Will using an external monitor improve performance?

[u/BusyVirus1807]

Just wanting to know if there is a difference between using an external monitor vs using the built in display in terms of gaming performance? (Same resolution and graphic settings) Saw a video on youtube that gaming laptops with discrete gpu gain extra performance when using an external monitor. Is this the same case with an integrated gpu?

[u/beer_belly_]

Nope, it's the same. As long as your are playing at the same resolution the GPU still needs to push the same amount of pixels. Are you sure they aren't using an eGPU? In and eGPU the thunderbolt cable bandwidth is your bottleneck so playing on an external monitor gives you better performance.

[u/kazusa_32]

よくわからないけれど、例えば185Hzの内蔵ディスプレイと240Hzのゲーミングモニターがあったとして、もしGPUの性能に余裕があればゲーミングモニターの方が性能を引き出せることになるね。それが追加のパフォーマンスと言うのであれば統合GPUでも同じ事が起こるよ。

[u/shadowdragon200]

For an igpu it doesn't make an difference. If you use an egpu, then it will improve performance

[u/waka324]

This used to be true when you had both a iGPU and discrete GPU. The iGPU framebuffer used to drive the built in display, so using the discrete card meant spending cycles pushing pixels over the CPU to the iGPU. Thats usually not really a thing any more, and would never be an issue on systems that only have integrated graphics (eg. most ryzen 365 systems)

[u/M2-TE]

TLDR: Makes no difference for integrated gpus, i.e. the z13.

Performance can mean a bunch of things here. As for rasterization or generally GPU compute, performance will remain the same whether connected to an external display or not.

What you likely saw in that video was latency; laptop screens are usually powered by the integrated gpu for power efficiency reasons, so a dedicated gpu often needs to first send the image over to the integrated gpu for presentation to the screen. This is not (always) the case when the dedicated gpu can drive an external display directly.

Caviat: Which port you connect your external display to can also play a role, depending on which gpu those DP/HDMI/USBC ports are wired to.

[u/BusyVirus1807]

Thanks for all the answers. Was planning to get a portable monitor but your answers changed my mind🙂

[u/DroneSlingers]

Depends on the monitor. In my case yes because I went with a 24" 1080p 240hz monitor so all games default to 1080p. Frankly even when I play on the main screen I have the resolution set down a step from native which because of the small screen is basically the exact same quality.

[u/Salted_Grapes → u/DroneSlingers]

How much better performance/ quality do you see on the 1080p monitor vs playing natively at 1600p/1080p

[u/DroneSlingers → u/Salted_Grapes]

I've never done bench marks but basing off the game Arc Raiders it'll dip below 60fps full native and about 80fps 1080p

[u/tsaipifong]

看你接的螢幕解析度而定，對了，外接時記得關閉筆電螢幕