eGPU Scaling Benchmark w/ Cooler Master EG200

1. Introduction2. Testing Methodology3. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy4. Cyberpunk 20775. F1 20206. Gears 57. Hitman 38. Metro Exodus9. Red Dead Redemption 210. Total War Saga: Troy11. Watch Dogs: Legion12. Average Performance13. Desktop vs eGPU Peformance14. A Word on the EG20015. Closing Thoughts16. View All Pages

Cyberpunk 2077 is a 2020 action role-playing video game developed and published by CD Projekt. The story takes place in Night City, an open world set in the Cyberpunk universe. Players assume the first-person perspective of a customisable mercenary known as V, who can acquire skills in hacking and machinery with options for melee and ranged combat. Cyberpunk 2077 was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One on 10 December 2020. (Wikipedia)

Engine: REDengine 4. We test using the Ultra preset, DX12 API.

Our first game to assess is Cyberpunk 2077. Straight away we can see immediate benefits to using an external display, as evidenced by the RTX 3060 Ti, which is actually faster than the RTX 3070 when only using the laptop’s built in screen. The same goes for the RTX 3080 when using an external display, which is beating the RTX 3090 on the integrated laptop screen.

If we focus on the data when using an external display, overall performance scaling is decent, but not quite what we’d expect from a desktop. The RTX 3070 is 8% faster than the RTX 3060 Ti, for instance, when we’d expect that to be more like 12 or 13% in a desktop environment. That’s also true for the RTX 3090, which is 7% faster than the RTX 3080; it’s not nothing, but it’s not a huge gap either.

Moving onto 1440p then, here we can only test the GPUs using an external monitor. Even with an RTX 3090, performance topped out at an average of 52FPS, making it 8% faster than the RTX 3080, which averaged 48FPS. The largest gap comes between the RTX 3070 and the RTX 3080, the latter GPU proving 20% faster. The RTX 3070 also fares better against the RTX 3060 Ti here, as it is 11% faster, though that’s only a difference of 4 FPS.

And then at 4K, I wouldn’t say any of these GPUs can handle Cyberpunk at maximum settings over Thunderbolt 3. The RTX 3090 averaged 33FPS, but its 1% lows dipped down to 27FPS. We do see better scaling from the RTX 3090 at 4K as we are less CPU bound than when testing 1080p or 1440p, but it’s really just academic if the frame rates themselves aren’t at the level you’d want for actually gaming on.

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