GeForce RTX 2070-powered XPS 13 can run Metro Exodus on Ultra settings.. sort of

Thunderbolt 3 is capable of some amazing things for the smallest of Ultrabooks, but even external graphics docks could use some more bandwidth for playing the latest titles at full speed. We recently had the chance to check out the Gigabyte Aorus Gaming Box eGPU equipped with a desktop mini GeForce RTX 2070 to see how it would perform when paired with a Dell XPS 13 9380. Can the latest Nvidia GPU really super-charge an Ultrabook powered by an ULV 15 W Core i7-8565U CPU?

The good news is that the Gaming Box will indeed allow you to play demanding titles like Metro Exodus with all fancy features active including ray-tracing and DLSS. Much like on last year's Gaming Box GTX 1080, it's the simple ability to play the latest games on an Ultrabook that makes an eGPU worthwhile. The only other option would be game streaming which has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

The bad news is that the eGPU comes with a heavy performance deficit. When compared to a standard desktop RTX 2070, the Gaming Box RTX 2070 can be 30 to 45 percent slower. Running Metro Exodus at 1080p Ultra with both RTX and DLSS enabled results in an average frame rate of just 30.7 FPS compared to 52.3 FPS on a "proper" desktop with RTX 2070 graphics. This significant performance drop holds true for other settings as well and it's likely due to a combination of bottlenecks such as the ULV CPU and limited Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth.

Note that the numbers below were tested on an external monitor and not on the XPS 13 display. The latter option would have resulted in even slower performance as the already-strained Thunderbolt 3 port must relay video data back to the laptop for displaying on the internal monitor.

We'll have a full review on the Aorus Gaming Box RTX 2070 coming soon with more gaming benchmarks to show.