphics API that gave their cards a major competitive advantage in the late 1990s?
Correct! Glide was 3dfx’s proprietary low-level graphics API that offered developers direct access to the hardware, resulting in superior performance and visual quality compared to rivals. Many iconic late-90s games were optimized specifically for Glide.
Not quite. The answer is Glide, 3dfx’s own proprietary API. Unlike Direct3D or OpenGL, Glide was hardware-specific, which gave 3dfx cards a stunning edge in compatible games — but also tied developers tightly to their ecosystem, a double-edged sword in the long run.
What was the groundbreaking product that launched 3dfx to fame in 1996 and is widely credited with beginning the 3D gaming revolution?
Correct! The original Voodoo Graphics card, often called Voodoo1, launched in 1996 and was a revelation. It brought arcade-quality 3D graphics to home PCs at a relatively affordable price, transforming games like Quake into breathtaking experiences.
Not quite. It was the original Voodoo Graphics (Voodoo1) released in 1996 that launched 3dfx’s legacy. The Voodoo2 came later and pushed things even further, but it was the original Voodoo that first made consumers and developers take notice of dedicated 3D acceleration.
What controversial business decision did 3dfx make in 1998 that many analysts believe contributed to their downfall?
Correct! 3dfx acquired STB Technologies to manufacture their own graphics cards, cutting out third-party board makers. This alienated partners, reduced their retail presence, and stretched their resources thin — a strategic mistake that helped NVIDIA and ATI capture the market.
Not quite. The pivotal mistake was acquiring STB Technologies in 1998 to become their own board manufacturer. This cut off crucial relationships with third-party add-in board partners, who quickly turned to NVIDIA instead — dramatically expanding NVIDIA’s market reach at 3dfx’s expense.
3dfx pioneered which multi-GPU technology that allowed users to link two Voodoo2 cards together for higher performance?
Correct! 3dfx introduced SLI — Scan-Line Interleave — with the Voodoo2, allowing two cards to split rendering duties line by line. This concept was so influential that NVIDIA later revived the SLI branding (as Scalable Link Interface) for their own multi-GPU technology decades later.
Not quite. The answer is SLI, which stood for Scan-Line Interleave in 3dfx’s implementation. NVIDIA later borrowed the SLI name — rebranding it as Scalable Link Interface — for their own multi-GPU solution, a clear nod to how influential 3dfx’s original concept truly was.
Which visual quality feature, heavily associated with 3dfx Voodoo cards, became a must-have benchmark for 3D graphics quality in the late 1990s?
Correct! 3dfx’s Voodoo5 was a pioneer in Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA), which smoothed jagged edges on 3D objects. While the Voodoo5 launched too late and too expensively to save the company, FSAA became a foundational feature that every modern GPU still implements in various forms.
Not quite. Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) was the standout visual feature 3dfx championed, particularly with the Voodoo5. Though the Voodoo5 arrived too late to turn the tide for the company, FSAA itself became one of the most enduring features in GPU development, refined and expanded by every graphics card maker since.
Which company primarily benefited from 3dfx’s collapse by absorbing their talent, patents, and market share to become the dominant GPU manufacturer?
Correct! NVIDIA was the primary beneficiary of 3dfx’s collapse. By purchasing their patents and hiring key engineers, NVIDIA gained crucial intellectual property and expertise that helped cement their position as the world’s leading discrete GPU manufacturer — a position they still hold today.
Not quite. NVIDIA was the company that truly capitalized on 3dfx’s downfall. While ATI did gain some market share as well, it was NVIDIA that bought 3dfx’s assets and absorbed their engineers, using that foundation to build an almost unassailable lead in the discrete GPU market.
What is considered one of 3dfx’s most lasting legacies in the modern GPU industry?
Correct! 3dfx’s greatest legacy is democratizing 3D acceleration for consumers and pioneering multi-GPU technology with SLI. Their work forced the entire industry to prioritize real-time 3D performance, directly shaping the competitive GPU landscape that produced the powerful graphics cards we rely on today.
Not quite. 3dfx’s most enduring legacy is their role in making consumer 3D acceleration mainstream and inventing the SLI multi-GPU concept. These contributions forced every competitor — especially NVIDIA and ATI — to innovate rapidly, establishing the fiercely competitive GPU industry that still drives graphics technology forward today.
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One computer, the best of all worlds. The only issue is that in practice it doesn’t work like that at all.
Bandwidth bottlenecks undermine performance
Drinking the sea through a straw
There’s only one reason eGPUs are terrible for gaming, and it comes down to that external connection. Using technology like Thunderbolt 5, you can expect at best PCIe 4.0 x4 bandwidth. As soon as a GPU needs more than this to render frames, it will limit your GPU usage, and therefore your frame rate.
Of course, there are different connection standards, some of which are proprietary, as well as open ones such as OCuLink which offer slightly better performance. The only eGPU solution I’ve seen with no bandwidth limitation is the Beelink GTi Ultra series, which has an internal PCIe slot that can be accessed using a special dock, but this is a very niche exception.
Without enough bandwidth, the GPU is simply wasting the performance you paid for.
The price-to-performance equation never made sense for gamers
It does for other people though
If eGPUs were a cheap solution, then maybe the story could have been different. However, even basic eGPU solutions are inexplicably expensive. I can understand the higher-end ones with lots of additional features and a big power supply for high-end cards, but often the cost of an eGPU setup can be prohibitive no matter what.
It only starts to make sense from a non-gaming perspective. For example, the limited bandwidth issues don’t affect professional workloads that use offline rendering. Once the data is loaded into the GPU’s VRAM, it can crunch the numbers at full speed. Likewise, if you’re running AI models, they have to fit completely into the card’s VRAM and all the processing happens on the GPU, bandwidth needs through the external connection are minimal. You can even use a Raspberry Pi as the brains of an AI system running on a GPU if you want.
So, for professional users with the right sort of workload, an eGPU can be a great solution. Even better, several people can share the same eGPU as needed, beefing up their laptops when needed and letting someone connect their laptop when they need to.
- Brand
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TREBLEET
- GPU Included
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No
- Ports
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2 USB
In the market for a budget eGPU enclosure? If the answer’s yes, definitely check out the TREBLEET Thunderbolt 3 Mini eGPU Enclosure. This eGPU dock supports triple-slot GPUs, has an attractive price, can work with any PSU, and is very compact and lightweight.
Compatibility and friction killed the “plug-and-play” dream
It doesn’t “just work”
I know that for some gamers out there, neither cost nor efficiency stands in the way of getting just a few more frames out of a computer and if you head over to r/eGPU you’ll find plenty of enthusiasts trying to get the most out of eGPUs for the least amount of money.
However, what you’ll also see is just how fragmented the eGPU world is. To get this working, you need a computer with the right connectors, the right BIOS, the right operating system, and then also get an enclosure that will work with that. When a better eGPU connection standard comes, you might have to change everything in your setup except the GPU itself to take advantage of it, at great expense.
Either a widespread standard such as USB or Thunderbolt needs to reach the point where eGPU issues are solved, or there needs to be a new connection standard that becomes widespread, removing the confusion and friction. Honestly, the former is far more likely, but probably neither inevitable nor soon.
Gaming laptops and small desktops closed the gap
The biggest challenge faced by eGPUs is that both integrated and mobile dedicated GPUs have advanced by leaps and bounds. In the past, an eGPU might have made sense for a laptop that only had an iGPU, but the new generation of iGPUs are making even entry-level dGPUs obsolete.
As for laptops or mini PCs with proper dedicated GPUs, the best model as I write this is the mobile RTX 5090 by NVIDIA. According to testing by NoteBookCheck it’s bang on for a desktop RTX 4070 Ti Super card, while average affordable gaming laptops with lower-end chips having no trouble equaling popular desktop cards like the RTX 3060 and 4060. In these cases it makes very little sense to get an eGPU, because you’re unlikely to have any reasonable gains over what you already have. At least not compared to the cost of complexity of making those gains.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
