External graphics card with laptop??

[Tommy L]

I like the cincept of the Sony Z laptop that ships with an external plug n play graphics card / optical drive / storage, but uses on-board when your wanting to be super-mobile.

That said, I prefer the overall zing of the Asus Zenbook. Does anyone have any info on using an external graphics card with a laptop?

Edit: this is the only thing Ive found, rather cumbersome but your GPU will never go out of date on your laptop

http://www.hwtools.net/Adapter/PE4L%20V2.1.html

Can anyone think of a reason this is a bad idea? Other than the looks....

 

I have heard that Apple may be going down this route. Stacking components (in the MacMini format) externally and using magnetic feet as connectors. Effectively killing the MacPro. With the Thunderbolt connection being basically as fast as PCI-E there's no reason not to.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Tommy L

[matthewspencer]

I looked into this a long time ago. My takeaway, as I'm sure yours was as well, is basically "it's a dead zone." Very few external solutions and all of them very hacked together.

 

Many of laptops don't even have PCI-E any more, and don't really offer an alternative. What's a person to do? USB GPU?

 

I gave up the dream of having any significant GPU capabilities on laptops. Cautiously curious as to whether companies will vigorously pursue Thunderbolt development.

 

Can anyone think of a reason this is a bad idea? Other than the looks....

By the time you have an external monitor, and this bulky assembly of converter+GPU+PSU, it's such a permanent installation that you might as well just have a dedicated workstation in its place. Hell you're probably 30% of the way there, cost-wise.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Thunderbolt - PCIe enclosures are already out and appear to be working OK...

There are two main weaknesses:

 

• The port itself is not powerful enough to power serious GPUs - the latter might be pushing upwards of 200W. This means that the external enclosures are big and bulky as those should contain not just a big GPU and the hardware to mount and secure it, but a PSU. Close to the box in your link.
  
• The pricing for such existing thunderbolt enclosures is ridiculous...think those range in the $600-800 atm, and PSU/Size etc limit them to less powerful desktop GPUs. Surely more powerful than the built in cards in all but the top of the line ASUS/MSI/Clevos etc gaming-workstation laptops.
  

 

So, the implications from the above:

• Lets assume that you have to have the MBP or any equivalent thin and light laptop. The external enclosure is not really portable, and current trends in GPU design won't change much. Cards get amazing GFlops/watt, but the rate top of the line desktop GPUs get less and less power requirements, is the same as that of the mobile counterparts that get much faster within the same thermal envelope. We are pretty close to the point that mobile cards can do virtually any view-port acceleration task respectably: it is driver optimization and not raw computation capability that hinder this task - and that is the case with all consumer GPUs vs. their workstation oriented counterparts.
  At any rate, you will have to be hauling a big external box (not smaller than a 2-3 3.5" HDD bay RAID enclosure) and a second power-brick, or an even bigger box if the PSU is built-in.
  
• The thing is expensive...we are talking $600-800 (AFAIK), ontop of an expensive laptop (no cheap ones are available with thunderbolt and won't be any time soon) + that of a GPU that would make it worth it - that's another $150 for a consumer grade, or $300 for a Quadro/FireGL.
  
• For much less than that (then enclosure and GPU), you can get a whole SFF desktop computer (mATX or mITX based), much more powerful and not that bigger or heavier than the laptop+extenal GPU combo. With cloud storage making syncing working files among multiple PCs much easier (I use sugarsync with 3x machines seamlessly). It is not a macmini, but that's again because of the sear size of GPUs, something we cannot overcome yet, as we cannot cool them down if we get them smaller.

[Tommy L]

Dimitris,

Thanks for your response. Do you refer to the Magma? http://www.magma.com/expressbox-1 because thats the only one I can find.

Like I posted earlier, the Sony Z series does do what I want (see below)....ultra portable with plug-in graphics power. But Im just amazeed that its the only option. Its ~$3k for top spec and derided as a gimmick. http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/sony-vaio-z-series-laptop-boasts-external-graphics-and-thunderbolt-tech-50004246/

I am sure the next gen of Ultrabooks will crack the nut on good graphics, but you already know it will be at the expense of more heat, more weight, less battery life etc. GPU is the last barrier to a good laptop, so why not make a good external GPU / storage / Optical drive combo with Thundrbolt? A Zenbook would be fairly future proof if you could plug in GPU. Especially if rendering/sim operations are offloaded to the External GPU. Then my 'on the road' laptop just plugs in at home for light to medium graphics work. I dont want two laptops and I have 10 pcs already!

 

This is the spec on the ($2450) Vaio with external Media Port:

3rd gen Intel® Core™ i7-3612QM quad-core processor (2.10GHz / 3.10GHz with Turbo Boost)

Windows® 7 Professional 64-bit [$50.00]

Fresh Start

Microsoft® Office 2010 Starter

13.1" LED backlit Full HD display (1920 x 1080)

Intel® HD Graphics 4000 with Intel® Wireless Display technology

Power Media Dock™ with AMD Radeon™ HD 7670M (1GB) graphics and CD/DVD player / burner [$300.00]

256GB (128GB x2) solid state drive with RAID 0

8GB (4GB x2 fixed onboard) DDR3-1600Mhz

Internal (4000mAh) + sheet (4400mAh) lithium polymer batteries [$150.00]

Edited October 18, 2012 by Tommy L

[Dimitris Tolios]

Well, it is a powerful system, not doubt about it...

Mind that the external GPU is top of the line mobile chip: 7970M is not even close to what a 7970.

 

Remember that each couple of years, we get a die shrink with the manufacturing process moving to smaller and smaller lithographies.

Haswell is around the corner - intel will start producing the new chip Q4 of this year.

The focus of the new chip is internal graphics, much like AMD was doing with its APUs.

 

This means same or stronger computation, with less electricity draw - aka, computers can either get much stronger within the same power draw / thermal envelope, or get much cooler/longer running if the performance levels are maintained to current levels, thus today you are getting ultra portables/ultrabooks @ sub $1K that blow away the desktop CPUs we had 3-4 years ago, so no, it is not @ the expense of size or battery life. Both of these aspects have been going smaller and longer respectively.

 

So...the Sony Z...it is pretty powerful ofc - if you would be satisfied with top of the line iMac (also featuring the 7970M as the best GPU option) for a few years, you would be up there with the Sony Z (tho the iMac has a low-voltage desktop CPU, still not crazy faster tho).

 

Personally if I was to spend all this money today, I would not go for the factory speced external card. Magma (or others, just google "thrunderbolt pcie") can do 200-250W desktop cards that will be much faster than a 7970M, and in case of an nVidia card work with current VRay, Octane etc GPU rendering versions). If external graphics will be sitting next to your external monitor etc, having it slightly bigger does worth the bulk.

The 7970M will be outclassed by much cheaper, cooler running 8x or 9x series AMD cards (and 7xx nvidia etc - the 680M is faster but not cool or easy on power draw) that will probably find their way inside expensive (tho probably a bit bigger) laptops like the Sony Z. i.e., it is not future proof. It might be a bit more expandable in theory, but , perhaps you have to go out of Sony's vision to get there.