Gaming laptops are becoming less attractive because of Google Stadia and external graphics cards

[Redaktion]

It's becoming more and more difficult to justify carrying around a laptop with GeForce RTX 2080 graphics when you can simply harness that power from the cloud or an external GPU docking station at home. Alternatives like eGPUs and game streaming services will make conventional gaming laptops a hard sell in the near future.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Gaming-laptops-are-becoming-less-attractive-because-of-Google-Stadia-and-external-graphics-cards.435665.0.html

[jeremy]

Seriously? I was sucked into the hype of external TB3 GPUs last year, and I went for it. I quickly learned it was nowhere near what it was hyped to be. Just starting, I found out (almost immediately) that TB3 docking was nothing like actual docking (like a port replicator dock). It was a finicky and temperamental deal which often just failed to work, or took some fiddling, or required a reboot. Drivers which just couldn't stay installed (part of why the GPU detection took so long was the drivers had to fully install in the background... each and every time).

These problems were just minor technical issues compared to the real problem: the eGPU was never present when I actually wanted to game. I had to bring the eGPU with me if I wanted to run anything GPU-intensive. I finally realized the only way eGPUs work, is if someone treats their laptop as a chromebook when mobile, and a gaming computer when at home.

Well... I can do that, too. Just get a cheap chromebook and a cheap deaktop at home. Blows away any gaming laptop, TB3 nonesense, everything. I still want to game on the go and edit videos at work (now using DaVinci Resolve), so I ended up choosing the cheapest of the 3 "big battery, GTX1650" laptops this gen (XPS15, vs X1E2, Blade 15; guess we could also include the Zenbook 15 with U + 1650 and a MSI GS65 with a GTX1660Ti). It still has a TB3 port, so I can still use my dock if I want to.

[S.Yu]

Not with TB3's bandwidth. Only low end options would be threatened but for mid-range dGPUs there are lighter gaming laptops that infringe on ultrabook territory too.

[Martin Fogg]

Outdated article as far as eGPUs are concerned. Such opinion would've been trendy 3 years ago, but eGPU scene is seriously stagnant right now. No new enclosures are being released and general impressions are not that good.

Could be changing with USB4 having direct access to PCIe or enclosures not costing half the price of budget PC, but right now eGPUs are in bad spot.

[Archuk]

Dude, what's wrong with you?
Streaming will never give you the experience you can get with your own GPU. eGPU's as someone else mentioned here, suck, and more likely to continue to suck in future (just as gaming laptops suck compared to desktop). Everything said in this article might be true, in some distant future, but no one really has a clue how computing will look in 10-20 years.

[A]

@Archuk - I think plenty of people underestimate streaming. Streaming can output WAY more power than a internal GPU. The key to streaming is local servers.

The experience would also be better because developers can easily test on streaming hardware. So bugs are more likely to be fixed faster and optimizations easier.

Either way, more and more games are going the way of the cloud. So streaming and non-streaming has already blurred.

[Noblestone]

Yep, that's me.

Holding off on updating my Laptop until I've seen stadia.

Seemless integration into my Android TV is appealing, lightweight Chrome Book when mobile or others using TV.

Not great Internet but never drops below 50 mbps.

Also interested in the Xbox Service, especially with an awesome new MS Flight Simulator in the works.

Gaming laptops are such poor value likely a combination of a streaming service and XBOX2 for me in the future.

[kony]

I used eGPUs long before they were 'cool' and used them via express card slot on old Thinkpads. They were a decent solution, but had serious issues with bandwidth in some games. Now with TB3 I've got XPS 13 and an eGPU and I'm extremely happy. This was the ultimate solution to whether have a laptop or a desktop. Gaming laptops were alright, but they were always inconvenient to carry and they tend to end up with GPU hardware issues. Of course I also got external monitor, keyboard, speakers, mouse, gamepad etc., so when I play games now my laptop is just a 'case', but when once in a while I want to take it I just unplug three cables and that's it.

Obviously I bet one could get a bit more performance using desktop tower, but honestly, the hardware advancement slowed down so much in recent years it doesn't matter to me much anymore, even though in the long past I was buying new towers every 2 years to play new games.

For those who play competitively new games I wouldn't recommend it, however, for many other it's just perfectly fine.

That said, not everybody wants a laptop anyway. I just know I do. It's great we have another option for us, so people can choose whatever suits them.

[Gary]

eGPUs are a dumb idea for notebooks... I need a powerful notebook (for work and gaming) everywhere, not just at one location... Stadia might be worthwhile but will it support my 3d modelling, realtime visualisation tasks on the road?

[AlexS]

How an egpu+laptop makes it more comfortable to transport than laptop only?

egpu only makes sense if it is vastly better than the GPU in laptop and makes the whole ensemble cheaper.

ll not even talk about online...

[Archuk]

@Archuk - I think plenty of people underestimate streaming. Streaming can output WAY more power than a internal GPU. The key to streaming is local servers.

The experience would also be better because developers can easily test on streaming hardware. So bugs are more likely to be fixed faster and optimizations easier.

Either way, more and more games are going the way of the cloud. So streaming and non-streaming has already blurred.

First of all, with streaming there are latency issues. Second, it's not WAY more. Seriously, wait until it launches a bit, and see for yourself. At the moment, people who tried it claim that the experience is worse than on PC/Gaming laptop. And we are not even talking about issues that will be caused by server load and bandwidth use.

No offense, but was the writer paid to write this article? Google Stadia at the moment, seems like Google's attempt to monopolize gaming and nothing else. Hopefully, they will fail.