akeean

It does not have Thunderbolt 3, so eGPU will not be 'without any issues' or work for sure. Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

Another neat non-hardware fix: Use msi afterburner in your current game to display per core cpu&gpu usage. Then once you got a feel for if the specific game is gpu or cpu bound, set a speed limit for the component that is not needed to run vs fast, to give more thermal headroom for the part that you'll run faster thanks to nvidia boost 2.0 / intel turbo boost. I have a gt740m and a i7 4700mq, most of the time the cpu is not that stressed, while the gpu is at 99%-100% in a given game. In that case I use ThrottleStop to limit my cpu speed to a multiplier of 24 (so it runs at the top base clock of 2,4ghz instead of boosting up to 3,4 ghz) this gives me enough thermal capacity on the unified cooler with dual headpipe to overclock the gpu by 150mhz to the maxmum possible in msi. afterburner and keeping each part at under 80c, despite overclocking&a noticable boost in whatever game I'm on. Gotta get myself some copper shivs tho and mod the heatsink. Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

Thanks for the summary. 2012 means it's connected via a x1 PCIe Gen 2 lane? What resolution did you test on? This one fares much better & closer to expectation on a x1 pcie connection. Stupid question: Is optimus compression enabled? This should save quite some bandwith&might explan the performance loss. I don't know if it would work without the compression enabled at all, but maybe this points you towards a fix. I'm not on eGPU yet, so not speaking from experience, but looking for a similar setup&reading up on the matter. Will be with a PCIe 3 system and a i7 4700MQ. Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk