The 'world's smallest' external GPU would make for a super portable laptop power-up alongside a pair of generous cargo shorts
At 225 x 111 x 29.8mm, the GPD G1 External Graphics Dock is arguably only pocket-sized if you have extremely large pockets. But I'm willing to make oversized cargo shorts my entire look if it means I can easily supercharge my compact 13-inch 2-in-1 laptop and have it turn it into something resembling a gaming laptop with this eGPU plugged in.
This compact external GPU is powered by AMD's Radeon RX 7600M XT. That's the best mobile chip out of AMD's 7000-series generation so far, delivering 21.4 TFLOPs of compute performance.
As for how that equates to gaming performance, Notebook Check reviewed the slightly slower RX 7600S and found it's on par with Nvidia's RTX 3060 mobile chip. On the product page for the GPD Win Max 2, which is being sold with the GPD G1, GPD says the eGPU will exceed the performance of an RTX 3070, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
At the very least we can expect pretty RTX 3060 or better performance out of the 7600M XT, if it's not too constrained by the G1 dock's compact shell.
The G1's finish does give me hope for pretty decent temperatures, though it will need to disperse 75–120W for the 7600M XT. Included with the G1 is a 240W GaN power supply, so no issues there. It's possible the G1 may pull that GPU back a bit to keep it from throttling too badly, but as GPD notes this dock is a joint development with AMD so ideally they're getting the most out of it.
The world exclusive pocketable eGPU!#gpdg1 pic.twitter.com/9k9xMIlIW3May 19, 2023
The size of the dock shouldn't pose too much of a problem for that mainstream GPU, as the competing and only slightly larger ROG XG Mobile comes with pick of two chunkier cards, the RX 6850M XT or RTX 4090M.
We have an AMD-powered XG Mobile to hand right
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