Can Surface Laptop Studio use an eGPU?
By Zac Bowden published

Can Surface Laptop Studio use an eGPU?
Can Surface Laptop Studio use an eGPU?
Thanks to Thunderbolt 4, the Surface Laptop Studio can use an external GPU. However, in our testing the eGPU compatibility has been a little buggy. It does work, and you can find yourself benefiting from huge performance increases by hooking up a more powerful GPU, but Windows can sometimes get confused and cause the display drivers to crash.
For the most part, it should work absolutely fine. But our executive editor, Daniel Rubino, found himself having to factory reset the Surface Laptop Studio not once, but twice, because Windows messed up the driver install, and the display stopped working entirely.
To hook up an eGPU, just plug its USB-C cable into one of the Surface Laptop Studio's USB-C ports, and Windows should do the rest. It'll install the correct drivers for your external GPU, and then you should be good to go with options to configure your GPU settings in NVIDIA's Control Panel or Windows Settings.
You should keep in mind that using an eGPU will reduce performance of the GPU you're using externally by about 20%, due to the nature of having to transfer that power and data through a USB-C cable first. This is standard for any eGPU setup, however, and shouldn't be much of a problem for most use cases.
Be sure to check out our best Thunderbolt laptops if you're interested in other PCs that support eGPUs.
Surface Laptop Studio
Best Surface laptop yet
Surface Laptop Studio delivers a powerful, flexible, workstation-style PC perfect for artists, engineers, and some light gaming. No other laptop currently does everything it can do at this level. But, like all Surfaces, you pay for that experience.
Razer Core X
Great hardware and great value
Pairing any laptop with the Core X is a smart choice, with this little box packing a 650W power supply to handle anything you want to throw inside it while keeping the price sensible
Zac Bowden is a Senior Editor at Windows Central. Bringing you exclusive coverage into the world of Windows 10 on PCs, tablets, phones, and more. Also an avid collector of rare Microsoft prototype devices! Keep in touch on Twitter: @zacbowden.
Get the best of Windows Central in in your inbox, every day!
Thank you for signing up to Windows Central. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.