These are the best graphics cards to use in an external GPU …

Using an external graphics card for gaming or professional 3D work is a great way to boost your laptop’s graphics power, but buying the best eGPU enclosure is only half the battle. You also need to buy a graphics card, and this isn’t as straightforward as buying the best graphics card you can buy. As powerful as Thunderbolt 3 and 4 are, they aren’t fast enough for the fastest cards.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good experience using external graphics. Here are the best graphics cards to use as an eGPU.

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amd radeon rx 7600

Best eGPU for most gamers

Why you should buy this: It offers great performance for playing games at 1080p at a great price.

what’s that for: eGPU Gamers who want a modern, capable GPU for 1080p gaming.

What we thought about the AMD Radeon RX 7600:

The AMD RX 7600 is a great entry-level graphics card from AMD’s latest RDNA 3 generation. This gives it excellent performance for 1080p gaming, and makes it a great candidate for eGPU gaming. It has a low 165-watt TDP and a compact size, so it will fit with any external graphics enclosure.

This card is so low-power that you’ll be able to use it to its full potential without the hindrance of the USB/Thunderbolt interface, and with optimized FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) support, it’ll deliver truly impressive performance in compatible games. It’s not powerful enough for 1440p, but you’ll be able to play most games at a steady 60 frames per second (fps) on medium or high settings with this card.

If you want to save a little, you can opt for the previous generation RX 6600, but it’s about a third slower, if not much money.

amd radeon rx 7600

Best eGPU for most gamers

nvidia rtx 4060

Best Nvidia GPU for eGPU

Why you should buy this: It is a great alternative to RX 7600.

what’s that for: Nvidia fans who want DLSS support.

What we thought about the Nvidia RTX 4060:

The Nvidia RTX 4060 is a good current-generation graphics card with solid performance, great ray tracing performance for the money, and full support for Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling algorithm. This combination makes it a great alternative to the RX 7600 we recommend at the top, but it comes with a much higher price tag.

You get DLSS support for it, and CUDA support in a range of professional applications, so this would be a great choice for an eGPU user who wants to work and play with their new external graphics card. It is also relatively compact and energy efficient, so it should work in almost any eGPU enclosure.

It lacks the performance needed for high resolution play, but you shouldn’t have any major hiccups with this card.

nvidia rtx 4060

Best Nvidia GPU for eGPU

amd rx 6750 xt

Best graphics card for 1440p

Why you should buy this: This is a powerful graphics card at a good price.

what’s that for: Gamers who want to play at 1440p without spending a lot.

What we thought about the AMD RX 6750 XT:

The RX 6750 XT may be a refresh of the previous generation, but it has proven to be one of the most enduring graphics cards of its generation. It offers excellent performance that competes with much more modern cards, and it has 12GB of VRAM, meaning it avoids all the problems some 8GB cards face as demanding modern games grow. It will still be fast many years into the future, where cards with 8GB or less may suffer.

It’s a last generation design, so its ray tracing performance isn’t great, but given its vintage status it’s incredibly affordable. It lacks support for DLSS, but does support FSR, so in compatible games, you can get a big boost in performance.

You’ll probably notice some hiccups with this card due to the constraints of the USB/Thunderbolt interface you’re connecting it to, but it won’t be so severe that you’ll feel like you’ve wasted your money.

amd rx 6750 xt

Best graphics card for 1440p

nvidia rtx 4070 ti

Best high-end graphics cards for eGPU

Why you should buy this: It is a powerful graphics card with DLSS and CUDA core support.

what’s that for: Gamers and workers who want to maximize their eGPU performance.

What we thought about the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti

There are better graphics cards available than the RTX 4070 Ti, but this is as powerful as you can go with an eGPU without experiencing extreme bottlenecks. Paired with a powerful CPU and memory it is capable of 1080p, 1440p and even a little 4K gameplay, although it is designed with 1440p in mind.

Its ray tracing performance is fantastic thanks to the new generation RT core, which opens up higher detail settings in a range of games. However, the real kicker as an eGPU is its DLSS support. This gives it much better performance in compatible games while reducing the bandwidth demands of native rendering.

It also features a large amount of CUDA cores, making it an excellent GPU for accelerating professional and creative tasks in compatible software. It’s expensive, and you won’t be able to utilize its full power, but it’s a great all-around eGPU for top-tier performance.

It’s also about the fastest graphics card produced by Nvidia that can actually fit in most eGPU enclosures. The RTX 4080 and 4090 are more powerful, but they are huge and their power requirements are much higher.

nvidia rtx 4070 ti

Best high-end graphics cards for eGPU

amd rx 7800 xt

Best high-end graphics cards for eGPU gaming

Why you should buy this: This is a powerful graphics card for 1440p and 4K gameplay.

what’s that for: Gamers who want as much power as they can get for their eGPU.

What we thought about the AMD RX 7800 XT:

The AMD RX 7800 XT is one of the best in the latest generation of graphics cards, offering impressive performance at a very affordable price. It uses AMD’s latest RDNA 3 architecture, giving it not only great general rasterization performance, but also impressive ray tracing performance for AMD GPUs.

It has 16GB of VRAM, so you’re future-proofed against next-generation games with higher RAM requirements, and it’s optimized for FSR, so you can really boost your performance in compatible games. It also supports FSR 3, so you can use AI to further increase your frame rates.

This GPU will be hindered by the eGPU interface, so don’t expect desktop-grade performance. However, this is not so severe that you are losing half the power of the card like you are losing with top GPUs. And it’s capable of playing any game you want to play in any setting.

amd rx 7800 xt

Best high-end graphics cards for eGPU gaming

If you don’t care about the bottleneck – or are hoping that Thunderbolt 5 will save you from it – then check out our list of the best graphics cards overall. There are some even more powerful options on that list.