Can an Old Laptop Paired with a Desktop GPU Run Modern Games?

Remember when we connected a desktop GPU to a laptop and it significantly improved said laptop's gaming performance? Good times. Now it's time to push things a bit further. We're going to try the old laptop with desktop GPU setup, this time with a 2008 Dell Inspiron 1525.

Watch the video below:

Our laptop in question has a Core 2 Duo processor that runs at 1.8Ghz, a whopping 2GB DDR2 memory, and an Intel 965 integrated graphics chipset which is basically nonexistent and won't be able to play any kind of game. It initially came with a 32-bit Windows Vista, but I went on ahead and reformatted the thing to install a 64-bit version of Windows 10.

For our external GPU, we'll be using the same system as last time- a GeForce GTX 560 paired with an EXP-GDC eGPU mount, which is then connected to the laptop's PCIe port.

Dell Inspiron 1525, Asus GTX 560mounted via EXP-GDC 

To make things fast and simple, we'll only be testing two things: one, the Unigine Heaven benchmark software and two, Final Fantasy XIV. First we'll be trying the two applications without the external GPU- as you can see, it can't even run Final Fantasy XIV from the get-go:

In Unigine, it's running on a mind-blowing 1 frame per second. You can get that sweet 60 fps in a minute lol.

Now with the eGPU on, Unigine Heaven ran with an okay 17 frames per second. Remember that this is a very old machine, a Core 2 Duo paired with an old video card so we can't expect it to run 60 or even 30 fps.

The results are out! With the eGPU, it runs on an okay 18.1 fps with a score of 456. wow, that's like almost 2000% better than the previous results we had.

Running Final Fantasy XIV with the eGPU, we get around 25-30 frames per second average. So from something it can't run in the first place to somewhat being playable, it's a huge improvement.

Now imagine using this eGPU with a current generation graphics card on a modern laptop. The difference would be huge! In fact, if you check my old video or article, my 4th-gen i7 laptop with a dedicated GeForce GPU was running FFXIV with an average of 30 fps by itself, but when used with the eGPU, the average fps got boosted to around a stable 60.

Anyway! That's about it. For more tech stuff, along with food, games, and anime, keep checking out my site! I'll try to write whenever I can. Peace out!