So I’m looking for advice on external GPUs. I want to try out Godot, but I don’t have a GPU. I don’t think I’ve ever had a GPU in fact. I’m a software developer actually, python mostly, but I’ve never done GPU stuff in my work, and my PC gaming days were mostly prior to the existence of GPUs. So I’m way out of touch with them.
I do have a reasonable laptop that I’ve been using for dev stuff, a Dell XPS 9370 (build number from Dell is CNX37014), but it has no GPU, so I guess it won’t be great for trying out 3D stuff in Godot. It does have thunderbolt ports though, so I think I can plug an external GPU into those? Anyone tried that kind of thing out? I’d rather fork out for an external GPU if that will work decently rather than try to build a whole new PC or something. I actually have no idea if there is a performance hit for the GPU being external, just heard they were a thing and trying to figure out if they are a viable option.
I assume you know that even if you have not been using a dedicated GPU, you still have been using GPUs all this time, albeit probably integrated ones. On that note, I have successfully used Godot with an integrated Intel HD 630, but would not recommend this for 3D stuff.
While I don’t know your specific model, Godot generally works with external GPUs on Laptops.
While I don’t know your specific model, Godot generally works with external GPUs on Laptops.
Ok good to know! Yeah there is no specific model in my mind yet, I am so far out of touch with them that none of the model numbers mean anything to me and I don’t even know what performance metrics or characteristics to look for in the things.
Hey, game dev here (well currently working for a company that works with many dev studios), graphics programmer in particular. It depends on what you want to do, is your primary usage going to be programming? You can get away with integrated graphics cards, as long as you stick to programmer-art quality level of environment details (which you would normally do anyway to test code).
You can get pretty far into the dev process with minimal need for a detailed 3D env.
There will be a perf hit for an external GPU just because of the physics involved (proximity and type of connection matters a lot in computers, this is why your CPU has L-caches on the cores).
I actually have a crap GPU always laying around because it’s also the best to test out performance issues. Nothing drives you to improve perf than a choppy framerate ;)
Most of my colleagues in my previous company were rocking 960’s or worse till last year, myself included. And we were a team of graphics programmers working on GPU driver-like software.
I’d say, try it out, download Godot and an example project, run it and see how well it performs. If the perf looks fine, congrats, it’s a good idea. If the performance is bad, look at the quality of the example project and think “will I make anything visually more complex?” if not, congrats everything is good. Otherwise, well consider an external GPU if you think that’s best.
I’d suggest getting a desktop though if you ever decide to keep going down the game dev line, just to keep upgrade costs low. I operate on a ±5 years cadence to modify parts, alternating between my CPU and GPU mainly. So I don’t replace the entire thing, but in 2 years I’ll be updating my CPU and in 4 it’ll be my GPU. I also have a crap laptop for when I’m on the road, and use the desktop for my actual work. I can always remote desktop into my desktop if I need something with more power to compile or render.
To put your hardware in perspective, it would have beaten my desktop of 15 years ago and I was already doing game dev back then just fine. So you could definitely do game dev with it, the big question is “what type of game dev”.
(sorry for the chaotic nature of this response, hope you got something helpful out of it)
Your laptop has an integrated gpu (intel uhd graphics 620). A pretty weak one but it should be fine if you’re just trying things out.
As for an external gpu, although there is a performance hit using thunderbolt it should work much better than your iGPU. That being said eGPU enclosures are pretty expensive and not worth imo if you just want to play around with graphics. You might be better off buying a newer laptop with a GPU or a desktop PC.
Here’s a video of a laptop similar to yours using an eGPU. https://youtu.be/EcrcF9wwT3E
A pretty weak one but it should be fine if you’re just trying things out.
Yeah? I tried unreal engine 4 on this laptop a few years ago and even just doing very basic stuff with the demo templates in the 3D UI thing was pretty garbage. But maybe Godot is more efficient? Or maybe it’s just because I was on Linux using Vulkan drivers which were pretty new and Unreal wasn’t using them well or something?
That being said eGPU enclosures are pretty expensive and not worth imo if you just want to play around with graphics. You might be better off buying a newer laptop with a GPU or a desktop PC.
Yes, they did seem pricy. But still, I can’t be bothered with a whole new machine. I’ll have to do some more mental cost benefit analysis I guess. I guess now is a bad time to be trying to get a GPU in general…
Godot is MUCH more lightweight than Unreal.
Unreal’s editor needs a beast of a dev PC, it’s basically like running a AAA game all the time, and it assumes by default that you’re making a top-end game with a top-spec PC.
Godot’s editor will run on pretty much anything. That’s not to say an external GPU won’t help, but if you keep the graphics simple you may not even need it.
If you’re just trying out stuff in Godot your iGPU is totally fine (most likely). Try it first before looking for other solutions. Unreal Engine is a lot heavier (but of course with much better graphics). Though if you really just mess around with simple scenes and trying stuff out and you’re not actually trying to render anything impressive graphics wise even a slow GPU can keep up with that.
When you actually want to do more with game development you might start to think about getting a better machine with a dedicated GPU and a better CPU, laptops overall are a bit iffy when it comes to that compared to a desktop (at least price and performance wise).
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You can buy a refurbished or second hand laptop with a good gpu for half the price of an external GPU.
