External Graphics Over PCIe 3.0? Netstor's NA255A, Reviewed

[dalethepcman]

[citation][nom]downhill911[/nom]Tomshardware Please please review this one! Thanks ViDock 4 Plus Overdrive (Two 6-Pin/320W/329mm) $279US Plus $30US Worldwide Shippinghttp://www.villageinstruments.com/ [...] age=ViDockUnboxing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymYbE3JawLk[/citation]

No review needed. This uses an Express card for inter-connectivity. That's PCIE Gen 1 or 2 1X speed.

 

[bryonhowley]

[citation][nom]slomo4sho[/nom]An expensive solution to inferior Mac hardware...[/citation]
For me that is what a Hackintosh is for. I have a nice Mac Pro but the hardware is so limited on it that I have not even used it for over a year. I do dual boot my i5 3570K rig with Windows 8 and OS X 10.8.3 though. I like the OS but on the hardware side for me it is just to much for what you get.

 

[shikamaru31789]

I really hope one day someone will manage to do external graphics for cheap. I dream of being able to buy a laptop with integrated graphics for general use without using too much power, and use an external discrete desktop graphics card for gaming, at a price cheap enough to beat the price/performance ratio of mobile graphics. Just an external box with some vents and maybe some small fans, a power supply that can power mid-high end discrete graphics, big enough to hold at least mid-high end discrete graphics, and some of way of connecting it to a laptop with decent data transfer speeds for less than $200.

Buy like a $600 laptop, a $200 external graphics box, and a $200 dicrete graphics card, beat the performance of a 680m for cheaper. Or be able to build a small HTPC with an APU in a case too small for discrete graphics and have discrete graphics available on the side for the more demanding games.

 

[dscudella]

Interesting thought, what if these are, somehow, the future of home "entertainment"? One central GPU for the graphics needs of a whole house. Interface it with your Quad Core tablet, all in one, or SERVER and you have instant graphics horsepower for whatever you're doing.

 

[dscudella]

My thought is pretty much on the same as Shikamaru, didn't read the last few comments before posting.

 

[slomo4sho]

[citation][nom]jupiter optimus maximus[/nom]a grand total of 16 GTX Titans for massive GPU computation. All for a grand total of $13,800. Massive electric bill, here i come![/citation]


Math is clearly not your strength...

 

[RedJaron]

Interesting product. Definitely niche, but for serious workstation performance without the noise and cooling in the workstation itself, this thing is pretty impressive.

 

[sna]

[citation][nom]RedJaron[/nom]Interesting product. Definitely niche, but for serious workstation performance without the noise and cooling in the workstation itself, this thing is pretty impressive.[/citation]

I made this box long time ago, this is off the shelves product.

the PCIe PLX cards have been there for 2 years , including the PCI express external cables.

and it costed me around 300$ only

and those selling at 2000$ are thiefs.

 

[groundrat]

Money to burn... Not much of that these days.

pass.

 

[InvalidError]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]PCIE signals scale poorly to long wires. So it is a technical achievement to have these signals travel over a meter of wire.[/citation]
10Gbps or even faster over a few meters is not that hard to do. You just need more tightly controlled wire and connector electrical characteristics. This is why external enclosures all have transceiver chips to drive external cables instead of wiring PCIe lanes directly to external connectors.

With Thunderbolt, this problem gets split in two: putting the line drivers in the cable allows cable manufacturers to use whatever transmission/signaling method/media they want between cable ends (optical, twisted pair, coax, stripline, etc.) and isolates the line from the connector interfaces so they can be treated independently, which should make even higher speeds more manageable. If someone made an external enclosure relying on active PCIe cables (a dumbed-down form of Thunderbolt), they would likely only need passive slot-to-external host adapters.

 

[Levi Hen]

im sorry but NVIDIA GRID beats this hands down, and it is fast enough to render transformers 3 realtime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRdSxZtUpFk

 

[e-z e]

I was curious if there were any detrimental effects to frame latency? Or did I miss the charts?

 

[jesot]

This is really cool.

I'm wondering how far apart you can have this unit from the PCIe card on the computer.

 

[Tanquen]

The Bitcoin numbers are odd, I get 1350 with just two 7970 cards. ???

 

[masmotors]

im no pc expert just a reguler joe who likes to game and upgrade and make my own pc this is a horrible idea just make a x79 with 3770k rig or crosshair5with 8350 amd with 2 7990s well that my 2 censt

 

[RobAC]

@downhill911

I just did a 3 part series How To for the ViDock 4 Plus setup and benchmarks heat noise etc. using an ASUS Nvidia 660 Ti OC here:

http://youtu.be/ZIZw3GPwKMo


enjoy

Rob

 

[RobAC]

[citation][nom]downhill911[/nom]Tomshardware Please please review this one! Thanks ViDock 4 Plus Overdrive (Two 6-Pin/320W/329mm) $279US Plus $30US Worldwide Shippinghttp://www.villageinstruments.com/ [...] age=ViDockUnboxing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymYbE3JawLk[/citation]

Argh- ignore my reply to you above- my first post on here and first mess up... I can't seem to go back and edit it.

Anyway hopefully this link comes out showing the first of a 3 part How To setup of the ViDock 4 Plus / Nvidia 660 Ti OC benchmarks heat noise etc. that I just did recently: http://youtu.be/ZIZw3GPwKMo

If the link does not show up then blame my diaper wearing newbie status.

Rob C. Agnew

 

[Novuake]

I think I will buy an APU based laptop and mid-high end workstation or high end gaming PC instead. $2200 not including ANY actual hardware. #snort#

 

[ElHarry]

[citation][nom]sna[/nom]I made this box long time ago, this is off the shelves product.the PCIe PLX cards have been there for 2 years , including the PCI express external cables.and it costed me around 300$ onlyand those selling at 2000$ are thiefs.[/citation]

Gen 3? Where do you get those?

I've been looking for an external gen 3 enclosure so I can do environmental testing on Gen 3 boards without exposing my host system to the heat/cold and humidity. This NA255A would be great, as long as it can survive an environmental chamber.

 

[mikenygmail]

Ridiculously overpriced.

 

[A Bad Day]

[citation][nom]Novuake[/nom]I think I will buy an APU based laptop and mid-high end workstation or high end gaming PC instead. $2200 not including ANY actual hardware. #snort#[/citation]

I had plans of buying an i7 laptop with a thunderbolt port, then getting an external 7850. But the cost for the metal box was... Expensive...

 

[KarlSHO]

I would be interested in seeing the TurboBox attached to a VMware server with 4 virtual workstations.

 

[jesot]

It's overpriced by about $2100, but it's an incredibly useful technology.

 

[Henrik Olsson]

man this tech needs to be applied into laptops and docking stations. just think about it most laptops have very powerfull cpus and the issue often falls to the gpu for slowing things down this would remove the issues of gpu bound things on the laptop while you are home or in the office. and when you are mobile you have sacrificed the power for the weight and powerconsumption levels.

 

[upgrade_1977]

Great concept!!

Now if only they could create some kind of standard plug that carried power and input output over fiber optic or something so you could power and interface with a single dedicated graphics card, or it could have it's own power supply like this the graphics card would have a box it plugs into to protect it. Then you could use it on any computer, say for instance plug it into a laptop or tablet that uses the plug. Like an eSata plug for instance, but for the graphics.