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.
@jackeyjoe True that we haven't validated any eGPU boxes with XPS 15 yet. We never stated that we did. Based on demand we will begin to now.@jackeyjoe True that we haven't validated any eGPU boxes with XPS 15 yet. We never stated that we did. Based on demand we will begin to now.— Frank Azor (@AzorFrank) February 9, 2017February 9, 2017
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.
