Zotac Has An External GPU Dock And A Mini GTX 1080

[scolaner]

At CES, Zotac will join the small but growing troupe of companies selling external graphics docks. We think.

Zotac Has An External GPU Dock And A Mini GTX 1080 : Read more

 

[jtd871]

And once again, we have a legacy (DVI) interface on a niche-market (based on the smallish form factor) flagship video card. Hey Zotac, if somebody's got the cheddar to drop on a 1080, they probably can afford to pick up a monitor or two with DP input. Adding insult to injury, the DVI connector blocks airflow out of the chassis through the PCI bracket. Let me guess: the Marketing Dept. insisted? <facepalm>

 

[dstarr3]

I like these external GPU docks. I really hope these catch on so that console manufacturers can see it as a viable way of upgrading consoles instead of releasing new iterations every couple years.

 

[larkspur]

And once again, we have a legacy (DVI) interface on a niche-market (based on the smallish form factor) flagship video card. Hey Zotac, if somebody's got the cheddar to drop on a 1080, they probably can afford to pick up a monitor or two with DP input. Adding insult to injury, the DVI connector blocks airflow out of the chassis through the PCI bracket. Let me guess: the Marketing Dept. insisted? <facepalm>

You could say the same thing to nvidia and all of their other board partners. DVI has been included on the gtx 1080 board designs. The Zotac's bracket is nearly identical to nvidia's founder's edition. There are many people still using excellent monitors that only have DVI. All the 1080s that I know of output to a maximum of four devices. This Zotac card gives you three DP and and one HDMI which should cover any modern multiple monitor configurations. The inclusion of the DVI is obviously a selling point for people who still love and want use their DVI monitor without the hassle of using adapters. There are a lot more of these people than you think. As far as blocked airflow... meh, that cooler spits the majority of waste heat inside the chassis anyway. Zotac's bracket is actually one of the better designs out there. Gigabyte's mini-ITX GTX 1070 actually sacrifices a couple DP ports to include 2 dual-link DVI-D. Now I could see complaining about that.

 

[James Mason]

And once again, we have a legacy (DVI) interface on a niche-market (based on the smallish form factor) flagship video card. Hey Zotac, if somebody's got the cheddar to drop on a 1080, they probably can afford to pick up a monitor or two with DP input. Adding insult to injury, the DVI connector blocks airflow out of the chassis through the PCI bracket. Let me guess: the Marketing Dept. insisted? <facepalm>

I see far too many people buying 1070s that are still using VGA monitors.
The problem is they're still making DVI and VGA monitors, and they're cheap.

 

[dstarr3]

More importantly, DVI and VGA are open-source, so unlike HDMI which needs to be licensed for a fee, it doesn't cost them much of anything to include these.

 

[alex0826]

Now what I'd really like to know is, can I use this external GPU dock with an i7 HP Envy (usb3.0) DV7 (non-touchscreen) laptop? And my second question is I wonder if they'll make an SLI version of this external GPU chassis?

 

[alex0826]

On a side note it would be really nice if they wouldn't charge so damn much for Flagship video cards like the Titan X Pascal :-(

 

[king3pj]

And once again, we have a legacy (DVI) interface on a niche-market (based on the smallish form factor) flagship video card. Hey Zotac, if somebody's got the cheddar to drop on a 1080, they probably can afford to pick up a monitor or two with DP input. Adding insult to injury, the DVI connector blocks airflow out of the chassis through the PCI bracket. Let me guess: the Marketing Dept. insisted? <facepalm>

I see far too many people buying 1070s that are still using VGA monitors.
The problem is they're still making DVI and VGA monitors, and they're cheap.

And it's not just the super low budget monitors either. Several 1080p 144Hz monitors seem to include some combination of VGA, DVI, and HDMI but not DisplayPort. I'm pretty sure DVI is the only way to get 144Hz out of those monitors.

Even at 144Hz, 1080p probably isn't the target market for people shopping for a GTX 1080 but monitors like the BenQ Zowie XL2411 needing DVI to get 144Hz is a good enough reason to include DVI in Pascal GPUs.

You could argue that they should just include a DisplayPort to DVI adapter in the GPU box instead of putting the port on the GPU. There are plenty of people using DVI monitors though and those need to be supported in some fashion.