Alienware Graphics Amplifier: Another External Graphics Brick

[Computer LVR]

hate how people say we are bandwith bottlenecked. 4x is enough
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/14.html
look at the other games too

 

[Ninjawithagun]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7987/running-an-nvidia-gtx-780-ti-over-thunderbolt-2

Actual measurements seem to suggest that an x4 connection doesn't really hurt performance in most situations.

For a single graphics card, this may be true. But once you add a second card to run SLI or Crossfire and pump up the resolution to 4K and beyond, PCI-E 3.0 4X is not enough to handle all the data. The point is that Alienware could have easily chosen to go with a PCI-E 3.0 x16 connection. Without it, the Alienware Graphics Accelerator has a very limited lifespan. Case in point, MSI did exactly that with it's new laptop docking station system - it has a PCI-E 3.0 x16 connection. In fact, the MSI docking station can also support dual graphics cards!

 

[EasyLover]

Idea is old with many users want this tech but price itself is not justified.

 

[Ninjawithagun]

MSI GS30 Shadow 13.3" Ultrabook with External Desktop GPU Dock - CES 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrPIqYpq1E0

 

[jimhood82]

Wow - I have seen a lot of strange, sad comments in here. The one that takes the cake: "Consider you save your laptop from melting down, even alienware laptops will eventually die from gaming." Wow. Obviously someone that never owned an Alienware. I have seen dead Alienwares, certainly. The last one had someone drop a couch on the screen. Seriously. None dead from gaming.

So, lets look at a few things folks.
1: All of you commenting on the 4x electrical connection misread the statement in the article. "The input card looked like it was a PCI-Express 8x card, and upon asking we were told that it was actually operating over just four lanes" The INPUT card. You know, the one with the USB ports on it. THAT is the card running on 4x lanes. Now then, looking at: http://ark.intel.com/products/78930/Intel-Core-i7-4710HQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz , it appears the CPU only supports 16 lanes total. So something has to happen here. Most likely (this is a guess) there is an electronic switching device internally to send 16 lanes to the GPU and 4 lanes to the IO. Consider for a moment, that there are up to 8 PCI-E 2.0 lanes offered up by the PCH. It is very possible that 4 lanes are being used for the IO device, and the last 4 used by the system internally. Audio and 1 Gig-E port are supplied by the PCH, so the remainder could easily be used for the M.2 ports... There is a lot of complaining done about bandwidth, when the chip itself is certainly capable of it, and NOTHING so far has indicated that bandwidth is actually an issue.

Now, lets look at the REAL issues that came with this. First and foremost, Alienware did away with CPU and GPU upgrades across their entire mobile lineup. They also limited the amount of RAM available (from 4 slots on the 17 to 2 slots - thus a 16GB limit), limited the VRAM on the GTX980m (from 8GB to 4), did away with metal chassis (to a carbon fiber/plastic mix), and killed the 18 entirely - so no more SLI.

 

[loki1944]

This, or something like the MSI one, would be awesome for me when I have buddies come over, just snap a couple of these with a high midrange card like a 290/780/970 to my i7 gaming laptops. It'd be interesting to see the performance on the x4 first to see how big a deal it would be performance-wise.

 

[sumon555666]

I think it is very important for me but i don't know proper use it. Somebody can help me?

 

[brash47]

You spend lets say, $1499 for the Alienware 17 R2, which is the latest low end 17" laptop they released. You get a great gaming laptop with all the portability, which is why you buy the gaming laptop. Now, you want a good gaming rig at home, because your rig is years old and will cost approx. another $1000 to $2000 to build from the ground up. Or, you purchase the Alienware Graphics Amplifier for $269-$299, slap in a GTX 970 for $375 or a GTX 960 for $200.

When you are at home, plug in the laptop to the amplifier and you have your home gaming rig. When its time to leave, unplug and go. How hard is this idea folks? Its actually a decent solution to having 2 computers, one mobile and one stuck at home.

Why on earth are you buying a gaming laptop and then this to take around anywhere? Use some common sense. Its a double solution. I don't think Alienware had the idea of some knucklehead throwing a $1500 laptop and this brick, and a screen into a backpack and going to your buddies house to game.