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External Thunderbolt Graphics Card On Its Way

Posted by timothy on from the hook-to-the-big-monitor-on-the-wall dept.

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?"

5 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Thunderbolt = dead in two years. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:Thunderbolt = dead in two years. by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

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      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  2. No bandwidth limiting yet by EdZ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Gaming + laptop = contradiction by Stormwatch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    --
    Circumcision is child abuse.
  4. So why not just buy a proper gaming laptop? by mlk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    Wow, I should not post when knackered.