Dell will begin certifying XPS notebooks for external graphics: Frank Azor

[Redaktion]

Alienware and XPS GM Frank Azor has stated that due to demand from customers, they will start to seek external graphics certification for their popular XPS line of notebooks. Without certification, newer graphics enclosures with the TI83 controller will not be able to connect.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-will-begin-certifying-XPS-notebooks-for-external-graphics-Frank-Azor.196560.0.html

[Neil England]

The 9550 and 9560 have Thunderbolt 3, but are handicapped by a choked implementation with a limited bandwidth over the PCIE... External GPUs are better suited on machines with full speed TB3 or Alienware's proprietary port.

[Douglas Black]

Very right, as it will preclude the user from using the internal screen for all but the most basic tasks. With an external monitor it is fine, however.

The problem is that there are no similarly styled and sized quad core laptops with TB3. There is the XPS 15 and the upcoming 15" Yoga 720.

The 9550 and 9560 have Thunderbolt 3, but are handicapped by a choked implementation with a limited bandwidth over the PCIE... External GPUs are better suited on machines with full speed TB3 or Alienware's proprietary port.

[AquaeAtrae]

Myths vs Benchmarks
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5rxclq/xps_9560_w_razer_core_1080_gtx_benchmark_requests/

Thanks for the article Douglas. I'm very excited to see the eGPU revolution finally reach consumers. And I agree we should all be watching the Latitude 5480, 5580 and Precision 5520 for viability. Their support of WiGig and better security options. Mind you, they don't have as bright a screen as the XPS 15, a low power pascal GTX 1050, nor the polished aluminum build. But they're still very interesting options that we'd love to have tested with eGPUs.

The article suggests that the Latitude 5480 is wired differently than the XPS 15, with all x4 PCIe lanes. Is there any evidence backing this up yet? I've been looking. So far, I've only found a second-hard account reportedly from @DellCarePRO listing some but not all Thunderbolt laptops (excludes AW, etc).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5ufjk9/dell_thunderbolt_number_of_pcie_lanes/

eGPU performance (FPS) is not "half speed" with x2 lanes
That's a myth. x2 PCIe lanes provides 16GTps which rarely affects the utilization of even the most powerful GPUs. This all reality isn't intuitive given the complexities of eGPUs and Thunderbolt. But gaming isn't nearly so affected as many expect.

PCI scaling tests by TechPowerUp show that 16GTps showed at worse 7% impact on FPS and that's based on x4 PCIe 2.0 and its 20% overhead. Overhead in PCIe 3.0 is now just 1.8% so the impact should be even less with an XPS 15. PCIe scaling would really depend on the specific game and the specific moment within the game. As more benchmarks come in, you'll notice games are barely affected. The impact may be more noticeable in other PCIe applications like large SSD RAID arrays.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_PCI_Express_Scaling/24.html

The article also suggests that the XG Station 2 is not viable until Dell certifies for eGPUs. That may or may not be true. To date, I believe only one XG Station 2 (@jackeyjoe) has been tried and there's some indications that the specific unit may be defective. We're still trying to confirm that.

https://egpu.io/forums/pc-setup/dell-xps-15-9560-asus-rog-xg-station-2-a-tragic-love-story/#post-2794

Also, there's some question if using the internal display has as much impact on the limited PCIe lanes or not. This too is the common belief. Yet both PCIe and Thunderbolt are bi-directional with their upstream and downstream bandwidth operating independently so this may not prove true. Again, we're looking to test this more.

Overall, I commend the article for increasing awareness of the wide range of options for eGPU. I believe eGPU capable Thunderbolt will become as common as USB is today. And I agree the Latitude 5480 is very interesting. But readers should note that these technologies are, as of yet, barely tested or understood. There is a lot of rumors and misinformation being promoted that needs ground-truthing.

https://thunderbolttechnology.net/sites/default/files/HBD16235_Thunderbolt_TB_r05.pdf

Thanks all. Our efforts to raise public awareness and solicit official support from Dell is very encouraging. We may want to clear up some misconceptions here and we need to see more actual testing done.

Make your Voices Heard
PS: He may have meant he was looking for enough demand to justify the certification effort. In other words, we still need readers to chime in and show him how many of our lives would be changed simply by updating their firmware and drivers.

"@jackeyjoe True that we haven't validated any eGPU boxes with XPS 15 yet. We never stated that we did. Based on demand we will begin to now." - @AzorFrank

https://twitter.com/AzorFrank/status/829719350961696768

[pol233]

Ho! very funny that Frank Azor Dell representative tells us about eGPU certifying, as  9650 and 9360/9350, the XPS innovative and performance Dell "champion" use full TB3 chips for x4 lanes, but only wired 2 (Compal beautifull design). So their 2017 model still does'nt comply with 2015'TB3, they only have TB2 performance from 2012's !!! At nearly 2.000$ the flagships models, Frank is a perfect liar :( ! See their knowledge base = http://www.dell.com/support/article/fr/fr/frdhs1/QNA44089/thunderbolt-3-data-transfer-speeds-up-to-40gbps?lang=EN , the feb,27 document that states officialy that mis-design! Note their web selling site is now focusing on a TB3 port x2lanes, until february, that stated data transfert to 40Gpbs... Thank you Dell, never twice!