Dell to start certifying external graphics options for its XPS notebooks

You may soon be able to add quite a bit of extra graphical "oomph" to your Dell XPS laptop. Speaking on Twitter (via NotebookCheck), Dell's Alienware and XPS General Manager Frank Azor stated that a surge of customer interested has prompted his team to start the process of certifying external GPU (eGPU) boxes for use with at least the XPS 15.

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While the XPS 15 is the only specific model mentioned, Azor responded further down in the thread saying that his team "will try" to do the same for the XPS 13.

Azor's response itself came in reply to a Reddit thread about the XPS 15 9560 discussing its incompatibility with newer eGPU solutions despite having the hardware to support them. While they aren't officially supported, it appears that all that is needed is a firmware update to allow the laptop to work over Thunderbolt with newer eGPU boxes that use a TI83 controller.

In any case, this is far from a guarantee the XPS 15 will get eGPU support, but it's a start. If support is added, it would certainly go a long way towards making the XPS 15 a solid option for not only getting stuff done on the road, but gaming while at home.

Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl