External GPU enclosures

For various reasons I am sticking with a laptop. I get acceptable VR results with my 1070 but would like a bit more oomph when settled at home, hence I am looking at external enclosures with a higher performing GPU.

Are there any issues with performance bottle-necking on the external cards? How much of a graphical improvement can I expect with a better card using my Rift S? Currently I am loving the immersion VR brings, and do not anticipate going back to a flat screen any time soon, but at a PD of 1.1, some cockpit elements are a little difficult to read.

Can anyone recommend an enclosure? I know card recommendations are a bit of a can-of-worms, but if I am spending best part of £1000 I would like more than a marginal improvement on my 1070.

That's one of the better ones, according to reviews:

Akitio - Node Pro External GPU PCIe Box

https://www.akitio.com/expansion/node-pro

Just a little bump.

I'd love to know if anyone actually uses one of these for DCS. Obviously there is a huge improvement in GPU-based games, but since DCS requires a fair bit of CPU work too will I see much of an improvement in gameplay or will the system just bottleneck?

Currently looking at the Aorus RTX 2080Ti gaming box (circa 1500EUR) for use with my 1070 equipped Aorus X7v& laptop.

I used one a few years ago with an Alienware 17r3 Laptop (built-in 980m, Graphics Amplifier with a GTX1070).

It took some tweaking and messing around with Dell drivers to get it working, but once setup it ran faster/better as expected.

1. If you go this route, you want to research the bandwidth to the external card. You want throughput and performance on par with a PC where the card is plugged into a motherboard.

2. Make sure the driver support is solid from the laptop maker.

3. Make sure you have adequate cooling. Running DCS on a laptop is going to really push the laptop internals and could result in thermal throttling (reduced performance)

YOu will loose ~15-25% performance on a 2080ti due to limiting it to only 4x PCIe lanes and not 16x.

Der 8auer has that topic in 1 of his videos where he used one of those with a 2080ti, but he got so many vids I forgot which one it is.

Knowing that, it doesnt need to be a ti, a 2080 Super will then roughly yield the same fps in my theory.

YOu will loose ~15-25% performance on a 2080ti due to limiting it to only 4x PCIe lanes and not 16x.

 

Der 8auer has that topic in 1 of his videos where he used one of those with a 2080ti, but he got so many vids I forgot which one it is.

Knowing that, it doesnt need to be a ti, a 2080 Super will then roughly yield the same fps in my theory.

I beg to differ. You will lose 20-25% or more sometimes, but not due to the bandwidth of the x4 connection, but due to the lame thunderbolt 3 controllers which seem to get overwhelmed by all the data. The Alienware external gpu solution uses the same x4 PCI-E connection, but since it's directly connected to the bus via a proprietary connection, the losses are under 5%.

For the life of me, I can't understand why no other company did this with their laptops. It would be nice to have more laptop brands to choose from as I certainly wouldn't shell out for an expensive TB3 enclosure plus 2080Ti and then lose 20% or more of its performance.

Hence why I got an Alienware laptop (need my main computer mobile) and its GPU enclosure, but I'm waiting for Ampere to consider an upgrade (hoping that AMD high-end Navi solution is around 2080Ti levels to brings its price down).

TBH. the 1080 in my laptop runs DCS well enough for my G-Sync 4K 60Hz screen, so I'm not in a hurry.