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AMD Wants To Standardize the External GPU (arstechnica.com)

Posted by timothy on from the arrange-the-contacts-in-a-smiley-face dept.

Soulskill writes: In a recent Facebook post, AMD's Robert Hallock hinted that the company is working on a standardized solution for external GPUs. When people are looking to buy laptops, they often want light, portable machines — but smaller devices often don't have the horsepower to effectively run games. Hallock says, "External GPUs are the answer. External GPUs with standardized connectors, cables, drivers, plug'n'play, OS support, etc." The article points out that the Thunderbolt 3 connector already (kinda) solves this problem, providing up to 40Gbps of bandwidth over a single connector. Still, I find external GPUs intriguing. I like the idea of having a light laptop when I'm moving around, but a capable one when I sit down at home to play a game. It'd also be nice to grab my desktop's GPU when I want to game on my laptop in the living room. Standardization may turn out to be important for GPU-makers if VR ends up taking off. The hardware requirements for those devices are fairly steep, and it'd facilitate adoption if graphics power was more easily expandable.

2 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No one plays games any more by wolrahnaes · · Score: 4, Informative

    I haven't bought one in over a decade, and even my most hardcore gaming friends I have don't own one. Also, other than Microsoft employees, I have never met someone that has one of those XBox things. They just aren't selling. How about improving your mobile CPUs before working on something that no one wants now. As usual, AMD is stuck in the past.

    As I type this there are 11 million users logged in to Steam, the primary source for PC games. There are nearly 2 million players actually in-game right now between the top 10 titles alone.

    A market of millions is nothing to sneeze at. I personally would love external graphics to become a proper supportable thing rather than the occasional one-off proprietary setup I can't expect to use with the next model. I have a desktop for gaming and a laptop for portability, but with a proper external GPU option I could just have the laptop and pair it with a GPU-equipped dock for when I'm at home.

    --
    I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
  2. Re: Soulskill, didn't you get canned as a /. edito by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Good luck and best wishes