Dell's unassuming Latitude 5480 could be the sleeper eGPU laptop you've been waiting for

[Redaktion]

A dark horse for use with external graphics enclosures, the Latitude 5480 just might be best choice right now due to its compact size, powerful i7-7820HQ CPU, expansion options, and business-class durability.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-s-unassuming-Latitude-5480-could-be-the-sleeper-eGPU-laptop-you-ve-been-waiting-for.197794.0.html

[Delta Zhhang]

What about the larger one, 5580, come with the choice of 92WHR battery.

[Douglas Black]

If it has TB3, sure. I much prefer a smaller footprint and centered keyboard, but it's personal taste as well.

[uPanda]

Sooooo... incoming notebookcheck review ?  :)

[herva]

Thunderbolt 3 is an option and only most expensive models have it  :'(
Im waiting for review to know if its a true 40GB/s tb3

[Douglas Black]

Herva: It's confirmed to have 4 PCIe lanes, which is why I was interested :)

uPanda: I hope so too ;)

[Damian]

I hope that there will be a possibility to pass through the whole Thunderbolt port to a VM. I am dreaming of a solution where I have Linux host for office work and Windows gaming VM, all enclosed within a mobile case and software securely isolated from each other. At work I would use basic notebook functions, while at home I could just plug in some Thunderbolt docking station and be happy with great graphical performance.
For now only best/most expensive dell precision notebooks (with that hardware docking station) would fit that possibility. I hope new Thunderbolt solution will manage to pull it through.

[Porky Pig Jr]

Dell configuration site says NVIDIA card is optional for i7-7820HQ. This is correct that the HD 630 performs roughly as 930MX given the fast DDR4 memory, both banks are configured.

[Andrey Konstantinov]

Thanks for the heads-up, Douglas! I bit the bullet recently - dragged my rig's internals halfway across the world and bought new case and monitor for it, but I wish I didn't have to. This is still too expensive for me but I like the direction things are moving in. Hopefully within a few months we could see a ZenBook with a similar config - quad-core i7, no dGPU, TB3 - and a non-overpriced dock (preferably small sized, fitting Mini ITX cards only). Having used an Asus N550 for several years now, I really prefer the feel of their multimedia laptops to Latitude even at the expense of corporate features, and just wish mine had a TB3 port so I wouldn't have to get rid of it :( I suspect some resistance among the laptop vendors to release eGPU-focused laptops because this would mean decreasing their profit (less frequent upgrades) so this Latitude is at least a good sign.

[Douglas Black]

Dell configuration site says NVIDIA card is optional for i7-7820HQ. This is correct that the HD 630 performs roughly as 930MX given the fast DDR4 memory, both banks are configured.

Technically it's the TB3 that comes with the 930MX. You can get the i7, but you won't have any TB3. :(

Thanks for the heads-up, Douglas! I bit the bullet recently - dragged my rig's internals halfway across the world and bought new case and monitor for it, but I wish I didn't have to. This is still too expensive for me but I like the direction things are moving in. Hopefully within a few months we could see a ZenBook with a similar config - quad-core i7, no dGPU, TB3 - and a non-overpriced dock (preferably small sized, fitting Mini ITX cards only). Having used an Asus N550 for several years now, I really prefer the feel of their multimedia laptops to Latitude even at the expense of corporate features, and just wish mine had a TB3 port so I wouldn't have to get rid of it :( I suspect some resistance among the laptop vendors to release eGPU-focused laptops because this would mean decreasing their profit (less frequent upgrades) so this Latitude is at least a good sign.

I think it's come down to planned obsolescence as well. If only Asus had actually released that laptop they put out at CES 2015.

[Iris]

I was thinking the same way about business laptops. How about ThinkPad series? Are those better/worse suitable?

How do you confirm that the TB3 is full speed?

[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

[uPanda]

@AquaeAtrae
I'm the one who wrote this reddit post : https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5ufjk9/dell_thunderbolt_number_of_pcie_lanes/

As I said in the replies, I only asked Dell support about XPS, Precision and latitude laptops (because I do not care about AW) and this is the DM they replied. I cannot guarantee this is true, but I can assure you this comes from an official Dell twitter account. These are the tweets that lead to the DM : https://twitter.com/DellCaresPRO/status/832172041226842117

That, again, does not mean it is true. While the person from DellCarePro assured me this list came from Dell's engineers, if I remember correctly, Dell support also said for quite a while that the 9550 and 9560 had full speed TB3.

So, before buying anything, I would advise to wait for actual benchmarks and reviews of the laptops.

[Alaz Nacar]

is it 5480-5840 naming mismatch in this news?

[Alaz Nacar]

Just curious, have it USB power delivery option?
Afaik there is no HQ notebooks with USB-PD, but based on specs, USB-C capable of up to 100W...
Already, it's awesome