u/Bumblebee-13

I'm looking for a laptop for college which will run with a gigabyte aoeus ai box 5060ti (16gb vram). Is there any sureshot way of knowing if a laptop supports eGPUs because I have been reading that thunderbolt 4/usb4 doesn't always mean egpus are supported ...

I have been trying to find out if the ASUS Zenbook 14 (2026),Intel Core Ultra 9 285H (UX3405CA-QL1016WS) will support it but the model was just released and I don't think people have tried it... Also it would be nice to know how to differentiate egpu compatible laptops from non egpu compatible laptops incase I decide to upgrade my laptop anytime soon...

LAPTOP QUESTIONNAIRE

• Total budget (in local currency) and country of purchase. Please do not use USD unless purchasing in the US: INR 160,000, India
• Are you open to refurbs/used? No
• How would you prioritize form factor (ultrabook, 2-in-1, etc.), build quality, performance, and battery life? ultrabook>performance>battery life>build quality
• How important is weight and thinness to you? does not matter.
• Do you have a preferred screen size? If indifferent, put N/A. 14+inches
• Are you doing any CAD/video editing/photo editing/gaming? List which programs/games you desire to run. Local LLMs, ollama etc.
• If you're gaming, do you have certain games you want to play? At what settings and FPS do you want? N/A
• Any specific requirements such as good keyboard, reliable build quality, touch-screen, finger-print reader, optical drive or good input devices (keyboard/touchpad)? N/A
• Leave any finishing thoughts here that you may feel are necessary and beneficial to the discussion. N/A

I have been looking out for a ultrabook for college, somewhere in the price range of 1-1.5lac INR. My primary usecase would be for coding sessions, running local ai models, and it must have a great battery life because i end up travelling a lot for competitions etc. and preferably should also have thunderbolt 4/usb 4 in case if i decide to use external gpus later (Eliminates Apple M series and Snapdragon X elite).

I have basically narrowed it down to two laptops (any better alternatives in the indian laptop market are welcome)

1. ASUS Zenbook S16,AMD Ryzen AI 9 465 Processor (32GB/1TB/AMD Radeon Graphics/40.64 cms (16) OLED Touch 3K) UM5606GA-SR248WS priced at around 1.6lac
2. ASUS Zenbook 14, Intel Core Ultra 9 285H (32GB/1TB/Intel Arc Graphics/35.56 cm (14) OLED Touch FHD+) UX3405CA-QL1016WS priced at around 1.2lac

As far as i understood, the only difference between these two is screen and NPU, from benchmarks online they seem pretty similar in terms of cpu, igpu performance (i referred to tomshardware website for the igpu comparison). While i do not require that 3k oled 120hz panel, I'm not so sure about the Ai NPU on each of the laptops...

Intel has 13TOPs compared to the 50TOPs on AMD. However I also read that Intel has better TOPS on the gpu and if im running models on them id possibly get similar performance.

Please note, I have zero experience running local ai models before, im literally upgrading from an i3 6006u laptop with intel hd 520 graphics (which was released in 2016) and until now i have always used cloud models.

Hence, i would like to know is there is going to be any performance difference between these two, and if there is, does it seem worth the extra 40k?

I have been looking out for a ultrabook for college, somewhere in the price range of 1-1.5lac INR. My primary usecase would be for coding sessions, running local ai models, and it must have a great battery life because i end up travelling a lot for competitions etc. and preferably should also have thunderbolt 4/usb 4 in case if i decide to use external gpus later (Eliminates Apple M series and Snapdragon X elite).

I have basically narrowed it down to two laptops (any better alternatives in the indian laptop market are welcome)

1. ASUS Zenbook S16,AMD Ryzen AI 9 465 Processor (32GB/1TB/AMD Radeon Graphics/40.64 cms (16) OLED Touch 3K) UM5606GA-SR248WS priced at around 1.6lac
2. ASUS Zenbook 14, Intel Core Ultra 9 285H (32GB/1TB/Intel Arc Graphics/35.56 cm (14) OLED Touch FHD+) UX3405CA-QL1016WS priced at around 1.2lac

As far as i understood, the only difference between these two is screen and NPU, from benchmarks online they seem pretty similar in terms of cpu, igpu performance (i referred to tomshardware website for the igpu comparison). While i do not require that 3k oled 120hz panel, I'm not so sure about the Ai NPU on each of the laptops...

Intel has 13TOPs compared to the 50TOPs on AMD. However I also read that Intel has better TOPS on the gpu and if im running models on them id possibly get similar performance.

Please note, I have zero experience running local ai models before, im literally upgrading from an i3 6006u laptop with intel hd 520 graphics (which was released in 2016) and until now i have always used cloud models.

Hence, i would like to know is there is going to be any performance difference between these two, and if there is, does it seem worth the extra 40k?