I am using an Nvidia 2080TI in the TH3P4G3 dock on my Framework 16 laptop and it is super slow.
On Windows I am getting 80+ FPS in Satisfactory, my testing game, but in Linux I am getting closer to 20 FPS. Also the desktop connected to the GPU is full of latency like jello.
If I run the game on the internal display I get up to 50 FPS so I think what is happening is that the eGPU is routing like this eGPU → iGPU → eGPU → display instead of eGPU → display and that hop adds latency and steals bandwidth the card needs.
I have tried will all prime modes and even with blacklisting the AMD driver for the iGPU, but the blacklist just makes SDDM not want to load and the prime modes change nothing.
I am at an impasse because if I cant fix this I would need to go to Windows for all gaming and I would have to deal with the jello on the desktop.
Does the Framework laptop have a discreteGPU on board?
Does the Framework laptop support disabling the internal drives via the firmware and booting over USB?
I have recently switched to using an eGPU with a laptop with no discreteGPU on board and it is fantastic, however I don’t really play games so I have no idea if the frame rate is good or not.
It only has the iGPU since the dGPU addon was not worth it for me when I had my old 2080ti.
Also it can boot over USB but I dont see how that would help this problem.
Are you using Xorg or Wayland? I have only tried Xorg and I found my automatic xorg.conf was a little unusual in that it had two references using the same name. If you have an AMD GPU and a NVidia GPU I am guessing you could see the same thing.
Failing that, I know I went line by line to get mine to run well. Fine grained power was one of the major buttons for me.
You could also post the configs you’ve tried, someone might spot something…
ps : Sorry, the USB boot was about a possible option to have up your sleeve… Boot an external USB drive with MS Windows on it for games. You do need to be able to disable the internal drive(s) though or, encrypted or not, they will be at risk. It is just an idea, I have several people who now do this, separating work from play.
