External Thunderbolt Graphics Card On Its Way

An anonymous reader writes "Last week, as the result of a straw poll on Facebook, Village Instruments agreed to begin development of an external Thunderbolt-connected graphics card enclosure. Village Instruments already has experience with its ExpressCard-connected ViDock graphics card chassis, which provides extra GPU juice for Windows and Mac laptops, and the Thunderbolt version is expected to be the same kind of thing — but faster. The only problem is, Thunderbolt is only 4x PCIe 2.0, so you won't be using this to connect modern, desktop-class GPUs to your laptop — and more importantly you need to carry around a second monitor to actually use a ViDock. So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

Comments

HP dv7

[Anonymous Coward]

So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?

It's not exactly a gaming laptop... but it does have a Core i7 2ghz CPU, Radeon HD 6770M 1GB, 8GB of RAM, and a 17.3" LCD... Oh and when I get bored of gaming it also came with a BD-ROM.

Costco has them for $999 and I bought two :)

Re:HP dv7

[Joce640k]

You were ripped off.

Re:HP dv7

[hsmyers]

Because you can't afford one? Couple of grand is fine if you have it---much less fine if you don't. Don't much care for the lashup described in the referenced article, but a link towards the end leads to some bare metal work that brings the price down to around 300.00 or so. What I'd like to see is a simple box that allows a graphics adapter slot upgrade (or two) for existing boxen. Might take a while to save up (fixed income and all that) but given one, the possibilities are large. Oddly enough, I don't particularly want the graphics, but I'd love to get my hands on multiple processors :)

Re:HP dv7

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, your screen will break at the hinge within 6-8 months. Every. Single. One. that I have has done this. Damn good comp, damn fine price, shitty mfg.

Re:HP dv7

[simcop2387]

In the future this may result in an upgrade option for users but given that currently only apple laptops have thunderbolt controllers (that i'm aware of) the idea of this being more affordable is rather moot.

Re:HP dv7

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough your soon to be out of date piece of junk. :)

Re:HP dv7

[Anonymous Coward]

You should always buy two HP laptops. That way you can use the other one when the motherboard/power supply/monitor dies after about a year of use,

Re:HP dv7

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had many HP laptops in the past, and I can say that they're cheap to buy for a reason...

Re:HP dv7

[hairyfeet]

Hell for the games most folks want to play on the go I've found my customers are quite happy with the $450- $500 AMD netbooks and laptops. What i got my oldest is typical of that price point, dual core 2GHz, 4Gb of RAM, 300Gb HDD (I think, it may be a 500Gb) and a Radeon 4xxx IGP (I think its an HD4550, I can't really remember off the top of my head) and frankly that little 15 inch is great for the games he plays.

He and his college buddies sit around after class in the commons and have LAN parties (my idea, nobody had ever had LAN parties there and my oldest is shy so I told him an easy way to make buds is to frag 'em LOL!) playing TF2, LOTRO, Perfect World, hell I think they have like a half a dozen games on rotation now. But those little AMDs get good battery life, have a great picture, don't get ball frying hot, have good framerate, and are very affordable.

So unless you are one of those "must have teh benchmarks!" types I really don't see much of a point going nuts when all you want to do is some basic fragging between classes. Thanks to the consoles being so long in the tooth it isn't like most games need insane hardware, and those AMDs have more than enough power for him to do all his classwork and still have plenty of oomph for doing some gaming or watching HD video. Hell if anybody needs one Tigerdirect is having a "back to school" sale on lappies and netbooks and they have a nice refurb AMD netbook for like $299, new ones for like $430. Really not bad for an ultra portable that you can play games on.

Re:HP dv7

[nickb64]

I got a DV6, and it will hold me over for game until around January/February, while I wait for new CPUs and GPUs in order to build a gaming box. It plays TF2 just fine on my 1440 x 900 monitor, and BC2 as well, on ~medium. It's more than fast enough for anything else I want to do for the most part, even working with video. That 2GHz CPU is almost always at at least 2.4-2.5GHz, even if I run Folding@Home or other heavily threaded stuff on it.

Re:HP dv7

[nickb64]

The VAIO Z has a Thunderbolt type thing, but it uses the USB interface design for the connector. It basically does the external GPU thing, just with a moderately powered mobile GPU.

Re:HP dv7

[hsmyers]

Wasn't talking about Thunderbolt---I've no machine capable of such a connection---nor do I have any confidence in it's longevity. I'm looking for a simpler approach using existing existing connectors (sufficient for the needs of the hardware in question) plus outboard slot with power brick. Give me that and I'm good to go. Better if it supports higher end boards, but I'll settle for as many GPUs as I can get my hands on :)

Re:HP dv7

[simcop2387]

Yea I don't have anything myself for thunderbolt but I do see the optical version of it as a very interesting way to electrically isolate something. I mean take a look at the way that professional audio equipment works these days, it's all moved out of the case for noise reasons but they still have to have some kind of connection to the computer that will add some noise. This has the potential of letting you take a nearly standard setup and completely isolate each component from noise without having to make a completely customized motherboard or other interfaces. For actual graphics I'd be wary of the latency myself since you'll be moving from nano seconds (benchmarks I've seen say about 128ns) to several microseconds to milliseconds for latency. That might not seem like a lot but I don't think most current graphics cards would deal with that well. They may however still work incredibly well for GPGPU stuff since if you're doing it right you should be doing more than a few milliseconds of computation on the card. I mean imagine this letting you build a bank of a few hundred cards with a higher efficiency and high capacity power supply.

Re:HP dv7

[hsmyers]

Read my mind! Most of my needs are calculation, not graphics. In fact the normal display of my boxen/laptops is sufficient to tell me if I'm on the right track. I'm still addicted to fractals after all of these years :) Started before fracint after a grad class at UCSC and have been hooked ever since. I've even toyed but not yet cut code with the idea of using the GPU version of the Amazon Cloud. The (pun alert) complexity is high, but the price is right! I figure that given what we are talking about as a initial breadboard, I could map out my code and then move to the Cloud. Don't know if you've seen the ultra hi res photos that allow substantial zooming, but that is more or less my target. Imagine a fractal that you can zoom in on without crunching the numbers, because they are pre-calculated! :)

Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody else think thunderbolt is a technology looking for a solution?

USB is cheaper, almost as fast, and ubiquitous. There are probably literally millions of USB devices that work with a USB port.

Thunderbolt has one RAID box you can buy, and now VI is really stretching the bounds of credulity to come up with another use for it.

I'd bet a month's pay that Apple will start removing Thunderbolt ports from Macs in 2014

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[TheRaven64]

Totally agree. I mean, a single connector that can drive a monitor, external disks, and a range of peripherals and is small enough to fit on something like a mobile phone? What possible use case is there for that?

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Thunderbolt is protocol agnostic. It's not meant to compete with USB, but express card. In fact you can run USB devices over thunderbolt.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It isn't exactly protocol agnostic, it's essentially an external 4x PCIe cable. Assuming the device in question doesn't flip out at finding itself a bit further than usual from the PCIe controller, there is certainly a lot of stuff you can plug in to it(with the addition of a case and one of those fancy custom Intel converter chips); but it isn't "agnostic"...

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[SimonTheSoundMan]

One RAID box? Their are several now, Lacie released one a couple of weeks back. Apple also have their Thunderbolt display, you might want to look at what it does.

Thunderbolt is not competing against USB either.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[ricky-road-flats]

As someone else has already pointed out, it is not a competitor to USB.

As to the RAID box, well, something has to be first. But there are already three others I'm aware of:

There is already also a Sony laptop with a Thunderbolt connector to docking station which has an optical drive, a graphics chip, *and* USB 2.0 and 3.0 sockets. The newer Apple monitors, as well as the new iMacs, use it for USB and DisplayPort. The laptops with it can use a powered-down iMac as a monitor. You can't do a lot of that with USB.

As usual with technologies like this, as soon as it's integrated into chipsets and/or standard motherboards, the products will follow. Just the fact that Apple are selling hundreds of thousands of units with this integrated will help stimulate companies to produce more products that use it...

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[GordonBX]

Um...

USB 2.0, even at its theoretical maximum is 20 x slower than Thunderbolt. USB3.0 at its theoretical maximum is 2 x slower. The thunderbolt architecture means that you get a full 10Gb/sec in both directions unlike USB which has so much processor overhead that you never get anywhere near its theoretical maximum. So no, USB is not "Almost as fast".

RS232 Serial ports used to be ubiquitous.

I'll take that bet. If only because they are still including firewire ports, and they have been useless for years and years and years. You must not earn very much to make such a bet.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[drsmithy]

Anybody else think thunderbolt is a technology looking for a solution?

Thunderbolt is a PCIe bus on a cable. USB isn't even playing the same game, let alone in the same league.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[Bengie]

"Anybody else think thunderbolt is a technology looking for a solution?
USB is cheaper, almost as fast, and ubiquitous. There are probably literally millions of USB devices that work with a USB port."

I don't think you understanding the difference between TB and USB. TB is meant to replace PCIe, HDMI, SATA, etc. Just wait for the teamable 40gbit optical version that's coming out in a few years.

Let me ask you this hypothetical situation. Imagine you have a computer 10 years from now, it has no PCIe slots or anything like that. All it has is a bunch of USB ports and you connect your 64 teraflop videocard to your motherboard via the USB ports, your 4GB/sec SSD via USB, and your 2100p 36bit monitor via USB.

People would say that this is completely stupid because USB isn't meant for this situation and would be horrible. Well, TB *IS* meant for this, will do this, and will do it better than anything else that exists or has been announced.

I'm not sure if this would happen, but I could see it happening. TB will eventually switch to a fiber phys. Once it does that, it will have a cheap fiber connection that is good for 40/100gbit. Could you imagine if NICs adopted the connection? I'm not saying to also adopt the TB protocol, but just make use of the connection for a cheaply mass-produced 100gbit 100meter fiber phys.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[deains]

Thunderbolt seems to get a lot of hate because it's marketed by Apple. Techies are quick to forget their main partner in this, who designed the technology, is Intel. I'm sure if Intel had released the technology off their own back it would have had the full support of the tech community, and would also have died within 6 months thanks to lack of use.

By going for the consumers via Apple first, this technology has the chance to thrive. It has a chance to gain some ground in the peripherals market, which it wouldn't have done if it was only found on high-end gaming PCs (see: eSata). Probably Intel will start putting TB ports on their motherboards soon-ish, and once those start appearing, the other mobo manufacturers will almost certainly follow.

So basically, odds are TB will still be going strong in two years. It could still fail of course, since nothing is really certain in this market (who's to say ATi won't come up with a competing standard?). But right now there's no reason to doubt Thunderbolt is a growing force in the world of plugging stuff in.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[Luckyo]

It would stupid because there's more then enough cables in a desktop already. If anything, we need LESS of cable solutions and more slots. Look up at what's missing inside laptops in comparison to desktops. Yeah.

Grandparent is exactly correct. This is a technology looking for a solution, or more correctly for a problem to fix. Because there simply isn't one at the moment.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[serviscope_minor]

Thunderbolt is protocol agnostic.

No, it carries displayport and PCIe data. The protocol is very well defined.

In fact you can run USB devices over thunderbolt.

Provided that you wire in a PCIe -> USB chip on the other end. But it seems you can bridge any generic transport to any other, given sufficient will. Did you know you can get a USB to ISA bridge, for instance? It's even supported under Linux!

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[FunkyELF]

So Apple and Sony are backing it.... sign me up

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[jythie]

There is a lot to be said for an external modular approach to computing, esp if you do a lot of field work where a desktop or transportable is not practical. I know several people who have to haul around lugables because they need some kind of functionality that only comes in expansion card form that thunderbolt could potentially replace. Plus, desktops already have slots, laptops do not. Maybe this would be less important for desktops, but for laptops this has been a long time coming.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[jythie]

*nods* in a lot of elitist's minds, Apple is just overpriced junk for stupid people.. thus anything Apple does must be bad/useless for 'real' users.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[JBMcB]

> If anything, we need LESS of cable solutions and more slots.

'Cause that's what consumers are looking for, great big huge desktops with loads of slots. That's what's filling the aisles at Best Buy.

No, the majority of consumers want tiny, unobtrusive PC's that they have to mess with as little as possible.

> Look up at what's missing inside laptops in comparison to desktops.

Uh-huh. That's why nobody buys laptops. Oh wait, laptops are almost more popular than desktops these days. If only there was some technology that would bring PCIe level expandability to laptops without eating up a bunch of space like ExpressCard...

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[Luckyo]

You may want to engage your brain and re-read my post. You're repeating my argument.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[DurendalMac]

You have no damned idea what you're talking about. What we're looking at is an external PCIe bus and it's over twice as fast as USB 3.0, which is hardly "almost as fast". Let that sink in. Anything that can be put on a PCIe bus can be put on Thunderbolt. Now think about Intel's ultrabook push and how we're going to be seeing a lot more ultrathin laptops. These laptops aren't going to have a lot of real estate for ports. Now, what Intel tech is going to be ideal for universal docking stations, hmm? Let that sink in, then please stop posting. TB may not catch on for desktops, but it has a lot of potential for laptops.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[The Dawn Of Time]

You are so wrong about that it made me laugh. Next time you pick on someone's reading comprehension, make sure you aren't the one fucking up.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[sexconker]

Anybody else think thunderbolt is a technology looking for a solution?

USB is cheaper, almost as fast, and ubiquitous. There are probably literally millions of USB devices that work with a USB port.

Thunderbolt has one RAID box you can buy, and now VI is really stretching the bounds of credulity to come up with another use for it.

I'd bet a month's pay that Apple will start removing Thunderbolt ports from Macs in 2014

Absolutely correct. The existing version of Thunderbolt isn't even optical, so the speed benefit isn't there.
It's the senseless quest for "one cable to rule them all" as usual.

If you want an external PCIe bus that you can attach all sorts of controllers to (like USB, Parallel, Serial, HDMI, Displayport, Assbadger, whatever), why not just use external PCIe?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/news/2008-06/ati_xgp_x8_connector.png
http://www.ixbt.com/video3/images/guide/pcie_ext.jpg
http://www.ioi.com.tw/images/products/cat_113/l_1130004_01.jpg

All Thunderbolt is is external PCIe with a controller to fold in some common protocols (USB, HDMI, DisplayPort, etc.). Yet for some reason we need a new cable, a new name, a new port, the whole 9 yards.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[sexconker]

Anybody else think thunderbolt is a technology looking for a solution?

Thunderbolt is a PCIe bus on a cable. USB isn't even playing the same game, let alone in the same league.

External PCIe is a PCIe bus on a cable.
Thunderbolt is playing the same game and acting like it hasn't been around for years.

http://www.ioi.com.tw/images/products/cat_113/l_1130004_01.jpg

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[rev0lt]

Except that you already have PCIe bus on a cable (external PCIe x8 adapters already exist, and more will appear until the end of the year).

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[petteyg359]

PCIE specifications prior to PCIE 3.0 use 8b/10b encoding. 10Gbps of PCIE bandwidth is only 8Gbps of data. You do not "get a full 10Gb/sec". USB 3.0 also uses 8b/10b, though, so this is still twice as fast.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[Renegrade]

You can get a USB->Amiga 1200 clockport bridge too.

The clock port is a little 22 pin header on Amiga 1200s (low end Amiga 'keyboard computer') that allow a realtime clock to be installed inexpensively.

Third party manufacturers have made USB controllers for it... amongst other things. You definitely can bridge transports with enough will! Even ones with 4 address lines and 8 data lines hooked up to D16 through D23 of a 32-bit data bus.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[dgatwood]

Anybody else think thunderbolt is a technology looking for a solution?

Actually, I think that USB 3.0 is a technology in search of a solution. The only thing USB 3.0 does better than 2.0 is move large quantities of data. This pretty much means that its utility is limited to storage devices such as hard drives, SSDs, etc. (Printers are already served much better by Ethernet, IMO, and most other devices don't need that much bandwidth.)

For storage purposes, eSATA utterly spanks USB 3.0 because of the lower protocol overhead, and is cheaper because of the lower silicon requirements. Further, with the (unofficial standard) combination eSATAp ports, USB 3.0 provides no real benefit over eSATA.

As far as I can tell, by the time USB 3.0 finally made it into silicon, the only reason for USB 3.0 to even exist is to push manufacturers to build enough power handling into their USB ports to make eSATAp possible. I don't expect a USB 4.0. Ever. By contrast, eSATA will continue to get faster.

USB is cheaper, almost as fast, and ubiquitous.

If everything is perfectly optimal, USB 3.0 is half as fast as a single Thunderbolt channel. On most Macs, each cable has two channels, for a total of four times as fast. So no, it's nowhere near as fast.

The reason for Thunderbolt is actually pretty obvious if you look at Apple's history. Apple has consistently looked for ways to allow a single cable to connect from your monitor to your computer and still provide USB and FireWire ports on top of your desk. Prior to Thunderbolt, this required either an Apple-proprietary video cable (the ADC connector) or running a bundle of wires that broke out into multiple connectors near the computer end. With Thunderbolt, they can do the same thing with a single, industry-standard cable. And have. It has FireWire 800, Gig-E, and USB (2.0—Apple hasn't gotten on the USB 3.0 bandwagon) ports.

I'd bet a month's pay that Apple will start removing Thunderbolt ports from Macs in 2014

If I were placing bets on what ports Apple will lose by 2014, my money would be on pretty much all the other ports. With Thunderbolt, Apple could provide a single USB port, a headphone jack, and a single Thunderbolt port, and it would take care of everyone's needs. Apple or a third party could provide FireWire, Ethernet, and USB breakout dongles for the few people who really need those other ports in the field, and Apple could sell its existing monitors for the 99% of people who only need them while tethered to a desk.

Given how much more flexibility Thunderbolt gives Apple, someone would have to be crazy not to take you up on your 2014 bet if you weren't posting as an A.C. Even if no one but Apple adopted Thunderbolt, and even if no non-Apple Thunderbolt peripherals made it to market, it would already be as successful as necessary to all but guarantee long-term relevance.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I was exhausted last night. I meant to say that it's incredibly bridgable not protocol agnostic.

But my point stands, it's meant to compete with ExpressCard, which also is another means of breaking out PCIe lanes. Thunderbolt is not meant to compete with USB.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[UnknowingFool]

Well developed by Intel is probably more of a deciding factor. Sony and Apple are the first to implement it. Apple seems to be incorporating it in all their computers going forward. Sony's adoption isn't as widespread yet.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[petermgreen]

Thunderbolt is not competing against USB either.

Right now if you want something better than firewire 800 or gig-e (which afaict is comparable to a single modern desktop hard drive on sequential transfers so will bottleneck an external raid array or SSD) and have a mac (other than the mac pro) you have no choice but to use thunderbolt. If you have a PC you can't use thunderbolt. So right now thunderbolt isn't in direct competition with any other interface.

But if and when thunderbolt crosses over into the PC world it will have to compete with USB3 and eSATA. It's better than them but I have my doubts as to whether it's better by a wide enough margin to displace them.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[Luckyo]

Let's see. Grandparent talks about problems with technology solving a non-existent problem. Parent claims that we will need things like thunderbolt because we won't have any slots in a desktop - we'll just have everything hooked up on one type wonderful cable, so you end up having one hell of a mess of devices hooked up to main board with one type of super fast cable.

I note that progress has been heading in the EXACT OPPOSITE DIRECTION, and use laptops as example of a system that handles everything through slotting rather then cabling. Child post rages that I'm wrong, and claims that users do in fact want small PCs like popular modern laptops... which have no cables in them, only slots.

Ouch?

Then again, your post history said more about you then anything else. Keep on trolling young padawan.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[Anonymous Coward]

For storage purposes, eSATA utterly spanks USB 3.0 because of the lower protocol overhead, and is cheaper because of the lower silicon requirements. Further, with the (unofficial standard) combination eSATAp ports, USB 3.0 provides no real benefit over eSATA.

I have one quibble with that. As external ports go, eSATA is somewhat user hostile in ways which USB (including 3) is not. This is a consequence of how eSATA came to be: it started out as an ad hoc evolution of internal SATA, and was retroactively standardized.

It starts with the connector. Internal SATA connectors are one of the hugest weak points of SATA, and the external version is even worse. Especially the eSATAp kludge. The cables aren't great either. Internal SATA was specified with solid core wire in the cables, so most eSATA cables do that too, and they're far too stiff.

Then there's protocol issues. SATA was designed to support hotplug, but it's optional rather than required, so support can be spotty, particularly at the driver level. And you can only hang one device off of one port. Port multiplier ICs exist which can split one port to many, but as far as I can tell port multiplication was hacked into the protocol after the fact, and can be a major source of pain.

Finally, you can only use eSATA for hard drives.

Some of these issues may be resolved by more modern implementations of eSATA than I've looked at, but basically it's never surprised me in the slightest that Apple hasn't touched eSATA with a ten-foot pole - it's one of the most un-Apple IO ports in existence right now.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[mabhatter654]

because a Thunderbolt port "wraps" raw DisplayPort and PCI Express 4x connections. USB is no where NEAR close to doing that. For instance a company can build a little box with a PCIe 4x slot in it and let you attach WHATEVER you want... graphics, Nic, USB, Firewire controllers all the standard versions. It also has the ability to encapsulate protocols as well like... Much like Fiber Chanel can wrapper for IP... That makes it VERY powerful. USB is just for slave devices and ALL the bandwidth has to be managed by the drivers on the CPU.. no HARDWARE shortcuts. That's always been the Difference between Firewire and USB to begin with. USB is ultimately a "hub" technology, much like the old ethernet hubs. Firewire is like a switch, maybe even a managed switch, because ENDS can manage too. when you only have 2-3 devices a network hub works fine, with less overhead. When you need to actually share all 3, under load, hubs break down... that's the same result you see in the USB vs Firewire. And Thunderbolt is 10x what those are.

As far a "loss" in an external connection, Intel has had Infiniband and similar tech for a VERY long time.. that literally bundled up the entire PCI bus (literally the raw hardware lines) to an external enclosure about 6 feet or so long. They've been doing external PCI enclosures on SERVERS for decades. The cable doesn't have to be 1-inch thick anymore!

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[mabhatter654]

You're missing that USB is divided into Hosts and Slaves. The port on your PHONE is backed by the same Host services chip that your desktop "master" USB port is. That is why USB has a clear distinction between ends A & B and no cable is supposed to have both A or both B. Very few phones have USB OUT on them. Because the design of the spec was to allow very CHEAP devices but handicap the device's ability to negotiate between themselves on their own.. so no "official" USB-to-USB cords.

Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years.

[TheRaven64]

Aside from the fact that you seem to have missed the development of USB OTG, I have no idea what this had to do with my post.

What's the use case?

[TheRaven64]

And machine with Thunderbolt already has a modern GPU, because it's integrated with the display port. Or they've added a Thunderbolt card to an old machine, but if they can add expansion cards then they can add a new GPU.

The new MacBook Pro already supports chaining two displays from the port, and I doubt this will be a very unusual feature for devices with Thunderbolt. I suppose this might be useful for adding a third one, but then you're really pushing the available bandwidth.

Re:What's the use case?

[GNious]

Doesnt MacBook Air now come with some Intel CPU-based graphics? Then I should think pretty much anything Village Instruments can come up with, would improve matters.

Re:What's the use case?

[beelsebob]

Modern, yes. Fast, not necessarily. the 13" MacBook Pro uses only the intel integrated graphics, which... while much improved in sandy bridge, don't hold a candle to a real graphics card.

For me, a laptop that's thin, light, portable, but can be used to play games on and/or to do graphics work when I get home would be perfect. This dock (combined with a MacBook Pro 13 or MacBook Air) seems to fit the bill dead on.

Re:What's the use case?

[tepples]

For me, a laptop that's thin, light, portable, but can be used to play games on

If it's games you want, any laptop will run an NES emulator, even an Atom netbook.

Re:What's the use case?

[AJH16]

Also think the cheaper new Mac Mini's that are running Intel graphics. This could be used at least for more video outputs if not better graphics performance.

So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you don't. Clearly the use-case here is an additon to a notebook like the mac book air. While on the road it's graphic performance may be sufficant, but at home/work you may want a little more punch, which dosn't always justify an extra pc or mac.

Please use the correct syntax

[AwaxSlashdot]

You forgot the tag.

Re:Please use the correct syntax

[AwaxSlashdot]

It originally said : "you forgot the <sarcasm> tag" but /. considered it a true XML tag and stripped it.
I didn't use HTML entities.

I should have used the preview button.

Re:Please use the correct syntax

[Anonymous Coward]

<sarcasm>Only in slashdot people are stupid enough to not get it without a stupid tag</sarcasm>

Did i get it right?

Re:Please use the correct syntax

[DJRumpy]

I'm confused. Are you being sarcastic, or instructing us in the finer use of non-compliant HTML tags?

Re:Please use the correct syntax

[bughunter]

We knew which tag you meant.

(Remember, this is slashdot: if we were thinking of a different tag, then the error was yours.)

Re:Please use the correct syntax

[Anonymous Coward]

<irony>yes</irony>

Woosh!

[CountBrass]

You've completely missed the point. Don't think MacBook Pro, think the new Thunderbolt equipped MacBook Airs that lack a decent built in graphics card.

And to answer the summary's closing question: because it means I can carry an ultra-portable (MacBook Air) when I travel and plug it in at home to give it a much needed graphics boost for use at home.

Re:Woosh!

[TheRaven64]

The latest Intel graphics cards aren't that bad. They're not great, but I'd imagine that they'd stack up quite well against something that's crippled by the bandwidth of Thunderbolt. Modern GPUs use 16x PCIe cards. Even with PCIe 1, this is 3 times the bandwidth that this device can use. With PCIe 3, it's 12 times as much. A slightly weaker GPU on a fast interface is going to beat a fast one that's spending 90% of its time waiting for data over the bus.

Re:Woosh!

[CountBrass]

All the bench marks show the intel integrated graphics are signigficantly worse than the NVIDIA discrete graphics chip in the previous generation of MacBook Air.

So no, by modern standards, the intel graphics solution that's built into the cpu is still pretty dreadful. Intel have never managed to make a competetive gpu and that's still the case today.

As the graphics card will be at the far end of the thunderbolt connector (ie the display end) I don't see the problem.

Re:Woosh!

[bemymonkey]

"And to answer the summary's closing question: because it means I can carry an ultra-portable (MacBook Air) when I travel and plug it in at home to give it a much needed graphics boost for use at home."

Sure, that would be great - but Apple crippled the MBA with a downsized Thunderbolt port. http://www.slashgear.com/macbook-air-gets-half-power-thunderbolt-29168292/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+slashgear+(SlashGear)

If the thing can't even handle two external screens, I doubt it'll handle an external screen and an external graphics card...

Re:Woosh!

[Billly Gates]

The AMD ones have an integrated ATi 6800 series graphics that is actual as good as a dedicated card from 3 years ago. The Intel ones seem 10 years behind and it is rediculous that games from 2002 barely play on an icore5 in this day and age because the Intel graphics are so horrible. It is ruining the pc as a gaming platform they are so terrible.

Anyway you can play wow with an AMD Llamo on medium settings and give the intel a run on the money. IE 9 and flash with 1080p fly on it too with hardware acceleration unlike an Intel one so they are becoming more important than just video games.

The Llamo shares the memory controller with the CPU so it is not as bottlnecked. It still is but nothing like the horrible solutions we have seen in the last 5 years.

Re:Woosh!

[Anonymous Coward]

modern GPUs are *connected* by 16x pcie lanes. They don't use all this bandwidth during normal use.

All this means is there will be a very, very marginal and completely unnoticeable delay when feeding VBOs and Textures to the card from system memory.

Re:Woosh!

[Kjella]

That doesn't seem to be directly related. The main issue is that a 16x PCIe 2.1 slot - what you'll find on most motherboards - can transfer 8 GB/s (64 Gbit/s). Thunderbird can do 10 Gbit/s, and that probably includes the 8/10b encoding so the comparable number is 8 Gbit/s. Any real high-end graphics card will probably starve. As for the outputs, wouldn't you then naturally use the additional outputs on the card? I don't see much sense in sending anything but the laptop screen - if in use at all - back to the laptop.

Re:Woosh!

[jpapon]

Any real high-end graphics card will probably starve.

Actually, afaik GPUs are very rarely limited by the bandwidth of a 4x PCIe slot, nevermind 8x or 16x. You have to be doing some very specific things to actually take advantage of a 16x PCIe slot.

You very rarely need to transfer data on the order of 8GB/s to/from the GPU... most of what goes across the PCIe bus is just commands, not data. That's why your DVI/HDMI/Displayport is on the back of the graphics card, and not on mainboard; your CPU doesn't need to know much about the results of the GPU calculations.

Re:Woosh!

[bemymonkey]

"As for the outputs, wouldn't you then naturally use the additional outputs on the card? I don't see much sense in sending anything but the laptop screen - if in use at all - back to the laptop."

True, there's not much sense in it - but that's a good question for someone in the know: Do outputs on an external Thunderbolt graphics card require any additional bandwidth on the "root" Thunderbolt port?

Re:Woosh!

[itsdapead]

If the thing can't even handle two external screens, I doubt it'll handle an external screen and an external graphics card...

The "lite" thunderbolt chip on the Airs has zero practical consequences: The limitation on external screens ultimately comes from the on-CPU Intel HD Graphics which only support one DisplayPort and a maximum of two displays (including the built-in screen). The 13" MB Pro has the same limitation for the same reason.

The full-fat Thunderbolt chip supports a second physical Thunderbolt port (but only the iMac actually uses this) and can carry a second DisplayPort signal (only useful on the machines with Radeon graphics like the 15" and 17" pros). It would be completely pointless in an Air.

Re:Woosh!

[bemymonkey]

"The limitation on external screens ultimately comes from the on-CPU Intel HD Graphics which only support one DisplayPort and a maximum of two displays (including the built-in screen)."

Do you have a source for this? Even Intel's 4500MHD (back from the last Core2Duo mobile generation) was already capable of pushing two screens of 1080p, or possibly even one at 2560x1600 and another at 1080p at the same time (need to get my hands on one of the bigger screens to find out). I doubt that the latest gen is incapable of driving two external displays, at least at 1080p... 2x2560x1600 seems much more likely.

Re:Woosh!

[drsmithy]

The latest Intel graphics cards aren't that bad. They're not great, but I'd imagine that they'd stack up quite well against something that's crippled by the bandwidth of Thunderbolt. Modern GPUs use 16x PCIe cards. Even with PCIe 1, this is 3 times the bandwidth that this device can use. With PCIe 3, it's 12 times as much. A slightly weaker GPU on a fast interface is going to beat a fast one that's spending 90% of its time waiting for data over the bus.

The vast majority of stuff you might want a GPU to do, is not bandwidth-limited. Numerous tech sites have shown that in most cases, the difference in performance between a GPU on a x16 PCIe bus and a x4 PCIe bus is nothing, and even a x1 PCIe bus doesn't suffer much.

Re:Woosh!

[drsmithy]

The "lite" thunderbolt chip on the Airs has zero practical consequences: The limitation on external screens ultimately comes from the on-CPU Intel HD Graphics which only support one DisplayPort and a maximum of two displays (including the built-in screen). The 13" MB Pro has the same limitation for the same reason.

Given Intel integrated GPUs in laptops were capable of driving a couple of 27" LCDs over displayport 2-3 years ago, I find that difficult to believe.

Re:Woosh!

[jpapon]

Do outputs on an external Thunderbolt graphics card require any additional bandwidth on the "root" Thunderbolt port?

That's kind of an odd question. If you didn't put the outputs on the external card then you would have to send your data for display back over the "root" port, which would consume a huge amount of bandwidth. So compared to that, using external ports consumes far less bandwidth.

Are you asking does it use more of the ports bandwidth than an external graphics card which has no external outputs and doesn't send output back to the host (ie it has no output)? In that case... presumably yes, external ports would require some small bandwidth overhead... but then your GPU would be a pretty useless coprocessor.

Re:Woosh!

[DJRumpy]

Actually the benchmarks show that the 2011's are pretty much on par with the 2010's, within 3-4 FPS. I wouldn't call that significant.

http://lowendmac.com/bookrev/11br/0805.html

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/07/intel-integrated-graphics-not-hampering-sandy-bridge-macs.ars

All the bench marks show the intel integrated graphics are signigficantly worse than the NVIDIA discrete graphics chip in the previous generation of MacBook Air.

Re:Woosh!

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

Going all the way back to the i740 in the Pentium-II days, Intel's GPU solutions have always been a step or two behind every other competitor on the market.

Posting anonymous to preserve well-deserved moderation in this thread.

Re:Woosh!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one significant problem - interface bandwidth. PCI Express x16 v3.0 runs at 128 Gbit/sec. Thunderbolt runs at 10Gbit on 2 channels (20 total). If Thunderbolt moved data at 64Gbit/sec, the performance hit may be worth the mobility, but 20Gbit is anemic for graphics. Expect up to an 80% performance hit for I/O intensive operations (texture/geometry loading). Once it's to the card, things should go smoothly.

Re:Woosh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus the reason that SLI / CrossFire works. I'm not aware of any non-server motherboard that has multiple x16 slots on it.

The "anonymous poster" who submitted this doesn't know much about that which he writes. Also, could he load the thing up with his opinion more? Most people don't want to lug around a 10 pound "gaming" laptop when they only use it for gaming Lenovo x1?), and still be able to use it with a large display (I believe Apple just put out a 27" with Thunderbolt built in) and gaming power when they want to. Not hard to understand, but he seems to be having difficulty.

Re:Woosh!

[itsdapead]

I doubt that the latest gen is incapable of driving two external displays

Intel HD graphics can support a maximum of two simultaneous displays total (http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-031040.htm#11). One internal laptop display + one external display = two displays.

Maybe Apple could have designed the MacBook so that it could blank the internal display and drive two external monitors (but also bear in mind that the number of monitors which support displayport daisy-chaining can be counted on the fingers of a boxing glove).

Re:Woosh!

[itsdapead]

Given Intel integrated GPUs in laptops were capable of driving a couple of 27" LCDs over displayport 2-3 years ago, I find that difficult to believe.

I think the "one display port" may have been a brainfart on my part, but the bottom line is that the chipset can only support two simultaneous displays.

Re:Woosh!

[QuantumRiff]

I'm thinking this will be very handy for film crews. there are already external PCI-E video card boxes for film crews to render and compress video on site.. Was reading some blogs from a film crew using the RED camera's, talking about their process..

Re:Woosh!

[JBMcB]

Intel HD graphics has full video acceleration. I was running a Core i3 with integrated video for a while that ran full 1080p 264 video without breaking a sweat.

Re:Woosh!

[citizenr]

>A slightly weaker GPU on a fast interface is going to beat a fast one that's spending 90% of its time waiting for data over the bus.

No it wont. Just check older Vidock expansion products that used ExpressCard slot (×1 PCIe)
example http://www.jessebandersen.com/2010/11/vidock-4-unbox-hardware-setup-software.html
Even with x1 pci-e you blow out of the water all the mobile garbage that is put into paltops.

Re:Woosh!

[sexconker]

Intel HD graphics has full video acceleration. I was running a Core i3 with integrated video for a while that ran full 1080p 264 video without breaking a sweat.

Not all hardware MPEG decoding solutions are equal. The more complex your video is, (average/peak bitrate, buffer size, number of sequential bframes, colorspace, etc.), the more likely your GPU is going to take a shit trying to decode it and fallback to the CPU. Intel's GPUs are shit, and still choke on any complex video files, or anything exceeding 1920x1080 in resolution.

Re:Woosh!

[sexconker]

Thus the reason that SLI / CrossFire works. I'm not aware of any non-server motherboard that has multiple x16 slots on it.

The "anonymous poster" who submitted this doesn't know much about that which he writes. Also, could he load the thing up with his opinion more? Most people don't want to lug around a 10 pound "gaming" laptop when they only use it for gaming Lenovo x1?), and still be able to use it with a large display (I believe Apple just put out a 27" with Thunderbolt built in) and gaming power when they want to. Not hard to understand, but he seems to be having difficulty.

There are plenty of enthusiast (gamer) motherboards that have 4 PCIe x16 slots for quad crossfire / SLi.
These typically are 8x slots electrically, and 16x slots physically, because the chipsets provide 32 lanes.

There are also enthusiast motherboards that offer 3 or 4 16x slots (physical and electrical). They do this by slapping on another PCIe controller.

And as for the core argument, you're wrong. Not only does bandwidth matter, it matters more and more when you start to use shit like PhysX/CUDA/Stream/DirectCompute in addition to traditional gaming shit. And beyond bandwidth, there's latency. Moving your processing power several meters away is just fucking stupid for anything that needs to make multiple trips. It's fine for a completed frame buffer, or for USB polling rates, or for ethernet, but not for processing data. There's a reason RAM is so close to the CPU. There's a reason you fill slots in the order of closest first.

Re:Woosh!

[JBMcB]

> Intel's GPUs are shit, and still choke on any complex video files

Do you have benchmarks backing this up? You can look up HD graphics benchmarks for video decoding and see they are about on-par with low end nVidia and ATI graphics cards. I've never heard of or seen "complex" video files degrading under DXVA acceleration.

I know of quite a few people using Intel HD graphics in home theater setups with no problems at all, using both windows media center and MythTV.

Re:Woosh!

[Lanteran]

A bit more than two steps I think. I've got a machine with 3GB DDR2 RAM, 2.5GHz pentium, and intel graphics, and it's outperformed by upwards of 30fps in ioquake3 games by a 2.4GHz P4 machine with a gig of some pre-ddr ram, and a Ti4200 from '03. That was not a high end card in '03, barely above nvidia's entry level stuff. By the way, I'm not talking about some hardly noticeable 50 fps vs 70 fps, I'm talking 20fps vs 50.

Re:Woosh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, that would be great - but Apple crippled the MBA with a downsized Thunderbolt port. http://www.slashgear.com/macbook-air-gets-half-power-thunderbolt-29168292/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+slashgear+(SlashGear)

If the thing can't even handle two external screens, I doubt it'll handle an external screen and an external graphics card...

Despite what the poorly researched slashgear article claims, it isn't crippled.

One TB port consists of two full duplex 10Gbps serial channels. One channel tunnels PCIe, the other tunnels DisplayPort.

The TB chip used in Thunderbolt Macs prior to the MBA is designed to support two Thunderbolt ports, so it has four 10Gbps TB IO channels, and two DisplayPorts. The MBA has one TB port, and uses Intel integrated video, which probably has only one DisplayPort channel available for external monitors. Using the old TB chip would waste half of its capacity, so Apple used a new version of Intel's TB chip which supports one TB port and one DisplayPort.

The only TB Mac which can fully utilize that 2-port chip is the 27" iMac model with two Thunderbolt ports. And maybe the dual-GPU MBP models can get something out of it by tunneling DP connections from both GPUs over a single TB port, provided that this is supported by the TB chip (I honestly don't know whether it is). Other than that, there's no reason for Macs with one TB port to use the 2-port TB chip.

I'd guess the reason Apple used them was time to market. It's common to sell the same chip design in different variants, with cheaper defeatured versions in smaller packages that have fewer functions bonded out to pins. Typically the full-featured package is what gets tested and validated first, so it's also the first into production. It's a reasonable guess that Intel's 1- and 2-port TB chips are an example of this practice.

(BTW, packages are a surprisingly large part of the cost of making a chip, so this is a real cost reduction, not just market segmentation by crippling. From the MB/MBA teardown pics, Intel's 2-port TB chip uses a flip-chip package and the 1-port version uses a wirebond package. Wirebond packages are much cheaper, but can't handle as much power or as many I/O connections.)

So, the MBA TB port isn't crippled at all. You can see this in the RAID benchmarks done by AnandTech (ironically, the very article slashgear used as its source):

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4528/the-2011-macbook-air-11-13inch-review/4

"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[macklin01]

So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

For docking stations and such. Plenty of us plop our laptop onto a docking station or a USB hub + monitor + speakers + keyboard + mouse anyway.

It beats the hell out of hauling an overpriced 10-pound beast to the same office desk every day, when you can just keep better equipment (with better ergonomics) neatly arranged and haul a lighter machine to/from work.

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's it. Also, just a thought but at the moment the penalty between PCIe 4x and 16x is something like 3 frames a second. That's not a really problem when your getting 50+ frames a second.

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Some pretty graphs: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/25.html

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[Billly Gates]

My exwife had one of those fancy Toshiba Qosmio gaming laptops. Lets look at it this way ... she will never buy a laptop again. it is bulky, hot, and needs a USB fan underneath so it wont catch on fire. They draw power and are highly unreliable and black screen all the time.

Get an AMD Llamo if you want ok graphics in the low to medium settings as it has an ATI 68000 inside the CPU that shares its ram contoller so it does not have latency waiting for the chipset to access the ram. The AMD bulldozer should come out in a month or 2 that will offer higher bandwith and will be comeptitive with dedicated GPU systems. They are fit in regular laptops so you do not need a beast.

Windows 8 with accelerated HTML 5 and flash will fly on these. I can't wait and it will give Intel a run for the money if you need graphics performance and not follow simple CPU benchmarks only ignoring the video.

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to consider one of them 'desktops'.
Try it, they're pretty neat.

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[teh kurisu]

This is a little bit off-topic, but does anybody know if there's a Thunderbolt docking station in the pipeline, from any manufacturer?

The MacBook Air + Thunderbolt Display combination has piqued my interest, because it provides a relatively full array of ports when plugged in. But I don't need an external monitor, just the docking station, and I've got no desire to splash £899 on a monitor that I don't want or need.

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[jedidiah]

Still. Why bother? This box is intended to do something other than what your so-called portable machine can manage. At that point, why bother with having the other box be a dumb peripheral. Just let it be an entirely separate machine. Clearly it doesn't need to be portable. So it can be anything. It doesn't need to be tied to any particular flawed way of doing things.

In truth, a discarded Windows laptop with "no resale value" makes more sense for the typical home use case being described here.

So would any random PC with PCI* expansion slots.

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[dwightk]

Yeah, it would be nice if apple sold it's thunderbolt monitor without the monitor :D It has 4 USB, FW800, Ethernet, thunderbolt on the back and thunderbolt + power on the end of the cable.

the 27" display drives the price up to $1000

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[dwightk]

dangit... "its" not "it's"

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[Tweezak]

Absolutely right. Granted, it's not for everyone but in my job my employer has decided to go with midrange laptops. However, my job has changed a bit since I started it and I may want to do some light CAD work from time to time. This would be just the ticket because it's a lot cheaper than buying one of the workstation options they have available.

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[Bill_the_Engineer]

For docking stations and such.

This. I'm interested because I have had a number of occasions where I needed a PCIe bus and chassis to test something in the field.

Now if someone came out with a general purpose I/O board based on something similar to a Virtex-5 FPGA that can communicate using thunderbolt (and USB 2.0/3.0) then I would most definitely purchase one.

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[Renegrade]

I wrote a DirectX 3* game many years ago as a test platform.

Most of the accelerator features available on PC platform at the time were either useless or not reliably available from system to system, so it generally just requested a surface and drew things manually (aside from background blits).

I still fire it up for fun every once in a while (yes, it still runs under Windows 7/64, despite being written for Windows 95, unlike 99% of the so-called "AAA" titles which crash and burn with each and every minor unrelated Microsoft update ever released, let alone moving from say Win2K->XP), and it runs fine..except one time my frame rate dropped off to something like 30fps for no reason. Normally it's running at 60fps, using less than 10% of the available render time. (I have vsync on; the game spends most of it's time waiting on a surface flip)

It turned out that my PCIe card dropped from 16x to 1x mode. It refused to return to 16x mode until I turned the machine entirely off. Once I did that though, it came back as 16x and my FPS was restored.

Those graphs are obviously for games/applications that aren't doing any direct rendering and aren't replacing textures very much. There ARE times when bus DOES matter.

Also, average times aren't going to tell the whole picture; do you really want to play an FPS that suddenly lags out while uploading textures for a new enemy that just appeared?

Granted if we're talking about PCIe 2.0 x4, it won't be quite so bad as say having to deal with 1x PCIe or old original low-end PCI, etc, but there will be times when the difference is very pronounced.

* - technically it's DirectX 5, but the only DX5 call it uses is the one that explicitly requests a frequency along with a resolution when setting the display mode. Plus, that was added later. It was originally purely DX3.

Random Ren Aside: I paid attention to the developer documentation. They told me stride(I think they called it 'pitch') isn't ~always~ equal to row length. They were right. They told me to use the QueryPerformanceCounter rather than snagging the TSC directly. They were right. Why can't AAA developers read these same documents?

Re:"So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?"

[UnknowingFool]

Correction the 27"' 2560x TPS display drives up the price to $1000.

Your argument makes no sense.

[CountBrass]

I'm not really sure how you manage to get from "[it] can't even handle two external screens" to "It [won't] handle ... an external graphics card".

I don't believe the former could you lead you to conclude the latter,

Re:Your argument makes no sense.

[bemymonkey]

Hmmm, I suppose you're right. Just saying, with Apple's track record: It wouldn't surprise me if there was some magical compatibility issue...

Re:Your argument makes no sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, I suppose you're right. Just saying, with Apple's track record: It wouldn't surprise me if there was some magical compatibility issue...

Innuendo is not an argument. And with your track record of posing nonsense such as the great grandparent of this post, I wouldn't be surprised if you were totally wrong. Just saying...

No bandwidth limiting yet

[EdZ]

Thunderbolt is only 4x PCIe 2.0, so you won't be using this to connect modern, desktop-class GPUs to your laptop

For multi-GPU systems in current desktops at least, there's little to no performance penalty going from 16x to 4x.

Re:No bandwidth limiting yet

[AHuxley]

Will be great for a Mac mini. Energy use is low when working in OS X, then enjoy a Windows game at okish fps for a while in bootcamp.

Re:No bandwidth limiting yet

[StoneyMahoney]

I saw an article on Tom's Hardware Guide a few years ago where this very topic was examined by reducing the number of PCIe lanes available to, what was at the time, a high-end graphics card. The were drops in frame rate but they were suprisingly small with the difference between 4 and 16 lanes being about 10% IIRC. However, times have changed, games have been tailored to higher resolutions with larger textures and modern graphics cards expect much higher available bandwidth than when this test was originally carried out. Think it's time to redo the test.

Re:No bandwidth limiting yet

[PingSpike]

The test has been redone: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/25.html and things haven't really changed.

Keep in mind that PCI-E 2.0 doubles bandwidth though, making todays 1x yesterdays 2x.

Re:No bandwidth limiting yet

[SethJohnson]

However, times have changed, games have been tailored to higher resolutions

Not trying to initiate a debate here, but are recent games really tailored to higher resolutions? Seems like most consumers are only running 1080p displays. Since so many games are developed with consoles in mind, I'd think the resolutions would be bound to what the consoles are connecting to, which is also 1080p.

I miss the days of high resolution gaming....

Seth

Re:No bandwidth limiting yet

[willy_me]

So long as the GPU has adequate local memory, there is no reason why 4 lanes would not be enough. All of the processing happens locally - unlike a cheap GPU that shares system memory and would be effected by reduced PCIe bandwidth.

Now it might be beneficial for such external GPUs to include even more memory. This way the game can include additional data on the GPU thereby removing any delays that might result from the GPU needing to access system memory. Minimize the amount of textures being sent over the PCIe bus and the remaining bandwidth should be more then enough for modern gaming.

Redundant

[CountBrass]

For hundreds of years written English managed perfectly well without having to sign-post everything with tags.

I certainly got the sarcasm inherent in the gp's post, indeed it was more effective without the silly sign-posting.

Re:Redundant

[Joce640k]

For hundreds of years the English language wasn't exposed to people who could respond to writers instantly in public forums.

Re:Redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

No tag means no sarcasm. I don't know what you guys find funny about this.

Re:Redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

For hundreds of years, English men have exposed themselves in public forums to writers.

Move the GPU into the monitor

[simonecaldana]

Apple should simply integrate a modern GPU in their monitors: there's room to properly cool down and the monitor becomes the definitve docking station. It would also justify the price, even if it's slightly increased.

Re:Move the GPU into the monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

Need a video card upgrade?

Throw the monitor away!

You know apple would make it non replaceable....

Re:Move the GPU into the monitor

[itsdapead]

Apple should simply integrate a modern GPU in their monitors: there's room to properly cool down and the monitor becomes the definitve docking station. It would also justify the price, even if it's slightly increased.

They do: it's called an iMac. They throw in a CPU and a hard drive, too.

Re:Move the GPU into the monitor

[simonecaldana]

need a computer upgrade? Throw the old one away.

that's apple policy to upgrades, and it always has been. That's why they don't sell low end CPUs: the point is to make machines last enough for consumer to swallow this pill and buy another mac.

Re:Move the GPU into the monitor

[simonecaldana]

it lacks an iBicycle to power it up while you're not within distance from wall socket.

Re:Move the GPU into the monitor

[eharvill]

I actually like that idea a lot, especially if the powers that be could come up with a standard connector that one could easily move amongst various monitors. Heck, the only reason I have a mid-tower case is to comfortable house the damn video card. Of course, PSU for the monitor/gpu combo might cause issues.

Re:Move the GPU into the monitor

[CountBrass]

That's funny because my first generation Mac Pro is still working fine after many years of service. During which I've replaced the graphics card, upgraded the RAM and added an SSD drive.

You really should try checking your facts.

Re:Move the GPU into the monitor

[simonecaldana]

Did you win the Mac Pro at a nitpicking contest?

(hint: Mac Pro is that overpriced exactly because if you buy that you're gonna buy LESS Macs in the future because of its upgreadability. Enjoy the rapidly aging CPUs)

Mac SCSI display

[dltaylor]

I remember it (for the really early Macs), Wikipedia mentions it (no footnote), and I have an old SCSI spec' for it (and SCSI Ethernet) around somewhere.

Sounds like more of the same. Connect a general-purpose interface to a box with some limited resource (no I/O slots in the original Mac, and only a few dedicated mass storage slots in most current portables) and there will be someone to use the GP interface to run a display.

Not a bad idea, just not terribly original.

Re:Mac SCSI display

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorta. The big exception here is that Thunderbolt is made from the ground up to speak other protocols. When someone finally creates a usb endpoint for this, it will speak usb over the Thunderbolt wire. Same for firewire, et. al.
Scsi cables can (as far as i know) only speak scsi protocol and can't efficiently embed other protocols.

Re:Mac SCSI display

[dltaylor]

Thunderbolt is PCIe and "DisplayPort" over wires/fiber. That's not really "other protocols", except that, of course, PCIe can carry the traffic for any sort of adapter, just as it does inside a desktop/laptop.

Firewire, BTW, as well as USB handle networking natively, although IP over Firewire is more robust than the relatively new USB-IP.

There already ARE PCIeUSB 3.0 bridges. Thunderbolt is just PCIe, so, no, it doesn't have USB protocol over the Thunderbolt wires, which is why it needs the bridge.

Re:Mac SCSI display

[dgatwood]

AFAIK, you could ostensibly pass arbitrary protocols in a Thunderbolt packet. The fact that TB currently only provides for two standard packet types (DisplayPort data and PCIe) doesn't inherently prevent a USB packet type.

This has been done before - AMD XGP

[Skowronek]

AMD released this kind of product before - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_XGP . It was generally considered to be a failure, partially because the software support was not perfect, and partially because people just didn't want to lug a dock / GPU box around. The hardware bandwidth was more satisfying, though, at 8 PCIe lanes and not 4 like Thunderbolt.

I find it amusing that the same ideas return and return in this industry, presented as an innovation every single time.

Re:This has been done before - AMD XGP

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There's actually an entire(rather obscure) industry of external PCI and PCIe connector products: ATI had their stab with the XGP, which unfortunately foundered because it only ever appeared in a few systems of no particular interest. Nvidia, to this day, has an external PCIe connector card for their higher-end Tesla products, for their legacy D870 enclosure or their current S2050 rackmount(both of which used a 16x PCIe interface card+proprietary cable to allow a normal desktop/workstation to connect to an external enclosure containing up to 4 Tesla cards). Various smaller outfits have had external PCI backplanes available for users who absolutely needed to run specialized ADC cards or similar industry-specific stuff on SFF workstations or laptops in the field. The Magma guys have been at it for a while now...

The question is not of Apple being innovative, which they wouldn't be; but whether Apple will, through force of just deciding that this is the new baseline, create a market large enough that such expansion gear won't be obscure, expensive specialty hardware...

Re:This has been done before - AMD XGP

[UnknowingFool]

The question is not of Apple being innovative, which they wouldn't be; but whether Apple will, through force of just deciding that this is the new baseline, create a market large enough that such expansion gear won't be obscure, expensive specialty hardware...

Since Thunderbolt is an Intel technology I would say that it isn't being driven by Apple exclusively. That was the problem with the ATI and nVidia products getting traction. I think there is now a Sony Vaio Z laptop that has Thunderbolt and a dock. As for expensive, initial hardware will be until there is more competition.

Re:This has been done before - AMD XGP

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unfortunately, for reasons best known to Sony's inscrutable penchant for pulling proprietary weirdness out of the jaws of standardization, their Thunderbolt dock connects to a modified USB port, rather than Apple's preferred modified mini-displayport... W.T.F.

Re:This has been done before - AMD XGP

[UnknowingFool]

That is some strange thinking considering that neither DSP nor Intel are Apple technologies why they would opt not to use them. The only thing I can think of is that VESA licensing was high but I don't know the terms.

Re:This has been done before - AMD XGP

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

My understanding is that displayport is royalty free(unless you include HDCP support, which most do, and Sony certainly wouldn't be one to skip), so I don't know what the thought process was. Just Sony being Sony, I assume.

Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[Stormwatch]

I just don't understand the purpose of a high end gaming laptop. It's always quite more expensive than the equivalent desktop; and ultimately you're playing with a small screen, a cramped keyboard, and an imprecise pointing device, in a far less comfortable way... unless you plug the laptop to an external screen, keyboard, and mouse, so what was the point of a portable anyway?

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[lawyer boy]

I play World of Warcraft on a MBP over WiFi while reclining on the couch. PVP is a challenge because mouse turns are hard to do with a trackpad, but I can raid without difficulties. I assume that most people play games on a desktop, but I can't imagine sitting in a chair for hours like that. YMMV.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[myspys]

Most of the time my laptop moves between the office and my home. Once in a while, I want to play a game (or two) and for quite obvious reasons, I don't want a gaming rig (ugliness and space).

I'd rather have a small device I connect between my laptop and my screen (external screen both at home and at work) for when I need to play.

Point of a portable? Being able to use it as a portable computer MOST of the time.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[Chris Mattern]

A laptop is much more convenient to take to a LAN party than a desktop.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[ledow]

I used to think this. Then, by chance, my workplace bought me one. I'd specified nothing more than "Must have Intel chip, more than one core, and an nVidia graphics card" - for convenience, compatibility with my existing disk images, etc. and to suit all the tasks I do during the average work day.

I ended up with an MSI gaming laptop - my workplace didn't even realise that the rucksack and mouse it came with were anything more than "freebies" even though the mouse was one of those stupidly expensive ones that has multiple DPI modes, weights for balance and all sorts of other shite (but, hell, it's a very good mouse).

They didn't even care that the WASD keys were highlighted or that it had all sorts of gaming features like a touch-button to overclock both processor and graphics (2 year warranty not applicable...). Apparently it was a super-cheap deal and even now I can't get the same laptop or any equivalent for even half the price they paid for it.

I have to say - it's been wonderful. I've always had a dedicated "games" machine in the past and never had the money for this sort of laptop and probably would never have bought it for myself. I threw 300 Steam games at it and it laughed at every single one (I've always played the defaults that games offer but now I can actually ramp up to maximum easily).

It has a huge screen that, even as up close as being laptop-range, you can really appreciate every pixel. It does HD video like I was asking it to add 2+2. The processor laughs at my Eclipse platform and compiles take no time at all. I've never NEEDED to press the overclock button for any reason, ever, at all. It has all the usual gadgets (webcam, bluetooth, wifi, even an "eco" button) and some more unusual (e.g. an external wifi antenna port!).

It has a huge (full) keyboard that's ideal for typing AND gaming. It has a solid aluminium construction that has so far suffered more and survived better than any other laptop I've ever seen in my life (and has a custom-designed backpack to carry it in that holds more weight that I ever thought a backpack like that could). The sound is amazing and the first full 7.1 setup I've ever owned (hell, I've never bothered to have anything but stereo before - and this is WITHOUT having to plug any speakers in) and it's the LOUDEST laptop I've ever heard (you can easily watch a DVD on a crowded noisy airplane, or in a room with the TV on, and hear every word - and the positional audio does still work in those circumstances.

I would never have touched this laptop in a million years, much preferring two or three more ordinary ones instead. But now I'm trying to find this EXACT laptop again for myself at a decent price. It's really changed the way I used my computer and I use the laptop exclusively now. There's nothing better than having a machine that you can use all day at work for menial tasks and then have that same machine at home to play anything you throw at it, and take the same machine with you on holiday and have it do everything you need/want while you're away too.

Plus, gaming laptops have huge advantages in terms of some basic specifications - big GPU's that you just don't get on business laptops, great for video encoding - large amounts of RAM, big screens, every port imaginable, full keyboards that you can get to every key easily, and a lot of money spent on making it feel "right" and solid. I can type on this laptop all day long, go home and type on it for hours, and then take it on the road and type on it for even longer and not fatigue. Even the mouse is the most comfortable that I've ever used.

I would never pay what I see as the gaming premium (similar to the wedding premium - a £5 cake suddenly costs £50) but a single gaming laptop changed it for me. It's not like this is even a model that *pretends* to be gaming while actually being general purpose - the WASD are marked and everything about it says "gaming laptop". But it laughs at everything you throw at it because, compared to a to

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[mlk]

I loved my 17" screen on my old Alienware laptop. It was the perfect size and was not cripped by the current HD fad. I'd happily swap my two current 19" "HD" screens for 2 17" 1900x1200(ish) screens.

> cramped keyboard

Take a look at a high end Alienware (ignore the uglyness for a moment. It is hard I know). That is not a "cramped" keyboard.

> imprecise pointing device

Agreed, but have you seen the size of a mouse? They are tiny. Most laptop bags even included little tiny pockets just the right size for a mouse.

> what was the point of a portable anyway

When I bought my Alienware I lived & worked in two places - UK and Greece. So it made sence to me at the time to be portable. Not portable in the sence that a phone is portable (I can whip it any anywhere and "work") but that I could put my life into two bags and move. Something you can not do with desktop. You can do with a laptop and a mouse. Playing video games is a big part of my life, so it should be covered by what goes in to my bag. You might not have a use case for a gaming laptop but that does not mean that they do not exist.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[del_diablo]

Somebody mod up.
This is not 2002 anymore: Laptop CPUs and laptop GPUs have gotten quite decent over the years.
And besides: Nothing beats sitting down comfortably in the couch, and game hard.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[misexistentialist]

Could use a monitor arm.

[Posted from my bed]

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[iMouse]

What is this "LAN party" you speak of? Gamers getting together in one place? Sounds so 90's...

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't understand the purpose of a high end gaming laptop.

If you're an CAD/CAM person and you need to go to a customer's office to demo designs that you have to date for feedback, and need the power to run the software. (Assuming they can't come to your office.)

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[tepples]

What is this "LAN party" you speak of? Gamers getting together in one place? Sounds so 90's...

I'd hate to live in a world that's so isolating that friends and family members never visit one another.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[gilesjuk]

People who are fanatical gamers but also have a job where they are on the road a lot?

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[Hatta]

Indeed. If you want to play games on a laptop, stick to old games. You don't need a massive battery draining testicle frying battery for old games. And they're still just as much fun as they were 10 years ago.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[luther349]

it depends on your life style i happen to work security where your allowed to bring your laptop to work even encouraged. this means my primary pc is a mobile pc aka a gaming laptop. my desktop is some 7 year old thing i just use for a nas/firewall/mediacenter. but all the games go to the laptop as well as any movies i wanna watch. yes i can even do netflicks if i land a job with public wifi but not all the time. but it apply to any job that your on the go etc and personal pc use is allowed. but on topic ati did this with xgp years ago. it never caught on disptie coming with the best card of the time i think due to the same problem this one has not being able to use the internal display and nobody likes carrying extra stuff with there laptops.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[Ruzty]

Get a wireless mouse and use the arm of the couch or the cushion next to you as a mouse pad surface. I used to do that all the time in my Lazy Boy recliner with my laptop.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[Creepy]

Actually, many newer, more portable gaming laptops come with power saving features that will shut down cores and either run the GPU in a low power mode or run a separate low power GPU (like an integrated one). My brother's small Alienware (an older version of the M14x - not sure if the model is the same) gets about 5-6 hours of battery life. He also owns a behemoth M17x that gets about an hour, though - and yes, he has more money than he knows what to do with because he isn't even a gamer - he mainly likes the looks and the CPU performance... ugh - such a waste.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's not laughing at all those things. Maybe it's laughing with all those things.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[IICV]

So what model laptop is it? It's kinda funny you spent the whole post raving about the thing, without ever mentioning anything more than the make.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[phorm]

There's also the difference between a "gaming laptop" and a laptop that just has a good graphics card and processor etc.

I picked up an Asus K21J for around $800 @ Costco earlier this year (it was on sale on the website). Quick specs include:
* Core i7 Quad CPU
* 8GB RAM
* Radeon HD6370M 1GB
* Win7
* BD-ROM (DVD-RW etc)

I brought it and a desktop to a LAN party last weekend, as I hadn't tested it for gaming and didn't really buy it as a gaming rig. The only major issue I had was that when connected to an external LCD via HDMI, it always jumped back to "overscan" mode (an issue between the LCD and ATI graphics card) and I had to jigger the settings.

Other than that, it played every game we had without any noticeable performance issues. I had a cooler-pad under it so it didn't even get all that hot. Mind you, the newest game we played was "bad company 2", but it handled that like a champ. Comparable to a year-old more than 3x pricier "alienware" gaming laptop, the rig was affordable and performance was excellent.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[citizenr]

Somebody mod down, Letter M next to laptop GPU model number means 1-3 models lower than advertised.
6770M = 6670
5770M = 5570
680M = downclocked 560

and so on

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of an external monitor, mouse and keyboard dumbfuck? Just curious ol' chap.

Jump your know it all cynical ass off a cliff.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[ledow]

None of which changes the fact that for 99% of what a gamer does, a gamer's laptop is perfectly sufficient and for others it's virtually 100% sufficient.

I don't even KNOW the model number of my particular chipset off-by-heart (nor it's desktop equivalent) but, TBH, I don't care - it runs everything I throw at it.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[goose-incarnated]

Get a wireless mouse and use the arm of the couch or the cushion next to you as a mouse pad surface. I used to do that all the time in my Lazy Boy recliner with my laptop.

In that case get a desktop case and leave it by the television set. Cheaper by far, and you can still use it for things other than games (Movies?)

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[willy_me]

Glad to hear that it works out well for you. But all laptops will suffer from limitations not present in desktops. Specifically, heat builds up in laptops and results in reduced performance. Be it the GPU or CPU, when they start to overheat they slow down to prevent damage. Modern Intel chips even support an "accelerated" mode where they work beyond their posted speed - for a bit and then they heat up and slow down.

So the better the cooling on modern hardware, the better the performance for periods of extended use - like gaming. Most users are not constantly using their computers so these "acceleration" features are welcome and greatly improve the user experience. But do not expect a laptop that says it has hardware X at speed Y to perform the same as a desktop with identical specs.

Now can a laptop provide adequate performance for you - apparently yes. But this question depends on the user and the requirements of the software that is being run. One thing for certain, adding an additional powerful GPU in an external box with proper cooling and a separate power supply will help. In those situations where a laptop is not sufficient for gaming, thunderbolt could allow it to perform this task well.

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[Anonymous Coward]

but...for the sake of all that is holy... what is the name/model of this sweet device?

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we know what model it is, please?

Re:Gaming + laptop = contradiction

[Ruzty]

PvP at TV watching distance can cause eye strain or just general fail. Accuracy and timing count and introducing a longer focal length and more in your field of vision isn't conducive to PvP success. I was offering a suggestion to his problem with using a touchpad for mouse control in PvP.

So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop?

[mlk]

They are bloody heavy and expensive. And when you drop it in an airport... :sob: (x-Alienware laptop owner).

This seams like an interesting idea, get a mid-range laptop (£500 will get you an i5 with a smallish screen) and then add this and a nice big monitor for home use. That way I can get a the odd game of TF2 and about and get my work done while out and about, but get home and play something a little more taxing.

Why to buy gaming laptop at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are so addicted to gamint that you need portable gaming machine, then better stay at home. DUDE

CUDA

[Anonymous Coward]

More interesting is whether CUDA would run across this interface. Running a Tesla board (or just a Fermi based GPU) from a laptop would be a major benefit for scientific research for which there is lots of CUDA accelerated software.

Re:CUDA

[Anonymous Coward]

Or OpenCL, for the obligatory bitcoin post!

Re:CUDA

[TheRaven64]

I R'd TFA, and it seems that calling it an external graphics card is actually a bit misleading. It's basically a breakout box that turns the PCIe channel in Thunderbolt into a dedicated PCIe slot. This is a lot more interesting, because it means that you can plug any PCIe card into it, not just a graphics card. Thunderbolt's PCIe looks just like normal PCIe to the rest of the kernel, so you should be able to use any card that you have drivers for. If you're transferring a lot of data, you'll notice the bandwidth limit a bit, but if you're doing something that fits in VRAM and then does a lot of processing on it, a Tesla board should be very fast. You could alternatively plug in an FPGA dev board.

This is particularly interesting, because it means that one of the big reasons for using a desktop over a laptop - being able to plug in that one expansion card that only comes in desktop form factors that your business needs - no longer exists.

Mythtv low res app?

[vlm]

The only problem is, Thunderbolt is only 4x PCIe 2.0, so you won't be using this to connect modern, desktop-class GPUs to your laptop

My recent interest is hardware mpeg decoding to low resolutions like 1080 HDTV (I haven't owned a computer monitor smaller than 1600x1200 since the 90s, so HDTV does seem low res to me, both absolute res and especially by DPI).

I'm curious if "something like this" would have enough horsepower to be a mythtv frontend. My gut level guess is, "probably yeah". I love my mythtv system...

Re:Mythtv low res app?

[StoneyMahoney]

It'll quietly piss all over something as simple as MythTV.

Also, 16x PCIe 1.0 was shown by Tom's Hardware Guide to be pretty massive overkill a few years ago. Even taking into account increased texture resolutions pumping larger quantities of data over the bus, I suspect the performance hit will be pretty minimal - I'd estimate about 5% based on Tom's old figures but I'd still like to re-run the test on up-to-date hardware to find out.

Re:Mythtv low res app?

[UnknowingFool]

I'm curious if "something like this" would have enough horsepower to be a mythtv frontend. My gut level guess is, "probably yeah". I love my mythtv system...

Well the mythtv wiki seems to think that the Intel HD 2000 and 3000 on the new Core iSeries is sufficient for it. That is without VAAPI support which is scheduled right now for 0.25.

Re:Mythtv low res app?

[jedidiah]

The key limiting factor here is whether the GPU of your choice is supported (and fully so).

Re:Mythtv low res app?

[Anonymous Coward]

My recent interest is hardware mpeg decoding to low resolutions like 1080 HDTV (I haven't owned a computer monitor smaller than 1600x1200 since the 90s, so HDTV does seem low res to me, both absolute res and especially by DPI).

yes, we all do that. It doesn't make 1080 a 'low resolution'.

do you have cinema resolution source files?

didn't think so.

so "decoding to low resolutions like 1080" isn't your issue - you're still UPSCALING from the source file (if not using a 1080 original)

again, we all do that.

Re:Mythtv low res app?

[walshy007]

do you have cinema resolution source files?

Dude, where have you been, even youtube puts out 4k resolution streams if the source material is up to it (you better have a fast connection or let it buffer a _lot_ though)

Thunderbolt == Docking port

[Trevelyan]

Apple hasn't marketed as such, as least not in this neck of the woods, but Thunderbolt is clearly a Docking port. The first one ever on a MacBook!! (That I know of)

Take a look at their new Thunderbolt display. With one cable connection, your MacBook gets network, sound, firewire, USB and power(!), all via your external Display. No need to attach a second cable.

Considering that Thunderbolt already is a DisplayPort connection, I don't see the benefit of connection a second graphics card over the PCI-e connection. Some says to have a more powerfull card, over 4x PCIs 2.0?, for games. However lots of suppliers have hard PCexpress (also on MacBooks) GFX cards, but none work with Macs because Apple wont play fair with regards to GFX drivers in OS X.

In the end, to be honest, I find it far more exciting that I can finally replace the 8 cables that I have to plug into my MacBook with just one.

Re:Thunderbolt == Docking port

[iMouse]

I believe the last time Apple had any type of docking port was in the early PowerBook / PowerBook Duo days (DuoDock). You could probably think of the MacBook Air as a modern PowerBook Duo. The Duo was designed to stay light and slim by leaving all the bulky I/O and modular drives in the docking station. It would be really nice to see Apple get back to this with Thunderbolt/MacBook Air.

If people are worried about the graphics performance of a card in the external PCIe/Thunderbolt enclosure off of a MBP, it will be even worse with the MacBook Air. The Thunderbolt controller is about 1/2 the performance of that in the iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro and I assume the mini.

Re:Thunderbolt == Docking port

[Amarantine]

With one cable connection, your MacBook gets network, sound, firewire, USB and power(!), all via your external Display. No need to attach a second cable.

No power. That is supplied through, eh, a second cable.

Re:Thunderbolt == Docking port

[Anonymous Coward]

The new Cinema displays take care of that.

They have the network, usb, firewire ports all built in to the display and the cable feeds power back to the laptop to charge it. Of course the display is going to be plugged in with a second cable, but it is only 1 cable with 2 connectors to plug in to the system.

And they do market the the new displays as 'The ultimate docking station.'

As for as the topic of the article, remember Apple isn't the only one that gets to use the Thunderbolt port. Thunderbolt ports are likely to end up on Sony and other manufaturer laptops. I can definitely see some use for a ultraportable that can plug in to a docking station that has a more capable video card built in.

Re:Thunderbolt == Docking port

[rsborg]

With one cable connection, your MacBook gets network, sound, firewire, USB and power(!), all via your external Display. No need to attach a second cable.

You're mistaken here. The tbolt Cinema Display (as you can see here on the main page: http://www.apple.com/displays/ ) requires two cables - one for power and the other for the rest... it's one of the small quibbles I had with the Thunderbolt's re-use of mini-displayport connector (small because it's damn hard to deliver decent power+data without a thick cable due to interference, and solving that would be like gifting a pony).

promo products

[Anonymous Coward]

Great blog, promo products thanks for sharing this..

Add these to the external displays

[franciscohs]

Apple got it right with the new displays that act as a docking station, providing USB ports, gigabit ethernet, another thunderbolt port, etc. Add a graphics card to it and you have the perfect docking station.

Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because no one moves around with their laptop and then docks it to use on a desk.

64 lane traffic on a 10 lane highway?

[mastermind7373]

10Gb/s? Only 10 Gb/s? They want to drive a low latency GPU on only 10Gb/s? I think they forgot the whole "computer thing" when they cooked up this piece of crap. Unless the GPU is a 7600GT, this is a useless idea. Any card within the last 2 generations consumes most of the PCIe 16x 2.0 bandwidth in texture and physics memory swaps(not transfer but swaps, latency makes a huge difference here). CUDA eats through that bandwidth like a starved bear. 10Gb/s? Freakin' useless, and not just because of the speed, but also the increased latencies.

Re:64 lane traffic on a 10 lane highway?

[Anonymous Coward]

10Gb/s? Only 10 Gb/s? They want to drive a low latency GPU on only 10Gb/s?

Nope. Please RTFA.

MACs Making Gaming Machines?

[Anonymous Coward]

MACs have games?

68000: What's old is new again

[tepples]

it has an ATI 68000 inside the CPU

My Sega Genesis also has a 68000 inside the CPU. What's old is new again.

Bigger screen than a DS

[tepples]

I just don't understand the purpose of a high end gaming laptop.

I can see two reasons. For one thing, unlike a desktop PC, a laptop can play video games while on an airplane or a Greyhound bus. For another, Chris Mattern mentioned LAN parties. (These wouldn't be quite as necessary if more PC games supported split-screen co-op, but that's a discussion for a different day.)

and ultimately you're playing with a small screen

It's far bigger than both screens of a Nintendo DS put together, or even a 3DS.

Been there, vapored that.

[chronosan]

Ahh, all this talk of external PCIE reminds me of the ASUS XG Station, I had so much hope for that: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ces-asus-xg-station,4679.html Too bad :(

Re:Been there, vapored that.

[Creepy]

yeah - me too - unfortunately from what was reported, the Vista/Windows 7 driver model killed it (my guess is the hardware GUI code that was added doesn't allow graphics to be directed along the USB2 bus, but I don't think Thunderbolt will have that issue because it interconnects with the same bus that graphics cards use).

Re:Been there, vapored that.

[citizenr]

ViDock has been selling XG clone product for almost 5 years now.

What does Intel GMA stand for?

[tepples]

I don't see the benefit of connection a second graphics card over the PCI-e connection.

If you've ever tried to game on an Intel "Graphics My Ass", you would.

can vs. should

[ChemGeek4501]

It sounds to me as though this is a case of "Just because something CAN be done, doesn't mean it SHOULD be done"

external pci-e is in the works and does not have t

[Joe_Dragon]

external pci-e is in the works and does not have the over head at Thunderbolt has and will not be Intel locked.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/look-out-thunderbolt-external-pci-express-spec-being-developed/6220
http://www.molex.com/molex/products/family?key=external_pci_express_pcie&channel=products&chanName=family&pageTitle=Introduction
http://www.andovercg.com/datasheets/molex-74546-0813.pdf

Thunderbolt may be good for external HDD's and other high data stuff. But for PCI-e add in cards and video cards better to go with pci-e also the mac's with on board video have like 8-12 unused pci-e lanes any ways so why not run a video card off of them as 1 video card just maxes out the Thunderbolt bus and still does not let it hit it's full power. Maybe in 2013 you can have a mac mini with a good cpu and a pci-e box with a good video card in it.

Desktop cards with Optimus, 4x is enough

[Anonymous Coward]

You do not have to connect an external monitor for Optimus enabled desktop cards, such as the nVidia 5xx series. Also, as a previous commenter states, desktop cards perform very well on 4x pci express 2.0, so you could absolutely connect a "modern, desktop-class GPUs to your laptop".

What about business?

[Anonymous Coward]

These would be less about gamers and more about professional users who need a portable computer, but more screens when working at the office. Especially in the realm of graphic design, engineering and software development. I would love to be able to have two external screens (24"+) attached to my laptop while in the office writing code. Why do these stories about graphic cards always have to focus on gaming?

Here's your potential application.

[faedle]

I don't know if it can be fitted with an NVIDIA GPU board or not, but if it can...

CUDA.

Imagine a BitCoin mining rig with a few of these, and there's your application.

Re:Here's your potential application.

[Anonymous Coward]

CUDA would chew through the 10gbit/s bandwidth and still be starved to death.

Re:Here's your potential application.

[Anonymous Coward]

BitCoin is happier with Radeons and OpenCL. But if you want to do CUDA, this should be able to fit an NVIDIA card.

Do-it-yourself eGPU

[danenick]

We over at notebook review have been working on an external GPU solution for a long time now. While at its current state, it does not lend to a lot of portability, but some great custom enclosures are being put together. Also, the price is far less restrictive than the Villagetronic solution.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-egpu-experiences.html#post5324240

I have gone as far as getting rid of my desktop since my docked HP Elitebook 8460p with second-gen i7-2720qm with 8gb ram and GTX460 is faster at just about everything than my old Intel Q9300/GTX 460 system. The only downside RIGHT NOW is there are no PCIe 2.0 compliant parts yet, so we are seeing limited bandwidth. Even Villagetronics parts are having trouble working on 2.0 compliant laptop(Lenovo x220)

My experiences
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-egpu-experiences-464.html#post7750576

Once 2.0 compliant parts are available, I am switching to a GTX570 for gaming on the internal LCD at friends, and my 24" LCD at home.

Unfortunately, my Elitebook has no TB port or I would perhaps go that route simply for a cleaner, less work intensive solution.

I find GM45 sufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

My mythtv frontend is integrated Intel GM45 with Q6600 2.4 GHz quad core.

It plays ATSC and clear QAM-derived 1080i just fine with basic deinterlacing. And at the lower resolutions that often get broadcast, the more expensive software deinterlacers can be amazingly restorative (those choke on 1080 though). There were some driver teething issues in 2008 but they've been pretty much trouble free in the past couple years.

Forget Laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to be able to run linux and suck the gpu into my windows virtual machine!

The world doesn't revolve around games

[sl3xd]

The problem (that is oh-so-common in the anti-Apple crowd) is that the world doesn't revolve around PC gaming. Many need to get past the belief that the only thing people care about is how many frames per second they can get in a game - and how small that part of the market really is.

This isn't about games, it's about getting real work done. And that is something that an external Thunderbolt GPU would be good for - when you're at the office, you plug in the GPU, and do your video editing and encoding using the external GPUs - and have additional monitors to help with video editing. You can use OpenCL to do compute-intensive work. For those that are ignorant: Apple makes heavy use of GPU acceleration, in everything from graphics editing and display to h.264 encoding. If they can use the GPU to accelerate it, they do. My graphics editor of choice uses Apple's GPU-accelrated API's to do just about everything with the images; filters run in real-time, rather than having to apply & undo while tweaking settings.

And most importantly: Thunderbolt isn't specific to notebooks. It allows professionals to plug in (and chain) multiple Thunderbolt devices into anything that has the port - be it a high end desktop that already has four GPU's churning away, to a notebook that has one. It allows for the user to scale the number of GPU resources in the same way we already scale storage with external drives.

The fact you could use it for games is a bit of a red herring - you could also use it to keep your drink warm.

Thunderbolt isn't 4x PCIe 2.0 though

[Sycraft-fu]

Intel says the PCIe part of Thunderbolt is 10gbits/sec which would make it 2x PCIe 2.0. PCIe 2.0 is 500MB/sec per lane, using 8b/10b encoding so 5gbits/sec raw data rate.

It has a 4x connection to the chipset, but that doesn't mean it has 4x worth of bandwidth out.

2x is going to hamstring high end graphics cards some.

I'm not saying it is unworkable, but there are limits to the performance you'll get because of the interface, particularly considering graphics cards are only going to use more and more bandwidth, as time goes on.

Re:Thunderbolt isn't 4x PCIe 2.0 though

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel says the PCIe part of Thunderbolt is 10gbits/sec which would make it 2x PCIe 2.0. PCIe 2.0 is 500MB/sec per lane, using 8b/10b encoding so 5gbits/sec raw data rate. It has a 4x connection to the chipset, but that doesn't mean it has 4x worth of bandwidth out. 2x is going to hamstring high end graphics cards some.

Some other people up above have linked to tests done with an ATI 5870 at 16x, 8x, 4x, and 1x PCIe 2.0 (they didn't try 2x). The 1x performance, averaged across a fairly wide selection of games, was 75% of 16x. Judging by the shape of the curve for all the steps, I'd guesstimate a 2x link would be good for at least 85%, if not more (there isn't a sharp dropoff till 4x->1x). Even if it only performs as well as 1x, 75% is still quite usable for gaming, rather than hamstrung. Just make sure to get a video card with lots of VRAM so it can cache lots of data locally and minimize PCIe traffic...

It'd be interesting to see how 'pro' applications which make heavy use of the GPU fare. I'd guess lots of them lean a lot more heavily on PCIe bandwidth than games.

Also, as an aside... As you note, due to line encoding overhead a single PCIe 2.0 lane is really 4 Gbps, not 5. (and of course there's protocol overhead eating away some more of that, but PCIe is a fairly efficient protocol with decently long bursts, which is probably true of most video card traffic.) Thunderbolt doesn't use 8b10b, however. It uses either 64b66b or 128b130b encoding (I forget which), so it's really at least a 9.69 Gbps interface, equivalent to about PCIe 2.4x. Of course, TB encapsulates PCIe, and I have no idea how efficient that is, but it's not beyond the realm of reason that it could do a bit better than plain PCIe 2x when the host connection to TB is through PCIe 4x.

BOINC

[Anonymous Coward]

So will I be able to offload work units from BOINC on this thing?

Re:external pci-e is in the works and does not hav

[UnknowingFool]

Well if you read the first link you used, external PCIe has power limitations of 20W so some video cards today will use up all the power. Also for the most part, it's been found that the PCIe x 20 has been overkill for most applications. TB will satisfy the majority of users; hardcore gamers will not use it but they won't use external PCIe either because of the limitations.

Thunderbolt is fast enough.

[Anonymous Freak]

The only problem is, Thunderbolt is only 4x PCIe 2.0, so you won't be using this to connect modern, desktop-class GPUs to your laptop

Why not? That's still as fast as many first-generation PCIe boards were when you used two video cards. (They had two physical PCIe 1.0 16x slots, that would switch to two PCIe 1.0 8x slots electrically when you filled them both. PCIe 2.0 is twice as fast, so a PCIe 2.0 4x connection is as fast as the PCIe 1.0 8x slot.

Plus many gaming benchmarks have shown that even using a 4x slot instead of a 16x slot doesn't slow down significantly.

And why the hell you need a "Gaming" Laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

The Gaming word in the sentence is utter crap. By definition laptops are portable devices. Why the hell would i lug around 17+ inch shit that weights 4+kilos. And that's not all of it. Where is the power brick, the mouse, the pad, and the external KB. It just does not figure in the term laptop. This is semi movable shit that you'd use only when at home. Why then spend ton of cash when you could by a desktop PC and have a better performance ...

and any video card case will have it's own PSU in

[Joe_Dragon]

and any video card case will have it's own PSU in it.

Re:and any video card case will have it's own PSU

[UnknowingFool]

And an external Thunderbolt box won't? That seems to be a crux of your argument that Thunderbolt doesn't have the necessary power but when it's pointed out that external PCIe may not either you switch the argument that it might have external power.

Already done!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was already accomplished by Sony's VAIO Z

http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/29/sony-vaio-z-review-2011/