GTrusted

In the past, you would be stuck with whatever graphics processors comes with your notebook, limiting the upgrade flexibility that you could get from motherboard and desktop systems.  However, using Thunderbolt 3 technology, you now have the option to use different graphics cards and keep up with the technology as faster cards inevitably become available.

In the case of the high end gaming notebook Dell Alienware 17 R4, the NVidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU is built-in complementing Intel's internal graphics processor.  

 

Let's see how using Thunderbolt 3 to attach a TUL-PowerColor Devil Box hosting a PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 480 8GB GDDR5 graphics card effects graphics performance.

To compare graphics performance, we used Rise of the Tomb Raider's DX12 benchmarking and captured frames per second (fps) results.

Without the TUL-PowerColor Devil Box, we achieved got an overall score of 29.48fps running the game on the Dell Alienware 17 R4 connected to an external 4K display.  The NVidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU was clearly hitting its stride.

After adding the TUL-PowerColor Devil Box, the Dell Alienware 17 R4 achieved a similar 28.54fps overall score running on the same 4K display.  Given that the AMD Radeon RX 480 used in the PowerColor external graphics card and NVidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU are both high end graphics cards, it's not surprising to see similar levels of graphics performance. 

It's good to see that the TUL-PowerColor Devil Box and PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 480 8GB GDDR5 graphics card combo enables a similar level of graphics performance compared to top of the line GPU's embedded inside the notebook PC.  As silicon transistor sizes continue to shrink and GPU's get faster, you can continue to upgrade your Dell Alienware 17 R4 graphics performance with Thunderbolt technology and the TUL-PowerColor Devil Box.