Gigabyte's Got A GPU Dock, But It Is Early In Development

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Are these even going to be necessary in a year? nVidia already announced the GTX 1080 is being dropped into laptops - albeit at a lower clock speed. That's more than enough GPU power for a gaming laptop in a year or two when Volta starts to roll out, I'm sure these things will be obsolete.

Just seems to me that they solve a non-existent problem.
 
Are these even going to be nesissary in a year? nVidia already announced the GTX 1080 is being dropped into laptops - albeit at a lower clock speed. That's more than enough GPU power for a gaming laptop in a year or two when Volta starts to roll out, I'm sure these things will be obsolete.

Just seems to me that they solve a non-existent problem.
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A lot of people don't want to carry around giant brick-like laptop. These things make sense as long as that's still an issue and Volta isn't going to give you high-end performance in 15W.
 
also, mobile gaming laptops are expensive. What we really need is a reasonably priced laptop with a suitable gaming CPU, and an inexpensive gaming dock.

In USD, maybe $600 for the laptop, and $100 for the dock, plus something like an RX-480.

I'd like to see an APU + shared memory idea instead of just a GPU. Then the game would run completely on the external unit which has advantages.

I'd also like to see units that are designed to be external, so much smaller with a tiny PSU. You could make one for about the size of a 3.5" HDD USB enclosure that's really powerful.
 


Yeah between that and AMD's new mobile GPU platform, I'm wondering just how necessary these things are. One thing is for certain - they seem to defy the laws of what being portable truly means.
 


That's pretty much my point. If I want a gaming laptop I want it for the portability as well as the GPU power. Otherwise I'll keep my powerful desktop, large screen monitor, and take a notebook or iPad with me while I'm on the go.
 
I'm a little late to comment (I occasionally search for eGPU news, which is why I only saw it now), but in a sense I agree with arossetti. These eGPU cases are huge and cost as much as a PC. Might as well buy a good HTPC for the same price and the same size.

What I really want are external HD style GPU's, small specially designed cases with small GPU's. They don't need to be high end GPU's, something like an RX 460 will be fine. They just need to be significantly faster than integrated graphics, portable and don't cost too much. I think I won't mind paying $200 for the equivalent of a $100 PC card, but I don't want to pay $500.
 
These things are going to become more popular over time, not less. Desktop sales in general are plummeting and will continue to do so. GPU cases unify the (growing, healthy) laptop market and growing NUC market.

Few examples how these can be used:
1. You can share 1 expensive GPU between multiple family laptops and a NUC at 1 desk rather than outfit 4 people with Geforce 1080s.
2. It's also great for say a college kid, you need a laptop for school and maybe you want to play games in your dorm but don't want some massively expensive huge gaming laptop? You get a Thunderbolt GPU case.
3. Someone who travels for work, needs a laptop but again just wants the top-end hardware at home rather than continuously buying the latest $2000 gaming laptop every year.

It just makes a lot of sense with no real negatives other than price, which will drop. It's still early days. Wait till Rosewill sells one that's just a case + TB3 interface, and you provide your own ATX power supply of choice.
That will be the tipping point for this market. People just need a while to get used to the idea, but GPU cases, NUCs and laptops are the future.
 
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