Good to see all the Xbox and Playstation losers have already commented.

Quote from: pelican-freeze on Yesterday at 19:00:29Honestly, just read what I wrote? Nothing in your comment appears to be a direct response to anything I said. Obviously you can game with lower wattage CPUs and eGPUs - you'll just get worse performance. And obviously if you want to avoid your eGPU being performance limited / bottlenecked by your CPU choice you can just choose a CPU that is a better fit for gaming.

Worse performance, yet still significantly better than what you get with gaming on iGPU or dGPU in that same laptop (if a GPU in an eGPU dock/enclosure is more powerful, naturally).

Quote from: pelican-freeze on Yesterday at 19:00:29Spending $$$$ on a high wattage desktop GPU that you know will be performance constrained by a low wattage mobile CPU is clearly not going to provide the best experience but no one is stopping you from doing it if you want. Also, you can't put a higher wattage mobile CPU intended for gaming use (255HX+) into a 4 lb ultraportable laptop so if your goal is "ultraportable laptop that can play games at home" that rules out the higher wattage enthusiast class CPUs that are designed for gaming / workstation laptop use.

• https://www.notebookchat.com/index.php?topic=256048.msg694421#msg694421
• https://www.notebookchat.com/index.php?topic=256048.msg694430#msg694430

Quote from: pelican-freeze on Yesterday at 19:00:29So there's nothing stopping you from using an eGPU / mobile CPU combo where the CPU is the performance bottleneck. It's clearly not possible to argue though that the best mobile CPU choices for gaming aren't the higher wattage mobile CPUs *explicitly* designed and marketed by Intel / AMD as mobile gaming CPUs.

The CPU is always a bottleneck, no matter of TDP. If you check any of the links above, for example that video with the Legion Go + 3070 eGPU, you will see that the CPU usage is basically identical in all scenarios - with or without eGPU; for example, as clearly demonstrated in the video, in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth the CPU at 1080p low is at 21-24% to get 26 average fps with iGPU, yet once the 3070 eGPU is plugged in there is 75 average fps at 1440p high settings with the CPU usage at exactly the same 21-24%.

I have 5070 Ti, when I try to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider for example (I'm actually currently replaying the reboot series) with my X1 Carbon Gen 9 and its iGPU (i7 1165G7, Iris Xe) at absolutely lowest possible settings at 720p, I get barely 30 fps with 55-60% CPU usage. When I plug in my 5070 Ti I get 160+ fps at highest/maxed settings without Ray Tracing and 80-100 with Ray Tracing, all at 1440p, and the CPU is still at 55-60% usage.

Which is more than what I get with my P16 Gen 2 (i7 14700HX + ADA 3500 12 GB), where I get 110-120 at the same highest/maxed settings without RT, and about 55-70 with RT on. With eGPU plugged in to that same P16 Gen 2, the same 5070 Ti is pushing 170-ish at maxed settings, and around 100-110 with same settings + Ray Tracing on. All 1440p, of course.

Is a faster CPU faster than a slower CPU? Yes. Does wasting away insane amounts of money for top specs makes sense when a 750€-ish GPU is still going to obliterate those specs even with slightly reduced bandwidth due to its eGPU setup? Well, that's up to each person to decide how much they hate their own money ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Again, for clarity:

Quote from: Worgarthe on December 12, 2025, 04:44:47I just checked prices in Germany, but for the P16 Gen 3 because it is possible to equip it with up to 24 GB VRAM (Blackwell 5000).

The base version 8 GB (Blackwell 1000) config goes for 2819 € currently. Prices for GPU upgrades are the following:

• 2000 Blackwell (8 GB) +230€
• 3000 Blackwell (12 GB) +790€
• 4000 Blackwell (16 GB) +1420€
• 5000 Blackwell (24 GB) +2980€ (😂)

The rest of the specs is untouched from the base config, so 245HX + 16 GB RAM + 512 GB SSD, with only the display being automatically improved to a 2400p panel (no option to keep the base 1200p panel with that GPU).

So I just added that GPU and literally nothing else, the laptop is now 6039€, that's an increase of +3220€ (!!) just because of 24 GB GPU!

Let's see how much VRAM we can get with 3220€, to put that in an eGPU setup while keeping the P16 Gen 3 at its base price: https://www.idealo.de/preisvergleich/OffersOfProduct/205942083_-geforce-rtx-5070-ti-gigabyte.html

3220/759=4. So four RTX 5070 Ti. Meaning 64 GB of VRAM. Meaning 40 GB more, for the same price. The 5000 Blackwell is similar in performance as a 4070 Super and 3080 Ti. The 5070 Ti is simply far ahead performance-wise, and with four of them at full power of 300W each - it's even more tragic to compare of what you get for the same amount of money... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Quote from: Fisk85 on December 13, 2025, 11:07:24The game supports terrorist so i don't want it even free

Fool

Quote from: Worgarthe on Yesterday at 16:34:16

Quote from: pelican-freeze on Yesterday at 14:48:36Are there any issues with the non-standard 3.2K resolution on a laptop intended for workstation use? I like the idea of a tandem OLED, but at 3.2K it seems like it might be more of a headache than anything else. At 1440p you get better battery life, cleaner application compatibility, and more flexibility for some light gaming, while at 3.2K you lose the battery life benefits of a lower resolution and risk app compatibility issues, without getting the content-consumption advantages of a proper 4K panel.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this resolution (or any other). Scaling exist for that exact reason. Increased power consumption comes from the tech, not a resolution - a 16" 1200p 120 Hz OLED is going to consume far more power than a 16" 2400p 120 Hz IPS, for example.

Quote from: pelican-freeze on Yesterday at 15:28:27Plugging in an eGPU wouldn't resolve the issue as the P1 G8's CPU options are all low wattage chips configured with a maximum of 6 performance cores. For an eGPU to make sense on the Intel side you'd need at least a 255HX (8P+12E), or, on the AMD side a chip like a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (8P+4E). It's hard to overstate the degree to which lower power mobile CPUs right now are not a good fit for gaming - mobile GPUs are just cut down so dramatically from their desktop GPU counterparts though that this is less of an issue when pairing mobile CPUs with mobile GPUs. Pairing mobile CPUs with desktop GPUs you're going to run into serious bottlenecks if you don't pick the right chip - at least 8 performance cores, more watts, more performance scaling ability when feds those extra watts etc..

TLDR: If you want the option to use an eGPU with a thinkpad workstation buy a P16 Gen 3 with a 255HX (or higher). The P16 Gen 3 *should* offer even better CPU performance when it doesn't need to allocate thermal headroom to cooling the internal discreet GPU. This would be the best fit - high wattage desktop-ish class CPU actually running at reasonably high / close to max wattage in the laptop itself, eGPU also running at reasonably high / close to max wattage outside the laptop chassis.

You knowledge about eGPU and how eGPU work is clearly somewhere between zero and nothing, nhf. Literally this whole comment is wrong.

Check egpu.io for more info and to learn something instead of being confidently wrong: https://egpu.io/best-external-graphics-card-builds/

Or r/eGPU: https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/

Or a 30 Watt CPU handheld - Legion Go with eGPU (fairly popular combo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5opYdgDtK0s

Or, heck, even an 5-year old ThinkPad with a 15W CPU (with UHD 620 integrated graphics) + RTX 4090: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOsGqAeyCtA

Or... Basically I can keep going endlessly.

Tl; dr - the truth is polar opposite of your comment.

Edit: Forgot to include this, from Notebookcheck:

X1 Carbon Gen 6 (15W CPU) tested with eGPU, back in 2018: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-2018-WQHD-HDR-i7-Laptop-Review.284682.0.html

Honestly, just read what I wrote? Nothing in your comment appears to be a direct response to anything I said. Obviously you can game with lower wattage CPUs and eGPUs - you'll just get worse performance. And obviously if you want to avoid your eGPU being performance limited / bottlenecked by your CPU choice you can just choose a CPU that is a better fit for gaming.

Spending $$$$ on a high wattage desktop GPU that you know will be performance constrained by a low wattage mobile CPU is clearly not going to provide the best experience but no one is stopping you from doing it if you want. Also, you can't put a higher wattage mobile CPU intended for gaming use (255HX+) into a 4 lb ultraportable laptop so if your goal is "ultraportable laptop that can play games at home" that rules out the higher wattage enthusiast class CPUs that are designed for gaming / workstation laptop use.

So there's nothing stopping you from using an eGPU / mobile CPU combo where the CPU is the performance bottleneck. It's clearly not possible to argue though that the best mobile CPU choices for gaming aren't the higher wattage mobile CPUs *explicitly* designed and marketed by Intel / AMD as mobile gaming CPUs.

BIFOLD