External Thunderbolt Graphics Adapter in the Works

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mister g

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On the go and powerful graphics card are now a real possibility. Now if only the CPU could be this easily upgradeable then people could drop the desktop and heft the laptop and these components around instead. not that I expect this setup would be too far from a power plug.
 
10Gb/s that's not even 4 lane in PCIe 2.0/2.1! Not ready for mainstream gaming yet. Need at least 4 lane 16Gb/s before I will consider using it as a GPU interface and need 8 lane 32Gb/s to be sufficient for now.
 

alextheblue

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[citation][nom]Pyree[/nom]10Gb/s that's not even 4 lane in PCIe 2.0/2.1! Not ready for mainstream gaming yet. Need at least 4 lane 16Gb/s before I will consider using it as a GPU interface and need 8 lane 32Gb/s to be sufficient for now.[/citation]Agreed. At this point I'd say get Llano for a budget/mid-range laptop, or an Intel SB + AMD discrete setup for higher end.

That's if you really need a laptop at all. A lot of people just use laptops like desktops, never move em, plugged in all the time. Cracks me up. By the time they take it on the road, the battery will be so shot it might as well be a desktop.
 

drumsrule786

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[citation][nom]leandrodafontoura[/nom]Now a MacMini or macbook will have powerfulll gaming performance...Mac users will no longer need a desktop windows gaming machine, bootcamp will rule[/citation]

except for the fact that most games are only for the PC
 

inthere

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All Macs have been able to run Windows natively for 5 years now. My 3 Macs all have Windows 7 and running plenty of vWindows only games.

All Macs come with Bootcamp, which installs a Windows partition in less than a minute. Putting windows on your Mac is as easy as installing a video game now.
 

Travis Beane

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I like the idea, especially since I have a 5770 1GB just laying around. Doesn't everybody?

It costs far too much however. I see no reason to spend on anything better than a ATi 5770 for most laptops, and then the dock costs far more than the GPU. At this price range, you can consider buying a high-end gaming laptop (17" Clevo preferably) instead.

I do however prefer the idea of a $50 dock and a $100 GPU to match on a $400-500 laptop.

Regardless, I'm interested, and I'll be keeping my eye out on this.
 

americanbrian

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Well, if you buy one of these not only can you use it for your laptop, but say someone comes over for a LANparty with there rubbish low-end laptop. Now you can plug them into this and have a proper session.

I kind of like the idea of having a graphics boosting tool, which is what I consider this to be. Not an installation but a tool that can be used in lots of places.
 
G

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this could work well specially when nvidia graphics cards with optimus technology feature pci-express compression technology causing the 10 gbs to act like a 20gbs conection. as the guys at notebook check have managed to get the optimus drivers to works with full with nvidia on their vidocks which feature the pci-express compression and have shown that it yields more performance and since like the express card it also is based on pci-e it should then have round about enough bandwidth for a mid range card
 
I have never heard of anyone gaming on such a device. I have some art student friends who have similar things that run through esata and firewire 800 that they use for rendering, but the bandwidth is too slow to get a decent frame rate out of for real time apps. It does lower render time dramatically, especially for 5th year students who cannot afford to upgrade their Freshman laptop that the school required them to buy
 
[citation][nom]mister g[/nom]On the go and powerful graphics card are now a real possibility. Now if only the CPU could be this easily upgradeable then people could drop the desktop and heft the laptop and these components around instead. not that I expect this setup would be too far from a power plug.[/citation]

sorry dude even with this the desktop will never be replaceable. now go back to hugging you're pink dell laptop :)
 

cypeq

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That's rly missed idea no1 with reasonable knowledge will hamper gpu with this agp bandwidths.
On the other hand if this will be cheap enough some old after-market gpu may work wonders for owners of intel gma and such. Im only afraid that device will be more expensive than gpu's it can efficiently use.

Im curious of some benchmarks.
 
I already looked into these things and found that thier prices were preventatively high. Otherwise if they were cheaper I would already have one. I could just put in my HD 4870 but at $200 for the cheapest one I would be more likely to buy a new laptop.

Oh well I guess I'll have to stick to WoW, N64 emulation, Team Fortress 2 and Left for Dead almost all of which have to run on the lowest settings thanks to the fact that I have onboard (intel) graphics. :(
 

demonhorde665

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i've been saying for years i wonder when some one is going to do this , it's actually an idea i ahd sicne about 2000. too bad i never thought to get a patent on the idea LOL with US's patent system, i'd be banking right now !!
 
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