this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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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
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?
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).