Guild Wars 2. Dell Studio 1569 eGPU?

I was curious to know if anyone knew if my laptop was compatible with the DIY eGPU. I'm looking forward to playing guild wars 2, but as is with intel HD Graphics it won't be possible. I want to know if possible what to buy to build and whats the cheapest Graphics card that will handle the setup. Thank you in advance.

I'm running windows 7 home premium 64 bit.
intel core i5 m 450 @2.40GHz.
intel HD Graphics.
8GB RAM(7.80 usable).

 

I hate to ask this, and I normally wouldn't, but what's eGPU?

 

"External GPU" or "External Graphics card"such as ViDock or Do it yourself version.

 

Wouldn't you rather upgrade your internal GPU? It'll be cheaper and give you better gaming performance. Also, getting an external kills the laptops portability.

 

I would assume that as with most laptops, upgrading the internal GPU is not an option.

If he could, it's most likely more expensive than an eGPU, and not exactly what he would like, performance wise.

I would think a desktop card would give you a better performance-to-price ratio, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

And while an eGPU makes your laptop not very portable, it's a plug and play solution mainly used at home. If you were wanting to take it travelling, you could enclose your solution in a padded case, like one you'd use for a Vita or DS, or make a custom enclosure.

Take this all with a grain of salt, as I don't know much about eGPU's other than that I'll be making one in about a year for a soon-to-be-mine W530.

 

It depends on the ports your laptop has. If you have an Expresscard slot then you can set an eGPU up pretty easily. However if not, you will need to use mPCIe slots, which usually means that you have to take the backplate of your machine off and probably take out the wireless card (you can use an external wifi card after of course). The latter is not a very convenient solution of course and it's also slower than the Expresscard method.

 

Expresscard and mPCIe provide the exact same performance. They will run at whatever speed the I/O chipset allows. In the OP's case, it's a Series-5 chipset so either will run at x1 1.0 link speed.

As for the original question, the OP has a more convenient expresscard slot and a Intel HD iGPU. Means a PE4L 1.5 or PE4H 2.4 + s/h GTX460-1GB (336 core) + 12V/15A PSU would be all that's required to get x1.Opt performance. Plenty of examples of those at http://forum.notebookreview.com/e-gpu-external-graphics-discussion/418851-diy-egpu-experiences.html .

Still, if the opportunity presented itself I would recommend upgrading to a Sandy Bridge notebook with an iGPU + expresscard slot. They run a Series-6 chipset which double bandwidth so a PE4L 2.1b can run at x1.2OPt link speed.

 

Wow, you really know your stuff.I'm about to order the PERH 2.4 ec2c set but is there a cheaper alternative for the video card? I kinda have a $100 budget. =[