Exploring Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Performance, Feat. PowerColor's Gaming Station & Radeon RX Vega 56 Nano
by Ganesh T S on February 13, 2019 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- PowerColor
- Thunderbolt 3
- eGFX
- RX Vega 56 Nano Edition
Power Consumption and Thermal Characteristics
The power consumption of the PowerColor Gaming Station (with the Radeon RX Vega 56 Nano installed) was recorded while processing the Furmark stress test using the Intel NUC8i7BEH (Bean Canyon NUC) as the host. We noted that the eGFX enclosure and GPU together idled at around 19 - 30W.
At the beginning of the stress sequence, the at-wall power starts off at around 250W and steadily climbs to around 260W within 3 to 4 minutes. At that point, we see the GPU core temperature approaching 100C, and the unit slows itself down to maintain a temperature around 95C. We see the at-wall power consumption oscillating between 210W to 245W for the next hour (duration of the test).
A Note on Compatibility
It must be kept in mind that eGPUs are not compatible every Thuderbolt 3 host systems; there are some steps that systems need to take to enable this kind of functionality. For example, our Skylake DAS testbed got external graphics functionality for the Thunderbolt 3 port in a post-launch BIOS version. Unfortunately, no amount of playing around with the relevant BIOS options and attempting Thunderbolt 3 firmware upgrades could enable support for external GPUs in the Thunderbolt 3 software.
The eGFX enclosure can still be connected to the host, and all the peripheral ports work. It is just that the eGPU refuses to become active.
Adventurous users have apparently discovered some workarounds for this problem, but we didn't test that out. In the worst case, it is possible that your Thunderbolt 3 system might not support eGPUs at all. There is also a chance that a particular eGFX enclosure might not be a simple plug and play solution. Thankfully, eGFX enclosure vendors do maintain a list of systems that are guaranteed to work with their enclosure. The growth in popularity of Thunderbolt 3 also means that we have a user community of considerable size to fall back upon for usage guidelines and recommendations.
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OolonCaluphid - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link
As a Dan A4 owner, I'm absolutely crying at the size and emptyness of that box!! What an utter waste of space. You can get a whole PC in there, negating the need for an external GPU in the first place.(yeah yeah, I get it, it's for laptops... just build an SFF PC)
Reflex - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link
I also have a Dan A4-SFX and that was exactly my first thought! And for about the same price no less!hansmuff - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link
I wonder if you could hook up a laptop to a gaming PC. Then, use Laptop keyboard, mouse and display as peripherals. I suppose the laptop would have to accept HDMI or DP as input, and I also suppose few if any do that?DanNeely - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link
You're making it too complicated. No need for special hardware functions, when you could remote desktop/etc into a desktop from your laptop.PeachNCream - Thursday, February 14, 2019 - link
Remote Desktop has a bit of trouble with DirectX and though the latency is a lot lower than something like VNC, it isn't intended as a solution for pushing a game's graphics over a network. Steam in-home streaming is a much better option for a local situation like that and you can use it rather effectively with non-Steam games by just adding them to Steam manually. You can also toss in programs like Windows Explorer or the components of an office suite to do something productive via Steam as well. In the end though, I do agree that remote access to a gaming PC from another PC is a layer of complexity that isn't typically necessary although you can, at least in theory, run a headless gaming desktop that way.WinterCharm - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - link
Steam has a built in game streaming solution that works perfectly for this. You don't need Windows Remote Desktop. You just use Steam's game streaming.29a - Thursday, February 14, 2019 - link
Steam does what you want.JoeTheDestroyr - Thursday, February 14, 2019 - link
I wanted such a thing and couldn't find it. I enjoy the laptop form-factor for playing games in my comfy chair in my living room (and no, for the last time, I don't want to use my tv, I use that for other things).In the end, I had to make it myself. Grabbed a dead laptop off ebay, ripped out the guts, and replaced it w/ a Chinese board off ebay that could drive laptop lcd panels from a DP connection. Made my own usb keyboard controller using a Teensy. Even added a class D amp + USB audio to drive the laptop speakers (which sounded like garbage until I used a calibration mic + Equalizer APO to clean it up).
JoeTheDestroyr - Thursday, February 14, 2019 - link
Stupid no edit:...enjoy the laptop form-factor for playing games in my comfy chair in my living room, but got tired of the ridiculous markup (and simultaneous lack of performance) on gaming laptops. And I don't care about portability, just "lap-ability" (moving it from a table to my lap, and back).
watersb - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Dang. That sounds like my kind of game. :-)