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AMD Wants To Standardize the External GPU (arstechnica.com)
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.
What does it take to get canned as a /. editor?
Did he RTFA or go a week without posting a dup?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
>> It'd also be nice to grab my desktop's GPU when I want to game on my laptop in the living room.
Congratulations: you just invented the home graphics mainframe!
Eh, Alienware still sells external PCI-E expansion bays for their high end laptops for this purpose. They're built to fit the largest cards. Some laptop makers are modularizing the videocards as well. You can technically replace the videocard in certain MSI laptops.
He has a law degree according to his profile. That explains a lot.
It's not weight, but battery life and upgradeability what this would improve.
Intel has already done the heavy lifting by giving us the Thunderbolt standard that can expose a 40Gbit (or more if you gang connectors) external interface that can transport PCIe to a GPU in a seamless manner.
If AMD wants to work on making the enclosures, cooling, and power supplies more standardized to make plugging in a wide range of GPUs easy then that's great. If they get all NIH and think they can gin up some proprietary connector instead of just using Thunderbolt then you can forget about this entire announcement right now.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
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.
Quake 3 was the best FPS
LOL
There are a lot of solutions looking for problems, but this isn't one of them. The MacBook is fanless for God's sake! That is so awesome. I want a fanless machine that I can plug into a graphics accelerator hooked up to my TV or monitor at home where I can play AAA games. Why do I need a whole second computer just to house a graphics card or God help me an abominable "gaming laptop"
I call bullshit. Your friends may not have bought console games in years due to your argument on games being comatose because the console controllers ceased evolving their input quantity, thus putting a stop on gameplay advancement,
but there is still plenty of PC gaming innovation happening thanks to the keyboard. Mount&Blade games, space sim, RTT games in the past 3 or 4 years had great releases, the continuation of great RTS storytelling and some innovation with the ex-Relic team coordinating the Homeworld successors,
FPS games that get advancement beyond the quantitative and response time capacity of console controllers (hybrid building/FPS or crazy shit like Planetstorm),
etc. etc. etc.
The only comatose things are consoles, as they are now mostly copy pasta with games we already played as you say, except with a focus on improving graphics and dicking around with "cinematic experience" because gameplay advancement is down the toilet.
PC gaming is just fine and dandy, with indie devs slowly piling up their revenue of initial smaller games on the road towards AAA conglomeration without any Publishers like EA fucking them up with the contractual "innovation is too risky" BS.
The only thing that's missing is Valve creating a marketing push with SteamOS like Microsoft did in the years it was focused on spreading Windows to every household everywhere via gaming, by fully focusing on helping devs with development teaching, bug fixing help, development tools, and stuffing their SteamOS brand on every video game start screen;
and AMD getting their shit back together by hopefully being the first to implement graphene and giving Intel a giant competitive nudge.
They've sold 20 million XBox One. Your getting the wrong conclusions from your evidence. From 1982-2012, sales went first away from mom&pop stores, and then towards online purchases.
Also, I think you've just gotten older. You get sentimental over games from when you were a kid...Kids don't play Quake anymore, of course they could. The game is dated, the model has been improved upon.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
One of my users was on a big gray Mac Pro, with a fiber card to access the SAN and an AJA card that puts video on the preview/client preview monitors - it's a video card, but a really strange one that acts more as a codec than a traditional video card.
When that machine became a crash-fest I moved him over to a newer Mac Pro trashcan. That fiber card and AJA card can't be put in the trashcan as it lacks PCIe slots. So I got this Magma Thunderbolt PCIe housing. That AJA card working in there beautifully. I doubt the Quadro Pro from his old system would work in that thing (it might - I may have to experiment one day) but I have little doubt a budget GeForce card would work in there.
I could totally plug my ThinkPad W540 into that box and just about any of the newer Macbooks in the building accomplishing what this article is all about.
Still - intentional and standardized would be nice. Especially with all these Mac people in my building - it would be nice to have GPU's in the Thunderbolt monitors we have floating around - it could save us money when buying laptops if we didn't have to worry about which laptop went to who as long as the monitor was able to handle the job.
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So what this sounds like to me is a standardized docking station.
Just put a standard connector in a standard location that passes through the VESA Local Bus (or whatever newfangled thing is popular these days). Then have a docking station with a card slot, install a standard desktop video card, and you're all set. This lets AMD (and others) sell video cards to end users of laptops just like they have always done for desktops.
Now where this could get really interesting is if they do this right, and create something that ends up getting applied not just to laptops, but to tablets and phones.
>> Quake 3 was the best FPS
> LOL
No, that's the best moba.
Whups... caffeine hadn't kicked in, and I had completely forgotten that the IP for Thunderbolt has been transferred to Intel entirely. Never mind me, I'm not awake yet.
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
Lately they're going for all these crazy niches and "next big things" that usually works out to either being a flop or if it's big, then nVidia can just stroll in from behind with a product once the market is mature. Like an ITX size 175W graphics card and so on. Even when they "win" like with Mantle nobody really cares until it becomes a standard like DirectX12 or Vulkan. Like this, I'm sure AMD will use a ton of money on the standardization effort, then nVidia will come and say "that's neat, here's Maxwell/Pascal in a box" and walk away with 80%+ of the market AMD built up.
And for all those hoping for VR to save the day, it rode the 3D TV hype wave. Now consumers have mostly rejected it and 4K is all the rage, people don't like wearing glasses and helmets even less. And Google Glass totally failed to make the cyborg look seem cool. I think the people behind it sold out to Facebook at just the right time and really... it's a $599 accessory for people with a $1000+ computer, that should be a hint. AMD won't recover until they get back to making good CPUs/GPUs and stop flailing around from one hare-brained scheme to the next.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
don't forget to also manufacture a giant red vibrating horse dildo
I believe it uses the new Intel Thunderbutt interface
Intel owns Thunderbolt, not Apple.
Have you ever taken a close look a modern high-performance graphics card? Get a good feel for their size and weight. These things can pull hundreds of watts and need a large heatsink to dissipate said watts.
Mobile GPUs don't come close to desktop GPU because the power/heat budget is much larger for a discrete card in a well-ventilated case. Yes, power efficiency is constantly improving but that just means desktop GPUs will keep cranking up performance for a given TDP, the power draw isn't going away.
I'm in my 40's and my 'device that does it all' is my cell phone. I hardly get on my laptop anymore. This may actually bolster a case for external graphics cards through; With MS continuum and an external graphics card I could play a lot higher end games that I practically can on my phone.
> The weight of a GPU chip and a couple of extra VRAM chips isnâ(TM)t going to break anyoneâ(TM)s back.
I disagree. Along with a GPU comes cooling requirements, and those definitely add both weight and size.
An external GPU would let you:
1)- Easily replace a wonky GPU, which is a gamble right now. "Al, lemme try your graphicbox. Ok, see, mine must be bad. I'll buy a new one."
2)- Easily upgrade a GPU, which is *almost impossible* now. "Huh, the new card just went on sale. It's been a couple years and I want to upgrade, but I don't want to get a whole new laptop. But this is just, buy the new one and drop it in."
3)- Possibly actually repair a GPU. "Ok, I know it's bad, but I can see the problem, and I don't have to be inside the machine I do my work on in order to fix it."
4)- Remove the need for expensive integration. Laptops are almost impossible to build and ones that actually work well with graphics cards are rare.
5)- Offload heavy and loud cooling options to an entirely different case.
6)- Prevent GPU heat from ever touching your HDD, SDD, RAM, and CPU.
7)- Pack in a fan that is large, slow, and quiet, versus slimline high RPM ones.
8)- Use a goddamned DESKTOP GPU. Mobile GPUs have the same names as desktop GPUs, usually with an "m" somewhere in there, but it's an absolute joke- in many cases, a third of the processing. It's simply a much more constrained system.
9)- Game on systems made by companies that don't have to support "gaming systems", such as Apple. Right now, if a company wants to support gaming, that's a whole market choice. If instead you have a standard you can hook up to any compatible box, you have no problems.
It will increase consumer choice, instantly double to quadruple the amount of graphics power brought to bear, lighten your laptop, shrink your laptop, make your laptop last much longer, and let you repair and upgrade it.
It's such a good idea I mostly doubt it will happen.
Your experience does not match the overall trend.
PC Gaming Market is Estimated to Grow To $35 Billion by 2018 [REPORT] There's a nice graph at showing how the PC games industry has doubled since 2009.
Did you miss the part where you don't lug around a huge external GPU? The idea is that you'd be able to take your laptop to class and take notes or whatever with all kinds of battery life, then when you get home you plug in the external GPU for some gaming.
watch that cpu throttle to uselessness in the process of gaming.
Actually, I think an external GPU and power source is a fairly elegant setup. Rather than limiting the GPU capabilities by trying to cram the cards into the laptop format, they can use full desktop GPUs with the associated power supplies and just plug in where you need that power. Then you could have something that performs both tasks of being a very nicely portable laptop and a gaming rig without unnecessary duplication of CPU and RAM or having to manage two separate machines.
Knowledge Brings Fear
Hardcore gamers do this so that they can bring the laptop without having to bring the GPU. They bring the GPU to the LAN parties, but not to the coffee house, or to work, or the living room, or the back yard. The alternative is to have a laptop + a desktop, but then they must keep the two in sync.
Thunderbolt 3 is fierce and could do it. The issue is always market, even with standardization.
Meanwhile we have morons like Palmer Luckey attacking Apple; basically the kingmaker in pushing to market modular, externalized resources like Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C.
I don't play much either, too many real life things to get done. That doesn't mean I don't want to...
That is the dumbest thing I ever heard. Minecraft made Notch millions long before it was ever ported to a console. Kerbal Space Program. Your "group" must be cloistered dopes or you don't listen very well.
So future predictions are now considered trends...?
I see lots of people here commenting and bitching that this is a horrible idea. I, however, am apparently the target audience for this very device.
Right now I'm typing this up on my tiny little 10 inch netbook. I travel around the country very frequently with this thing for casual browsing from hotel to hotel. However, when I'm at the office, I have a full keyboard, mouse, and 22" monitor hooked up to this thing. Am I carrying around a bulky monitor around the country? Nope. But when I'm in the office and docked in, I have these resources available to me.
Enhanced GPUs are for far more than just gaming these days. For me, besides casual browsing on the go, the laptop also serves as a portable hard drive to dump photos on that I take with me. When I get back to the office, Lightroom and Photoshop come into play for editing. Both of these applications are now heavily GPU accelerated. While I have a decent desktop at home for editing that has a nice beefy GPU in it, it would be great to have closer to that same performance experience in the office when docked into the large screen and big keyboard/mouse.
Yes but with the external GPU doing the heavy lifting, there should be less heat being generated inside the laptop, and less throttling of the CPU. In theory. But I fear you're probably right. The article certainly doesn't address that issue.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Twenty years' experience tells me that an [easily replaced] external GPU isn't likely to help if the onboard GPU in your laptop goes out; you'll almost certainly need it functional just to boot up...
Ah, an unreal fanboy I presume. Why are you people allowed to live?
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.
Okay, but the PS4 is doing great. Maybe you should buy one of those. I hear there are roughly 20 good games for it by now.
Heat is a problem that doesn't exist? Good, we can all put all that climate change hysteria to rest.
Yelling "get off my lawn" only works if you know what you're talking about. Bullshit, by the way... Plenty of people play serious games on computers.
Agree. The fellow is out of touch.
Apparently, he is 10 years old.
http://fairlyoddparents.wikia....
But I don't think that is the Timmy we are speaking of.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
"and I don't know anyone that can get the games that they paid for to work." That one's easy: You know 0 people who use Steam. Chances are also good that you know 0 people altogether.
What's to keep in sync if the two machines serve two mostly orthogonal purposes? In the age of the cloud, that sort of thing should be a total non-problem. You shouldn't worry about the state of your two PCs anymore than you would worry about the state of n+1 mobiles and streamers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
mod parent up! (god, I miss mod points now)
...except quite often by the time you deliver something to do that, you might as well deliver an entirely separate machine to go with it.
The GPU isn't the only limitation of Apple laptops. My main motivation for having a monster laptop myself is not the superior GPU, or more RAM, or a faster CPU. It's the drive bays. Only monster machines come with the amount of storage I want in a laptop.
The storage needs of PC gaming will likely be hampered by the netbook you're trying to plug into the external GPU.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> Also, other than Microsoft employees, I have never met someone that has one of those XBox things.
Really? Do you only know boring people ? MS sold about 35 million XBox 1st gen, 85 million XBos 360 and 20 millions XBox One. [1]
That figure includes 12 millions XBox One in the North America. That is about 10% of US Household. So in all likelyhood, there are multiple on your block.
[1] http://www.vgchartz.com/analys...
Having one of these would be great for training / running your own personal neural network. Instead of beaming all of your data to a 3rd party you have the work done locally (or series of GPUs even...)
You want to game on a MacBook?
You'll need a real GPU.
You're going to want a real keyboard and mouse.
And a bigger and better display. Or multiple displays.
You'll want real speakers (or headphones for the retards).
Multiplayer? You need a good mic to talk to people without them hearing everything in your game looping back to them.
At this point you've got so much shit on your desk hooked up to the laptop (docking station or not) that it's easier to just get a real desktop.
You'll get much better CPU performance out if it, you'll be able to store more games on it, you won't have to deal with wireless internet or a usb to ethernet adapter, etc. It'll be upgradable, too.
Tenderbutt
Having a store losing business means that games aren't popular? I guess that means that since HMW and BestBuy are down in business it's because nobody is interested in music or movies, too.
For PC, fewer people but physical media, but gaming is still alive and well. Like music or movies has moved towards iTunes/Play/etc, so too are most PC games on Steam or Origin.
Storage has been a non-issue for a long time. Sure if you want 2-3TB of SSD it's going to be expensive, but even on desktop I only use SSD for some stuff and spinning rust for the rest. eSATA or USB3 do well enough for storage, even more, but if you want local storage space it's easy enough to steal it from the optical bay.
> Seems like trying to solve a problem that doesnâ(TM)t exist.
Maybe not to you, but when I have a GTX 980 Ti in my Windows box and a (weak) GeForce 750M in the MacBook Pro the ability to use an external GPU in a standardized way would be godsend to us graphics / shader guys. I guess you never play around with ShaderToy on a laptop.
Anyways, you're missing the fundamental problem:
GPUs in laptops suck (for high performance).
I understand the heat + space + energy concerns but when you have to resort to hacks of the PCI Express then having a standard connection makes WAY more sense.
Now if only Apple would quit dragging their ass and support OpenGL 4.3+ ...
AMD promoting a specialized connector for a third-party GPU reminds me of the short lived VESA local bus connector in the early 1990's. It became unnecessary as soon as a general purpose expansion bus (PCI) became available which was fast enough to support gaming GPUs.
With the arrival of Thunderbolt 3, it looks like AMD's idea is pretty much dead on arrival.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
It's an awesome idea that won't get traction because:
a) It will increase the complexity of the design (which may or may not be a problem for expensive gaming laptops)
b) It will increase the life of the laptop before a new one is purchased, and thus reduce return business and profit. Gaming laptops are a niche where you get more turnover since they have to follow the leading edge more closely.
c) The external connector will definitely need the standardization, or the laptop might find itself compatible with too few external cards to make it worth the effort.
d) I doubt that even most gamers would use it. If you're buying a gaming laptop, portability becomes one of the concerns that doesn't exist with a desktop. Lugging an external GPU around with you is definitely going to add to carry weight and set up. It will also take up considerably more desk or lap space.
That said, I would be happy if someone provided that, but then, I generally build a desktop for gaming. A lot easier to keep it up to date and I don't need to make any compromises for a box that I'm not going to take out of my office at home anyway.
When GPU goes bad it usually works until you put it under load. Meaning it will let you get into BIOS. You might see lines/graphical artifacts and what not, but very often it's still enough to change config. So in many cases external gpu could help.
In that era, the originality of a best selling game was driven by the technology to do something completely different and to make use of the latest technology at the time (VGA, SVGA/ModeX) and SoundBlaster cards/MIDI. And speed was important, so code optimization took priority.
People were doing casual games (simple platform games), but those were written on top of the Windows API.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I'm sure it's been considered but at least from a programming perspective I'd be more concerned about the latency on the port as regards the ability to process realtime high framerate graphics through there. When I was doing CUDA programming the most difficult (that is, time consuming) part was getting data from main memory to the graphics card. Would the Thunderbolt interface be as fast at shuttling data from main memory to an external graphics card? 40Gbps is great and all, but is the latency low enough?
Data from 2009 to 2015 is not a future preduction.
3 consoles = XBOX, PS4, Wii U.
The graphic isn't clipped for me (I'm using Firefox 44.0.2). The axis is labeled from 2009 to 2018. Here is the raw image if you want to look at it that way. Your confusion probably stems from not seeing the axis. The graph shows both historical data and projected data. Since the discussion is about the historical data, you can debate if the future predictions are "made up" or not, but it makes no difference to the point at hand. The AC I replied to was saying that PC gaming is dying, which didn't match my experience. So I found this chart to see who was right.
You could certainly do it that way - dedicated PC for games, laptop for everything else. Some people find that inconvenient to maintain multiple computers. And your UID is low enough that I am guessing you can recognize that not everything is in the cloud. :-)
I'm at a LAN party, and I wanna show something I am working on - my recent Photoshop projects, something I am coding in Visual Studio, an object I am designing in Blender... I don't wanna install all that on 2 machines and keep them in sync. Maybe I don't keep those files on the cloud. Maybe I don't feel like dual-booting Windows and Linux on both boxes. Plus: I just paid for 2 Windows licenses, and 2 sets of hardware. Blech. Gimme one machine that can do it all, and if I can detach the hardware I don't need then *BAM* you have the best of both worlds. Portability and power. Also, the power gamer prefers the laptop w/ external video card because it is still easier than lugging around a tower case.
The real trade-off here is, does the hardcore gamer get enough value out of the laptop+exteranl GPU -vs- the desktop? They probably can't upgrade the CPU on that laptop, and the HDD is probably smaller and more expensive. That's where having the separate laptop + desktop pays off.
There are a lot of people out there with laptops, All In Ones, and small form factor desktops out there who are stuck with crummy integrated graphics. They have no way to add a bigger power supply or a giant two slot PCI-E graphics card, so a solution like this would be a godsend to them! Plug it in when you want to play PC games, and leave it disconnected when you want to be portable.
So, where do I buy one?
You must have missed Battlezone, Battlezone II, Clive Barker's Undying, Dark Forces, Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Duke Nukem 3D, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, No One Lives Forever, No One Lives Forever 2, Return To Castle Wolfenstein, Serious Sam: The First Encounter, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, Serious Sam II, Shadow Warrior, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, Star Trek: Elite Force II, System Shock, System Shock 2, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, TRON 2.0 and Unreal, which are all vastly superior FPS games. Even Halo is better than Q3.
Also to a UT player everything in Quake III felt like slow motion with shit weapons and poorly designed levels. Quake III was nothing more than a tech demo and the people who play it are a joke.
You're confusing single player games with multiplayer games like quake.
You get sentimental over games from when you were a kid.
As I've gotten older, I'm less inclined to pay $60 for a PC game. I can wait a few years to buy the same title for 20 bucks or less on Steam. I may have even replaced the video card to play the game in its AAA glory.
I wouldn't be surprised to see fast paced fps games revive, publishers have worn out interest in the slow modern 'realism' shooters by releasing them every year.
He was part of Dice, he came in with them and left with them.
The CPU in macbooks is pretty weak. I'm not sure how much benefit they would even see with an external GPU.
Only problem is you've still handicapped the CPU by "trying to cram the cards into the laptop format".
Maybe they can put the CPU in the external enclosure too.
You're confusing single player games with multiplayer games like quake.
Many FPS have single-player and multiplayer game modes. If the game doesn't have a good single-player mode, I'm not interested. I rarely ever play multiplayer mode unless it has a sniper rifle and I can snipe as I run around. Nothing infuriates an opponent than a head shot on the run.
When BizX bought Slashdot, they brought only a portion of the existing Slashdot staff with them. That included one of the three editors and one of the four engineers. I'm not sure about the other departments. I'd guess they intended to fill those roles with people from their own organization, but I don't know anything about how they're going about it.
I never met or talked with any of the BizX folks, so I can't tell you much more than that. We editors were the bottom of the decision-making totem pole for the site, so I didn't know about the acquisition until it was done.
Even if I'm no longer affiliated, I still love the site and the community. I'll keep contributing until I see good reason not to.
Yes, I've found another job -- I start on Monday, actually. Really looking forward to it. :)
It's almost like somebody, somewhere, might want to only buy one system. How absurd!
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
While I disagree in general that the gaming market is dead — certainly the decline of brick & mortar stores tracks to some degree with the decline of games being distributed on physical media — I do agree that Quake 3 is the best FPS.
Negative; I started at Slashdot in December, 2007. Dice didn't buy it until Fall 2012.
b) It will increase the life of the laptop before a new one is purchased
Not sure if I agree with this one. I get your point, but on the other hand it's a lot less expensive to upgrade from one integrated graphics laptop to another.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Apple do own the IP to the Lightning connector though.
"Also, you're correct about the XBox not being popular. My parents would go weeks without selling an XBox game."
What a dumb statement. Of course they'd go weeks - brick and mortar game shops are dying. People who own XBox One and PS4 systems are using digital distribution for the most part.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
"high school comp sci teacher"
You can stop talking now.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Indeed. Also very convenient for the increasingly rare LAN party. Man I miss those.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
You want to make it a standard?
Don't encumber it with patents.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Good luck and best wishes
I'm not a gamer, but from what I've heard most modern CPUs are capable of handling just about any game out there. Even laptops come with multi-core processors and tens of GBs of RAM these days. The only limitation I see on the laptop format would be disk space. Maybe attaching a fast external storage array to the dock would be a useful add-on so you can keep the cost of the on-board SSD down?
Knowledge Brings Fear
Nothing infuriates an opponent than random missing words in your sentence.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
The bottom dropped out of retail computer games, because millions of people switched to the online distribution methods: Xbox and Playstation have their own online store, and for pc you can buy umpteen thousand of games through steam, at prices retail stores can't compete with. People still buy plenty of games - the big franchises can sell for literally hundreds of millions of dollars in pre-orders alone... they just don't need gamestop anymore. All those 'hidden' gamers still buy powerful graphics cards.
First, big diff between gpu and graphics in general.
Second, graphics cards that die do so because of use and heat, and an external gou would greatly reduce both those things
Third, super rare for a little onboard guy to ever quit
...AMD cant manage driver support for the life of the laptop.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Wow, someone being nice on Slashdot. :).
My hat is off to you, sir
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
This is true as far as it goes, but misses the point that the GPU connection at that point is PCI-E. You can pick and choose your GPU in the Dell/Alienware solution and it works really well. Yes, the connector is proprietary, but that's because there were no standards for external, pluggable PCI-E.
For the record, I have an Alienware 15 that is my primary box and I love it. I have the external box (Amplifier) with a GTX-980 in it right now for heavy lifting on games. It's really nice when I'm on the road to be able to still play games with the integrated GTX-970m, but then play my heavy games at home on the amp. In addition, it acts like a dock of sorts with 4 USB sockets in the back... so I have a good keyboard, gaming mouse and Logitech G13 attached permanently to it. I do wish it had integrated gig-e but I can understand why they didn't do that.
That depends a lot on your use cases. I will preface this by saying I'm part of the target market here because I have already spoken with my dollars and have a laptop with an external GPU box; specifically an Alienware 15 with the Graphics Amp.
a- Increased complexity? Sure, and there's no doubt that there will be teething troubles with drivers. I know I had them early on because of effectively having three GPU's (integrated Intel, integrated GTX-970m and external GTX-980). However I think what AMD is aiming for here is a portable system that would only have two when "docked" and one when mobile.
b- I am still quite happy with the solution I'm running... the CPU isn't the bottleneck on the games I play and I love the fact I can upgrade my GPU when I'm ready to.
c- Agreed, but why overthink it? Yes, Dell's solution on the AW is proprietary, but technically the external GPU connection is just PCIe. That works great because you can use the same GPU that you use in a desktop today. I think AW's solution is actually pretty elegant, though dual GPU capability would be nice... but then my CPU probably would become a bottlneck :)
d- Yes, portability of a laptop is important... but for what purposes do you typically move your laptop? Mine moves when I take it somewhere I want to work.... rarely do I game anywhere other than at home so a powerful GPU on the road is mostly irrelevant. Having said all that, I also own a tablet (Dell Venue 11 Pro 7140) which is actually my go-to for a portable system so I rarely really use my AW for work at a coffee shop or the like. However, it is nice that when I am traveling for work (about one week a month) I can pack up my AW15 with my Venue Pro and I have my entire work and "home" systems with me. That way if I choose I can game in my hotel room or while delayed at an airport. Sure the GPU in the laptop isn't as powerful as the one I have at home, but it's also driving a less high res display (HD as opposed to 4K) that's smaller so I don't really notice the detail reduction.
Solutions already exist to the problem from Alienware and MSI... AMD's solution here is OK on paper but requires yet another connector on a laptop which most manufacturers are moving away from. Using TB3 is an OK solution too, but we will hit a limit at some point as GPUs continue to grow.
At the end of the day though, AMD's solution is all about extra revenue. They want to be able to sell two versions of the same GPU; one that's external and pluggable and one that's PCIe. Personally I prefer the AW and MSI solutions because they leverage already existing standards and I can go buy any PCIe GPU I like. So far just over a year in and I'm quite happy with the GTX-980 but will probably look to upgrade in the next year or so... that will extend the lifespan of my laptop because CPU just isn't much of a bottleneck.
+1 to this... I have no mod points or I'd give it. Other solutions include having a home server or NAS you can dump bulk data to for archival storage. This is what I do, and have Windows File History set up to back up to that NAS as well.
Put it on one of those laptop pads with built in fans.
Cheap storage VM.
Thanks for posting! Congrats on the new job!
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