ASUS could create a new product for the x13 and z13 called "XG Desktop" wich is a eGPU enclosure with a DESKTOP GPU instead of a mobile, that would be sick ! specially if you're planning on upgrading later and buy the laptop first :3c
We need the thunderbolt 5 for that with the new gpus coming soon. Asus is definitely going to release an XG MOBiLE with an rtx 4070 or rx 7700 xt. And the flow lineup of laptops will come with the amd phoenix cpu that (according to leaks) it will dethrone the rtx 3060 mobile :V
I would love to see an external desktop dock like this for the xg connector. Like the msi gs30 shadow before it. The was a really cool concept that sold in very small volumes but had an external dock like the port-replicators for business notebooks. This dock had a full size Gen 3 16x slot and room for a 3.5" HDD.
The link is still pcie 3.0 x8, so bandwith would be an issue with higher end cards. But a full power 3060 ti will likely be faster and cheaper than this 3080
I think dockstations for laptops should come back. You have you base laptop with a low power GPU and a dock using PCI-E x16 with a more poweful GPU por higher demanding games.
IBM/Lenovo used to have that in the past, a docking station with a GPU enclosure built into it, it was WAY too slow for gaming and only really useful for connecting multiple displays, but this was 2003 or something, quite revolutionary for its time.
This is one of the most awesome videos on the ROG Flow ecosystem anywhere! Thanks for this information; saved me from reinvesting in a TB eGPU enclosure.
Thanks for giving the Z13 so much attention! A word of caution, some folks have reported battery damage when connecting two separate power sources via the USB-C ports (a la having the eGPU and the ASUS charger). Another fun fact about the engineering, no doubt. :)
Thank you so much for all you do Jarrod. You never fail to deliver and keep everyone updated about everything. Always wanted the best for your supporters when making purchases. Much appreciation by giving every detail about things, With full truth and honesty a real trustworthy person with great intentions.
That's not going to happen. Nobody is going to want to jump through those hoops for such a small market. At least thunderbolt docks are supported by just about every laptop over $1200. The XG mobile connector is on like 3 Asus laptops. It just doesn't make sense to invest the RND. As cool as it would be to have that, it's unlikely.
@@Jackofafewtrades I'm pretty sure with the crapton of useless junk out there some company would love to be the only one in the market to profit off those devices' userbase ;) especially if they continue to use the connector in future models!
Since the XG mobile connector is proprietary and unique only to a subset of Asus laptops, I don't foresee any 3rd party eGPU enclosure manufacturers like Razer or Sonnet wasting time and resources to build a device with such a connector. Because no one would buy it except for those who have an Asus laptop with the connector. But what Asus has shown however, is it's possible to offer an external PCIe solution with power delivery and more pcie lanes than thunderbolt. So instead of 40 Gbps max, you get what 60 or 80 Gbps ? Until intel launches TB5, this could be a good solution. But the reason why thunderbolt is good is because it encapsulates various signals along the same wire: pcie, ethernet, DisplayPort, usb, and power delivery. I don't think this Asus solution encapsulates the same signaling. But if other manufacturers could form a consortium and agree to interoperate using the XG mobile connector form factor (or some other common form factor) then this would probably drive broader industry adoption of the tech for eGPUs at least. But since Radeon and Nvidia mobile solutions are becoming even stronger, I don't think any of the manufacturers will dedicate capital to do it. Motherboard manufacturers would have to be onboard as well.
@@j340_official I mean as far as I remember, Dell's graphics connector on some Alienware laptops was better than TB3. And Microsoft's surface connect also has pcie throughput that's supposedly better than TB3. For what it's worth, others have tried but I don't think any have licenced the tech.
@@Jackofafewtrades I don’t think the surface connect had more than 4 lanes of pcie 3.0, and either way, while the surface dock had options for supporting monitors and such, you still couldn’t connect external pcie nvme storage or pcie Ethernet or even a pcie gpu. Microsoft didn’t adopt tb3 because it felt the tech was potentially unsafe due to DMA attacks. But tb4 mandates dma memory protection so now Microsoft offers tb4. Tb4 is good but given that nvme storage now maxes out at 4 lanes of pcie4.0 and later this year nvme drives will adopt pcie5.0 and offer over 12,000 MB/sec… tb4 is starting to look very dated. It’s time for intel to move on and either offer pcie4.0 speeds or even pcie5.0 if a 3 ft copper cable can support such bandwidth.
Thank you for making subtitles for your videos, I'm from Russia and in order to understand your videos well, I use google translate and it perfectly conveys your thoughts
I actually didn't know so many issues existed with an eGPU. After watching this, I would probably refrain from recommending anyone an eGPU atleast until the performance is on par the hassle. Just get a good laptop with that eGPU money. Thin and lights are also packing a punch now
This problem is with this particular device, not common to all laptops. If you have any gaming laptop with TB3 or TB4, you'll get pretty decent performance with egpu dock.
I've been recommending against e-gpu's since jarrod did his last video. I agree with you on just buying a laptop with a better GPU. I personally think the ideal setup is desktop at home, lightish laptop for travel.
@@123Suryasis False. The problems with this device are seprate but the bandwidth bottleneck can't be sorted out unless more powerful connection is made. That is why an eGPU performs way worse than properly installed desktop GPU. I hope to see what TB5 brings and if it will solve the bottleneck issues but probably not since GPUs will keep getting more powerful too
Did you disable dGPU (3050) when doing your testing ? Nvidia EGPU with Nvidia DGPU are known to cause stuttering when both activated. You should got 14500-15000 Timespy score with dGPU disable. That said, I tested similar setup with the Z13 and got the same charging / CPU profile issue.
The 65W max power delivery through third party chargers is a deal breaker. From what Asus said it doesn’t look like this issue will ever be addressed either. Shame.
Not sure how much I buy ASUS's reason for third party USB-C chargers not working. We've seen plenty of laptops with good Thunderbolt implementations that are fine taking 100w of charge from the eGPU's power input. Seems like a design oversight or hardware design error they're trying to play off as a safety feature or something. IIRC Asus already has laptops with decent thunderbolt implementations so it doesn't make any sense to me. More I think about it, the more it seems like sabotaging the Thunderbolt eGPU experience to convince people to buy an XGm. Not super sure how I feel about this all... Would definitely need a bit more technical info from ASUS IMO to be fully satisfied
I am really hoping to see an xg mobile version of nvidia 4000 mobile series in the future. I hope asus continues to make such laptops like Flow x13 and z13 with their own gpu enclosure. Portability of a tablet, convenience of a laptop, performance close to a full-fledged gaming desktop!! Sure it is a niche market, but this device was an experiment itself, and I can see the growing interest.
I’m glad you finally got this video out. I had my hopes up since no one over on Reddit had any solutions. I ended up returning mine because if I was playing on just the tablet with the included charger it would actually drain the battery. So atleast from my experience the tablet uses more than 100w while gaming. After about three hours I was below half charge. So this product needs some work. I’m still hopeful they can address these issues as I would love to use one of these daily as my mobile device of choice.
would love to see an updated version of this video with the coming 4090 xg version. also, have seen ROG do a desktop version enclosure called the XG station 2.(which looks discontinued) im wondering if it would play nicer due to being same manufacturer?
Nice thank you for testing Jarrod! What would interest me now is how do other laptops/tablets similar to the Z13/X13 compare to these results using an eGPU
I dont know why thunderbolt egpu's are still stuck with 4 lanes pcie gen3, when we have pcie gen5 now. Only thing I can think of is the cable. It would be such a huge boost if they made it use gen5 even if it remains 4 lanes. Would like to see a test with a more mainstream device if the same thunderbolt issues are seen, or its just the z13.
It's because of bandwidth limitation of the cable. Actually there is standard external pcie connection, i.e. oculink, that can handle up to 80 gbps. But instead of being common in consumer pc, oculink is used more in server.
So I have a dell xps 15 9520 and I saw a lot of the same things as he did. The gpu would crash at least once before it would just reboot and not have that issue anymore. After a driver update it worked flawlessly with connection and disconnection. The bandwidth limitation doesn't affect me in all titles, just the ones from about 3 years ago onward. The CPU will be your next big bottleneck. Get at least a 6 core or higher cpu with 28 watts or higher if you don't want to be cpu limited. My dell xps 15 9520 doesn't limit me to 30 watts when connected with egpu power, just make sure you get an enclosure with 85-100 watts of charging if you don't want to drain the battery under load. Overall I think the biggest takeaway is that the convenience of the laptop form factor and the power of the eGPU is great if what you do isn't maxing out your system. It's a maliable package to fit in a variety of packages and keeps you're laptop cooler since the internal screen isn't always used and the iGPU isn't active. If you truly want best bang for the buck and or what more customizability then go desktop and a middling laptop although this will separate you're data into 2 places and might require an external storage solution for better data sharing.
The 3dmark pcie bandwidth benchmark would make an interesting comparison between the dgpu , thunderbolt 3080 and the xg mobile 3080 laptop. may shed light on funky behavior of the thunderbolt connection
I hope this comment reaches to you. I am a mechanical engineering student starting this fall who is looking for a really nice laptop in price range upto 1500 dollars. The thing is we need a laptop capable enough to run heavy softwares like CAD, Solid works and I would be really grateful if you could make a recommendation list for us engineers. You're only one of the few ones I can trust so please consider my request
4:32 I was thinking that no matter which USB-C cable you are using, the power, if the battery is full, will go directly onto the motherboard. So basically the same mechanism as you are using those dedicated 230W charger for designated power ports on larger devices.
Hi, question regarding this post. So, if you set your max charging level to 85% against battery degradation, than the battary never full so, the charger charging it all the time, or also bypass the battery? I hope you get my point. Thx
Would you make some test on diff laptop? Legion maybe? I (or maybe we all) want to know the result on another laptop.. Better, same, or even worst? Thanks a lot..
1:03 but more than twice the tgp, while the performance difference is barely half times more, well it depends if you just want raw power, but not quite efficient, though I'll take your consideration using the general external desktop means much more future proof, or at least more options if ever changing device
This is exactly the sort of content I was looking for as I am in the process of upgrading to a Asus Flow Z13 from a surface pro 8 with an egpu 3080. I was curious whether to just use the XG Mobile or an egpu.
Pity, I have a ROG Ally and was thinking I can use the RTX3080 in my desktop when I upgrade. Seems not worth it. Asus would be amazing if they bring out a XG mobile enclosure that accepts desktop GPU’s.
I had an XG mobile 3080 and sold it and got a steam deck. I was looking at the prices of XG Mobile 4090 incase I ever wanted to get back into gaming on the laptop and its ridiculous, over 2000 USD!
God knows why they went out of their way to create a proprietary I/O only to not offer desktop card eGPUs... it would've been a lot easier if ASUS just made XG "Desktop" with desktop GPUs or an XG eGPU Case.
At the time of writing this comment, there's no Thunderbolt 4 eGPU docking in existence. Which means if you plug Thunderbolt 3 eGPU into TB4 port, it will still behave like TB3 eGPU with 22 Gbps bandwidth limitations. Also both TB3 & TB4 have false advertising for their PCIe portion of speed. It's never 40 Gbps as advertised. TB3 is 22 Gbps, & TB4 is 32 Gbps
Hi. Can you do a review where the egpu is connected to the thunderbolt port? Based on your setup the egpu is connected to the type C port where as the charger is connected to the actual thunderbolt port. I already have this machine and was planning to buy an egpu or the xg mobile. This will really help me decide. Thank you 😊
Thank you so much Jarrod, this is invaluable! I got a Z13 recently, yesterday actually played AC:Valhalla on it for most of the day, with some settings turned down, it maintained 60+ pretty much all day, and was a great experience. I had watched your other video comparing the 6850M XT and 3080 XG Mobiles and there definitely seemed to be some surprising performance lacks with the 6850. Have you gotten any word, or done any subsequent testing since, to see if there have been improvements to the 6850M since? I'm looking at the XG mobile and the 6850 version seems to be the easier one to get a hold of. Thanks!
dont expect asus to update their laptop issues that seem to trend with asus. if you run into a bug with the asus laptop get rid the laptop asap there goner other you run into that the likely never fix.
2 months on working with z13 and it went dead lights on but no booting up, geek squad changed motherboard for 3 months first 2 days back on it keeps shutting down randomly and sweating while starting up like needs at least 5 min for it be able open application smooth….maybe I am just unlucky like that but what a purchase🤦🏻♂️
I don't think external GPUs will ever be a worthwhile investment considering the cost vs performance you get with them. Too many random issues like you experienced and bottlenecks for something that really isn't "portable" in my eyes.
If you can pick up a gpu enclosure cheaply, I think they are worthwhile. I bought an Aorus gaming box without gpu for 70 euro. I plan to put a 3060 ti in there and then I’m good to go with my Lenovo Yoga 9i. I can always do something else with the gpu if I decide to flip the Aorus box.
Most Laptops GPU especially the ones with NVidia GeForce x50 like GTX 1050M GTX 1650M, RTX 3050 4gb, they are working at PCIe X4 Lanes. So it means it is actually worth it to put any external GPU to M.2 NVMe slot, because it is rated at PCIe X4 Lanes and you can put a stronger GPU than those I mentioned, and it will perform way better.
Jared I confess to being a piker when it comes to computer technology and probably maybe understood an eighth of this entire video, but I still love your presentation
So is this eGPU problem common across all laptops, or unique to just Asus? Also, is the same observation true if you use a Radeon card? Could it be an NVIDIA problem? Also, perhaps Asus gimped thunderbolt eGPU performance to incentivize buying their non-thunderbolt solution? Perhaps there's a bios setting to tweak thunderbolt settings? Allocate more memory to thunderbolt devices?
Why Asus don't make a external GPU box with a power supply and the flow conector, so we can put any GPU we want , that would be so easy for them to do it, would make more sells for the Flow series notebooks and people could have any gpu they want, also because the xg flow gpu is always out stock.
TB3 eGPU's performance hit caused by latency. not bandwidth, not cpu. PCI-e tunneling via TB, it needs tb3 controller. It makes huge latency to bus. It Sucks.
We have completed testing the Z13 with Akitio Node Pro TB3 along with RTX A4000 and A5000 for a year. Application like Resolve Studio, Fusion Studio and Blender runs great on both eGPU A4000 and A5000. However, we found that battery wear is far worse than HP Mobile Workstation and Dell. Just exactly at 10 months use of balance battery setup at 80% of its capacity, the battery capacity dropped 11% already at 89% now. Our 2 years HP Zbook 17 battery is able to keep the battery capacity at 98% (losing 2%) with HP optimized battery setup. And replacing the battery only in Indonesia for the Z13 at the auth service center asked us to leave it with them for 5 days. This is unacceptable. So, we recommend anyone trying to get expensive portables, should seek for further information of the local support, if making it the primary rig, before making the decision to spend heavy $$$.
"I've spent months with Asus trouble shooting this thing" "I couldn't complete the testing because for some reason Asus wanted it back" This cracked me up you spooked them because they knew you were basically the beta tester.
I am so sad to know that it’s no possible. I have a SP8 and Core X with 3070. It works flawlessly. But I don’t like SP8’s CPU, it’s only a quad core and not enough for my use for work. The Flow z13 is the only tablet that has better CPU ( wait, I know Dell has one coming too but my other reason next tells that Dell is not what I want ) and a kickstand. I love kickstand, I don’t use it on my lap and I use it all the time to watch movies or videos when I am standing in kitchen or lying on my bed, without a keyboard. Anyway, I don’t want to throw out everything I have and then buy a z13 with the XG Mobile that is not even future proof. Thank you for the explanation of the problems, it’s very helpful for me to decide not to buy it or else I will have to go full trade in with the XG Mobile.
Base on my experience, less hardware means less problems.. The best way is to save up and buy a high end gaming laptop with 4070/4080.. Just avoid external hardwares.. definitely not worth it.
Thunderbolt 4 is still not good enough for this task or is this just z13 problem ? I guess ill just grab AMD+Rtx configuration laptop later end of the year.
The machine comes with Win11 home that has no Bitlocker support, so how can it be enabled? Having to run the charger _and_ the enclosure is a hassle though... But it does work fine (for me). The power limits happen with all kind of 100w USB-PD chargers. They just only allow the turbo profile with the official charger. You can use ThrottleStop to just override it and set it to 50watt (or more! It turbo's at 90w out of the box, so it can handle it for a while!) though. I set the GPU mode to 'eco' first (to disable the built-in rtxs3050ti) and then connect a Sapphire Pulse GearBox with a 6700XT in it. I can't compare to the XG-dock since I don't have it, but it performs fine from what I feel.
Sure, ASUS might decide to give us an XG dock with a desktop GPU slot (and maybe a SATA port to connect an HDD or a SATA SSD) But what if we could jury rig one using the cable and connector of the XG Mobile and some soldering on a third-party eGPU?
One can only hope that the propietrary soluton from ASUS X13/X15/X16, becomes some sort of stanandard. It rocks the hell out of a Thunderbolt 4/USB4 solution. Sure it's the mobile version, but considering that it whacks the hell out of a $15000 cheadeper card.
I’m having trouble even getting egpu to work goes to black screen on boot. When I plug after running the computer will not run on egpu it stays on internal gpu. Any recommendations?
If thunderbolt 4 performs with terribly with 40gbps bandwidth and Pcie.gen3, I'm curious how thunderbolt 5 will do with external GPUs if it does actually end up with 80gbps bandwidtha and Pcie.gen4
I feel if Asus created an XG dock that allows us to attach our own desktop gpu, the Flow lineup and the XG connector by extension would be far more successful
Big OOF for those who bought Z13. Luckly I spent my money on MSI GP66 Leopard 11UH and this is only because I always watch your videos and MSI laptops is usually at the top.
Thanks Jarrod. Great analysis! About type-C charging, I am using type-C charging in my Legion 7 for quite a while now. Does it also use battery-as-a-buffer for USB-C charging? In that case, am I slowly decreasing my battery life while doing that?
Very nice video, make me wonder are these issues happens to Flow X13 too? Cuz I am planning on getting either one for my own, and doesn't want to pair their gpu but mine existing gpu🤔
i have had the same problems since March, My device is Asus ROG G533ZM, but suddenly it has a blue screen when I connect the Razer Core X, and now is not usable.
imagine we could use desktop gpu with xg mobile connection. it would have been so great since technically xg mobile version of connecting external gpu is more powerful ( i am talking about the connection not aboit gpu ). example:- if there is a similar external gpu closure that uses desktop gpu just as thunderbolt but using pcie+type c connection of xg mobile then xg version would guve more performance with same desktop gpu compare to thunderbolt. i wish someone create a custom xg connection based external desktop gpu closure or amd would let others to experiment with xg mobile connection
Companies don't send them and they aren't sold here, it is what it is. I beg for them all the time and they keep sending 3080 Ti configurations, I'm not happy about it either but there's not a whole lot I can do.
bought mine 4 months ago, already went twice to the service center, they did change the mainboard, battery, and keyboard already. FYI I use this device very carefully due to the price it is not cheap for me. but this thing just garbage, a lot of problem! vey dissapointed!
I already know thunderbolt sucks, it disconnects more often,3080 laptop GPU is on par with desktop connected via thunderbolt at 1080p. Laptop manufacturers should make a universal 16X Lane connection ,so that every one can use this.
Hey Jarrod, great video yet again mate. I purchased the Z13 last week as I travel a lot with work and wanted something smaller than my ROG Zephyrus Duo with a 3080 in it. I found that when I connected a Bonelk USB to HDMI cable into the bottom USB C port and then plugged the Asus 100W power brick into the power in part of the Bonelk dongle (which is rated to 100W) the Z13 says the power input is not enough and completely stopped charging. I was playing Minecraft with the kids and i suffered detrimental frame drops down to completely unplayable. Then I discovered I had 5% battery left so obviously there was the problem. Do I understand correctly that despite the Bonelk dongle being 100W compatible, it is being reduced to 60W ?? Thansk for the help.
If the desktop 3080 performs better than the XG Mobile in most creative applications but games, it's probably a drivers issue since even some games like Red Dead Redemption 2 could actually greatly benefit from it. So in conclusion, if you're a Professional/Creator, you use 3 or more monitors in your setup (XG only supports 2 monitors, 1 DP and 1 HDMI) and you're just a casual gamer like me who only plays Genshin Impact and AAA titles from time to time (and you don't bother playing them 1080p@60Hz), you should probably stick to the thunderbolt enclosure (I'd love to have 32/64 GB RAM version of this device with at least 1TB M.2 and USB 3.0 '-_- )... Otherwise, if you are a Hardcore Gamer On The Go, you should probably stick to the XG Mobile, but if you are content creator and a casual gamer, this tablet should be enough by itself as a great "Desktop/Laptop Replacement" even without any external expansion, a great Microsoft Surface competitor tho.....
Hi, im an architect, Is less performance caused by bottle neck created by thunderbolt for data transfer!? FPS is clearly affected because the data transfer is more faster and the thunderbolt cannot handle it. But the setup would probably help in situations such as rendering (not in games) when less data transfer is required, right?
Did you ensure you disabled the onboard graphics card in device manager? My eGPU has huge issues if I try to run the internal and external GPUs simultaneously....
