The Razer Stealth does look fantastic.
$999 Ultrabook that supports the external GPU.
This is fantastic news. It also allows someone with a slimline desktop to take advantage of a kickass GPU, as well. Of course, I’m waiting to see the non-Razer pricing.
The Razer Stealth looks pretty good, but the whole point is everything with a TB3 port will ultimately support the eGPU.
Just curious, I saw an article mention there’s lots of Surface knock-offs coming out/in the pipe. Any of them have a TB3 port?
Extend the thinking out about 5-10 years and it won’t be your ultrabook you’re docking with this. It’ll be your phone.
So far, just the Acer Aspire Switch 12s. I imagine there’ll be a lot more in the next couple months.
Completely agree, Woolly.
So will a cheapo laptop, one of these $300 things, be able to hook into one of these GPU docks and go crazy with games, especially if you use another monitor? I no longer speak nerd and was never very fluent anyway. This does sound like a really cool thing.
Edit: Oh, and another thing, will these GPU docks be upgradeable too?
Yes, if the laptop has a thunderbolt3 port. And since it uses the same plug as USB-C, in a year it probably will.
The docks themselves are not upgradable, because there’s nothing to upgrade. Of course you can always slot in a better GPU.
Just to reiterate what stusser said, the docks are essentially BYO graphics card. Therefore, you don’t upgrade the dock, you just put in a different graphics card. This is, to me, the holy grail I’ve been waiting for ever since buying a “gaming” laptop only to discover I couldn’t actually have it be mobile because it weighed more than I did!
You’re tethered in one place when you use this enclosure, monitors, M/K and external drives. Buying this and setting it up properly is just as big an anchor as a desktop.
A tablet/phablet or a cheap, moderately spec’d laptop combined w a gaming desktop mostly takes care of this need for me. I don’t need the exact same device at all times, Everything is in the cloud when I’m mobile so a laptop just needs to be adequate.
You aren’t anchored to anything at all.
But sure, if you prefer a laptop and a gaming desktop, that works too.
Ah, so you buy the dock but it still needs a graphics card? I get it. You put the card into the dock instead of into a desktop.
So is the dock + card cheaper than a desktop + same card? I do like that idea. I want a laptop either way, so it seems like a laptop + dock + GPU card might be more economical than a gaming desktop + laptop, since both desktop and laptop have to have their own CPUs, hard drives, etc.
Bingo!
We don’t know what the dock will cost, but it’ll certainly be less than an entire computer. Or nobody would buy it.
I’m like 70% sure you’d still buy it, stusser ;)
How big of a deal is the Razer laptop being dual core? Where would I see the bottleneck exactly?
Huge strategy games with tons of units, primarily. It’s really not a big deal, the vast, vast majority of games are GPU limited.
To expand on my earlier question about that topic, I was thinking of stuff like this (Far Cry 4 refusing to run on 2-core processors) and rumor-y stuff like this (numerous AAA games like Witcher 3, MGS V, etc. having a quad core as their bare minimum spec).
No idea if it’s a genuine limitation (e.g., game doesn’t start) or just severe performance issues from unoptimized code (I seem to recall a patch that sort of fixed the issues for FC4, for instance).
I’d be just as excited to get a large source of heat out of my pc case into its own enclosure with its own fans and airflow. That also allows for more interesting case design for the rest of the desktop.
One thing I’m not clear on… can the eGPU dock utilize the monitor in your laptop/ultrabook, or does it require an attached external monitor?