Gadgetory

welcome back too hard wrong box today we're looking at another external GPU which is a topic we've covered a few times in the past this time we're reviewing the gigabyte rx5 a league gaming box which joins the Auris gtx 1070 and GTX 1080 gaming boxes and gigabytes lineup this is the first time we've looked at an AMD external GPU solution so that'll be a bit interesting and of course I'll be discussing some performance numbers later in the video the basic design to the RX 580 gaming box is effectively identical to gigabytes other each GPUs it's an extremely compact housing much more compact than build yourself a GPU some companies like razor and it houses especially built graphics card with a custom small form-factor cooler gigabytes a GPUs are ridiculously compact in comparison to something like to raise a core or alienware graphics amplifier and that's why I like them so much the other key advantage to the gaming box is it actually includes a GPU inside so you don't need to purchase the e GPU housing and then source your own graphics card the RX 580 Gaming box is the cheapest a GPU gigabyte has produced at 550 US dollars so the enclosure itself is valued at about 250 when you consider the cheapest rx 588 gig models a sudden these days for $300 or so not as good value as the gtx 1070 or gtex 1080 boxes and there's something I'll discuss in more detail a bit later but it's similar to other eg pew enclosures on the market if you've seen my coverage on the GTX 10-17 GT X 1080 gaming boxes you'll be familiar with the overall design of the RX 580 gaming box considering gigabyte basically recycled it the entire chassis is constructed from industrial metal with two large vents on either side one provides there to the GPU and the other to the power supply the front is a simple metal sheet with a gigabyte logo on it while the back includes direct access to the GPU ports along with a few additional IO options as this is a mostly standard RX 580 you get three DisplayPort outputs and one HDMI out directly from the graphics card in addition the gaming box gives you three USB 3.0 ports and an orange quick charge 3.0 USB port all of which connect through the Thunderbolt 3 cable to your laptop or other device the Box also of course requires wall power and will charge your laptop through Thunderbolt 3 that's supported the boxes internal layout is simple and taking the unipod is pretty much a breeze 1/2 is allocated to the compact GPU and the other to the power supply to small fans on the psu side help provide additional airflow into the case and the PSU itself has a rear exhaust fan these tiny 25 millimeter fans can be a bit noisy when idle but during full load it is drowned out by the graphics card fan the box isn't especially quiet when fully utilized but I wouldn't say it's loud either upgradability though is a pretty limited affair with the gaming box you do get two slots worth of space but length and height a serious concern so you need to find a super compact mini ITX style card if you wanted to upgrade and even then I'm not convinced all compact cards would fit likely the 450 watt power supply with 80-plus gold-level efficiency shouldn't present a power problem if you do want to upgrade and if you are planning to pull out the RX 580 from the gaming box to use in another system again you will have to be careful the exposed 120 millimeter fan on the cooler extends well beyond the bottom edge of the heatsink leaving just a few millimetres of clearance between the fan blades and the motherboard most desktop boards don't really have that sort of clearance as is the case with most a GPUs on the market the RX 580 gaming box NYX / Thunderbolt 3 and the setup process is extremely straightforward provided your laptops support Thunderbolt 3 just plug in the Box it powers itself up then you simply allow the device to connect when the Thunderbolt 3 utility pops up and should begin working a basic set of drivers is installed automatically - just like with nvidia gpus from there the whole process of using the gaming box is super simple you plug in the box to your system in the box will automatically turn on and switch to using external graphics unplugging the box it powers down automatically and switches the system back to its internal graphics you don't have to switch anything yourself the entire process works smoothly and perfectly every single time however there are some tips and tricks to get the best performance out of your eg PU there are two display options you can choose from either you can use an external display hooked up directly to the GPU outputs on a gaming box or you can let the box pass back a display signal to your laptops display if you don't have an external display hooked up passing the display signal back to your laptop sucks up some valuable fundable 3 bandwidth and noticeably hurts performance so we always recommend using an external display for gaming we tested the system like that also I don't recommend using the USB ports on the Gambian box while gaming either as that too sucks up thunder bot 3 bandwidth and can introduce performance drops and stuttering you really need to save every last drop of Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth for the GPU to get the best performance so stick to using the USB ports when you're not gaming so let's talk performance for this review I'm going to be discussing how the rx 580 gaming box performs in a handful of games are both 1080p and 1440 pay so you can get an idea of what sort of experience to expect I'm not going to be focusing on comparisons to other gaming boxes because we already know how the arts 580 stacks up against the gtx 1070 gtx 1016 so forth just watch some of our previous coverage if you're interested in that but of course there are some limitations to external GPUs that prevent you from getting desktop class performance to Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth and latency are the primary concerns Thunderbolt 3 latency introduces a performance penalty to any graphics card attached to any system so no matter how fast your CPU or GPU is the e GPU setup we'll never reach proper desktop level performance from identical components while this does hurt performance overall the latency penalty levels the playing field among mobile CPUs the difference in performance between an e GPU attached to a 15 watt u series laptop and a 45 watt h-series laptop is only a couple of percent in other words there's little advantage to using a processor like the six core core i7 8750 H over the quad core Core i7 8550 you provided you have a full full-length Thunderbolt 3 connection at your disposal it's also important to note that the latency penalty is not a true bottleneck of sorts a GTX 1080 EGP you will still outperform a gtx 1070 EGP you buy margins roughly similar to those cards in desktop systems but the performance of each of those cards is limited by Thunderbolt 3s latency the GTX 1080 isn't captor gtx 1070 level performance instead the latency penalty caps any cards performance - roughly 80% of what you get in a desktop system if you do have a two-lane Thunderbolt 3 device like some older dell XPS laptops you will be hitting a bandwidth cap on top of the latency penalty and that hurts performance by approximately 10% that's the background information about a GPU performance that you need to know for testing the RX many gaming box I used the gigabyte arrow 15 X which has a six core core i7 8750 H inside along with 16 gig of ddr4 2666 memory and a four-lane Thunderbolt 3 port at the moment this is pretty much the best-case laptop test platform for an e GPU but even if you have a less powerful laptop like something with an 8th gen you seriously PU you only be looking at a performance drop of a couple of percent at worst let's kick things off by looking at watchdogs 2 performance running at 1080p with the medium quality preset we're getting around 50 FPS average and a 37 fps 1% loge is quite respectable not the best experience you'll ever see but definitely playable and if you lift that up to 1440p you still get around 40 FPS with a 1% low above 30fps prey on the other hand is not looking good this is a game that is heavily impacted by the latency penalty producing just a 22 FPS 1% low at 1080p with the very high preset a proper gtx 1060 gaming laptop pushes well above 60fps 1% low in this title at the same quality setting so it's clear the RX 588 GPU is well behind in this title Middle Earth shadow of war is the game mode class is quite playable on the RX 580 gaming box provided you choose the right quality settings I tested with the high preset and got a 55 FPS average at 1080p and a 1% low above 30 FPS though to play at 1440p you might want to turn down a few settings i'm only going to briefly talk about Assassin's Creed origins because even the medium preset at 1080p was completely unplayable on the RX 5 any gaming box this game is comfortably playable in gtx 1060 laptop an Rx 588 GPU unfortunately doesn't cut it Star Wars Battlefront 2 runs really well on the RX 580 gaming box we're looking at 60 FPS average at 1080p with ultra settings and a 1% low of 42 fps you could quite comfortably plant 1440p if you want as that drops the average frame rate down to just 45 FPS while maintaining a 35 FPS 1% low turn down a few quality settings at 1440p and hitting a 60 FPS average is quite easy battlefield one runs reasonably well whether you're gaming at 1080p or 1440p both hit 1% loads above 30 fps and if you turn down the quality settings from ultra you can get a decent experience here though the game is less playable an actual see player barrels the final two games we have are dirt four which is not the title that gets absolutely obliterated by the latency penalty with way lower than expected performance for this GPU and far cry 5 which runs really well even using the ultra preset in Far Cry 5 I was able to hit a 42 FPS average with a tight 35 FPS 1% low and that was only reduced marginally when gaming at 1440p so there aren't too many surprises in regards to how the aurochs 580 gaming box performs it can transform a laptop with weak integrated graphics or an entry-level discrete GPU like the MX 150 into a decent-enough 1080p gaming machine provided you are willing to game at mid tier quality settings at around 60 fps or lower in some situations it might also be good for 1440p gaming considering the performance penalty moving from 1080p to 1440p is a surprisingly low 15 to 20 percent but as with a lot of external GPUs there are many things to consider the RX 5 many gaming box when hooked up to even a core i7 8750 H is nowhere near as fast as a proper gtx 1060 or rx 580 gaming laptop you're looking at upwards of 40% more performance from a GTX 1060 laptop if not double the performance in latency impacted titles the cheapest gtx 1060 laptops around a thousand bucks these days and that's a full system it's not just an a GPU the closest performing system to the RX 580 gaming box is a laptop with the gtx 1050 or gtx 750ti inside so it only really makes sense to get the arcs 580 gaming box if your existing system has worse than 1050 level graphics we're talking MX 150 or integrated graphics here which makes the RX 580 gaming box an upgrade on just the most basic laptop solutions and even then I probably wouldn't recommend it the gtx 1070 gaming box also from gigabyte it's just $50 more than the rx 580 model yet it includes a GPU that's currently $200 more expensive on the standalone market that's much better value because for just 10 percent more money you can expect at least 30% more performance plus of course for a lot of users that just want a system capable of gaming it makes more sense to go out and buy an entire gaming PC a GPUs is still a pretty niche product I think they will remain in that category until we see a better interface and Thunderbolt 3 come along so we can not get that latency penalty anymore I could see the rx 580 gaming box be a useful purchase for Mac owners is this a GPU does support Mac's whereas invidious a GPS is not officially supported but for most other buyers looking at an external graphics box for gaming with a Windows machine I would point you towards to the gtx 1070 gaming box instead that's it for this review of the RX 580 gaming box there are links to check the current prices for all of gigabytes each EPS in the description below subscribe to hardware box for more testing like this of a GPS and all sorts of other content and I'll catch you in the next one