AMD XConnect External GPU Technology For Thunderbolt 3

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For those of you that aren't up to speed with AMD's XConnect technology, this video gives you the rundown on how Radeon Software 16.2.2 drivers coupled with an external Thunderbolt 3 GPU enclosure can turn any compatible laptop into a gaming machine.
 
And this is a perfect example of the glory of the thunderbolt 3 interface - enough bandwidth and transfer rate to allow for an external graphics solution.
 
Ok so the guy says this can be used with the internal laptop display which is what I was wondering. I can possibly see some value in that, but it all depends on price.

BECAUSE if I have to haul around an expensive small suitcase which houses a GPU and a power supply, and THEN have to hook up an external monitor to play games and I'm still using a laptop for CPU/RAM/input... then WTF is the point. Build an ITX with a handle on it and use whatever GPU you want.

Also that suitcase is cute but way too big to travel with. They need to get it down to about the size of an external optical drive if it's intended to be portable enough to haul around.

Also... wouldn't it just be easier to have an external dongle-like attachment (maybe the size of a portable 2.5" USB hard drive) with a higher powered mobile GPU in it?

I think it ultimately comes down to price. Oh and also I'm locked into Team Red cards which is not exactly a positive from my standpoint (cough *drivers* cough).
 
Uhhh....The size of the box is the size I could build a full system in and the laptop is just acting as a monitor (and CPU), so for the carry size I might as well build a SFF and attach a monitor to the box and I am done, also would end up with larger selection of GPUs, drives and CPUs, along with up-gradable CPU/mobo in the future, I am also betting this thing is going to be expensive for what it is, so cost of a good laptop + this add on box + GPU and you are probably WELL over the price of a well speced SFF system.

I don't get it....
 
Burticus said:
Ok so the guy says this can be used with the internal laptop display which is what I was wondering. I can possibly see some value in that, but it all depends on price.

BECAUSE if I have to haul around an expensive small suitcase which houses a GPU and a power supply, and THEN have to hook up an external monitor to play games and I'm still using a laptop for CPU/RAM/input... then WTF is the point. Build an ITX with a handle on it and use whatever GPU you want.

Also that suitcase is cute but way too big to travel with. They need to get it down to about the size of an external optical drive if it's intended to be portable enough to haul around.

Also... wouldn't it just be easier to have an external dongle-like attachment (maybe the size of a portable 2.5" USB hard drive) with a higher powered mobile GPU in it?

I think it ultimately comes down to price. Oh and also I'm locked into Team Red cards which is not exactly a positive from my standpoint (cough *drivers* cough).
Click to expand...

On the other hand. I can now buy a nice powerful notebook, without the size/weight/heat hassle of having a high-end GPU onboard. And have my GAMING GPU sitting safely at home, not adding to the expense of my laptop. When I want to sit and game, I go plugin to my GPU and away I go.
 
BlueFireIce said:
Uhhh....The size of the box is the size I could build a full system in and the laptop is just acting as a monitor (and CPU), so for the carry size I might as well build a SFF and attach a monitor to the box and I am done, also would end up with larger selection of GPUs, drives and CPUs, along with up-gradable CPU/mobo in the future, I am also betting this thing is going to be expensive for what it is, so cost of a good laptop + this add on box + GPU and you are probably WELL over the price of a well speced SFF system.

I don't get it....
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Think you guys are missing the point.

You have a nice laptop, that is used for work/travel, but when you are home and want to game, you can attach this to that same laptop and game on it. Which reduces the need to have dual laptops or even a laptop/desktop. The solution isn't for everyone, but I think for people that their main mode of computer use is a laptop, this opens up a lot of alternatives.

And I would certainly go this route to have a better battery in my laptop, lighter, and smaller laptop then having to have a gpu in my laptop to be able to game. Plus AMD is making it open for everyone, so we could see Nvidia enclosures at some point too.

The only real sticking point is pricing on the units and compatibility with thunderbolt moving forward.
 
Dekar12 said:
Think you guys are missing the point.

You have a nice laptop, that is used for work/travel, but when you are home and want to game, you can attach this to that same laptop and game on it. Which reduces the need to have dual laptops or even a laptop/desktop. The solution isn't for everyone, but I think for people that their main mode of computer use is a laptop, this opens up a lot of alternatives.

And I would certainly go this route to have a better battery in my laptop, lighter, and smaller laptop then having to have a gpu in my laptop to be able to game. Plus AMD is making it open for everyone, so we could see Nvidia enclosures at some point too.

The only real sticking point is pricing on the units and compatibility with thunderbolt moving forward.
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Willing to bet the price will be high, might even be close to a whole rig.

And if I am going to only use this for single location use and not travel, I would have a desktop for more CPU/GPU power and a much MUCH larger/better screen. If you are going for gaming laptop there are some thinner choices that still have a good GPU and many disable the dedicated GPU when not in use so no massive power draw, my AW14 actually has battery life close to the ultra book it replaced when under load or "gaming", at idle the ultrabook had a much longer battery life, considering the ultrabook was a efficiency based i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD and the AW14 is a true quadcore i7, 16GB RAM, a 1TB SSD and 1TB HDD, that's saying something.

I understand the point, I just don't get it, as the market for such an item I would think would be very, very small.
 
Because I want to drop huge coin on my GPU to play in a shitty little 15" laptop screen?

This idea is far from original, and we have not seen it gain any traction in any form yet. I was a big proponent of MXM back in the day, and I would suggest that MXM had more promise than this. Although there were certainly some different roadblocks for it.
 
If Apple would adopt this, even as an expensive pre-made kit, for 5K iMacs and Macbook Pros, it would be awesome.

But just having the option of a thin & light laptop during the day, or even a Surface(!) and being able to plug this in at home would be great.

Having an open standard on it opens up possibilities, great work AMD for pushing for non-proprietary connectors.
 
Sooo, while this is great for laptops, I can see it also making its way into the desktop realm.

Say you want to game at a friend's house. They have multiple machines, but maybe your GPU is better or they just have one gaming machine.

If the desktop has the support or an add-in TB3 card, you could just take your GPU with you and plug it in instead of hauling your whole rig over there.

I for one could make use of it in this type of scenario.
 
Dekar12 said:
Think you guys are missing the point.

You have a nice laptop, that is used for work/travel, but when you are home and want to game, you can attach this to that same laptop and game on it. Which reduces the need to have dual laptops or even a laptop/desktop. The solution isn't for everyone, but I think for people that their main mode of computer use is a laptop, this opens up a lot of alternatives.

And I would certainly go this route to have a better battery in my laptop, lighter, and smaller laptop then having to have a gpu in my laptop to be able to game. Plus AMD is making it open for everyone, so we could see Nvidia enclosures at some point too.

The only real sticking point is pricing on the units and compatibility with thunderbolt moving forward.
Click to expand...

Pricing is the key. So like a hundred years ago they used to make docking stations that could house expansion cards, etc. So in theory you could plop your expensive laptop down into a dock and have access to those resources. Why didn't that take off? Cost. Back then everything was so expensive you could justify some of the cost to use a laptop in that fashion. Now? A dock like that with PCI-E slots would cost as much as a computer.

Price is everything. Do you love your laptop so much that you'd drop (and I'm guessing at prices) $399 for this suitcase? Then another $300+ for a GPU? To game on your laptop display? Nah. $500 could build a competent little computer just for gaming.
 
I've got mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, as someone who has used a laptop for my gaming machines for the last 8 years, I can see how it would be nice to have an external plug-n-play style graphics solution rather than relying on the sub-par dedicated graphic card solutions most laptops come with.

On the other hand, this only "kinda" solves the portability issue he seemed to highlight at the beginning of the video. You can't tell me that enclosure doesn't weigh more than the 3-4 pounds the lighter laptop offset from the gaming laptop. He does make a separation between "game" and "travel" in his description, but when I travel for work, I want to game in the evening hours during my downtime in the hotel. I suppose I can carry this brick in my suitcase and leave it there till nightfall, but it just seems a bit... awkward. Not terrible, just awkward.
 
This is bigger than the fully functional A4 custom case by dondan (in the SFF subforum).

You can fit an entire computer plus a top of the line GPU in this volume. I don't see the point of this.
 
I agree with everyone else. This all depends on price. If it is the price of the of a desktop computer, what is the point since every game solution has cloud saves. Just get a desktop. If it is cheap and you only are really out the price of the GPU then this could be awesome.
 
illram said:
This is bigger than the fully functional A4 custom case by dondan (in the SFF subforum).

You can fit an entire computer plus a top of the line GPU in this volume. I don't see the point of this.
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Same. That's on the verge of Core 500 size, which is perfectly capable of fitting a full-length GPU without any noise or exotic cooling compromises. And I doubt this will sell for less than $500, which is getting dangerously close to a Core i5 system (sans GPU).

The other problem you get using an Ultrabook to game on is: you get stuck with a CPU slower than a desktop Core i3 6100 (turbo doesn't last forever on these tiny systems). There's a reason real gaming notebooks up you to quad core - Core i3 is an excellent value gaming CPU, but it's not optimal.
 
Shmee said:
I agree with everyone else. This all depends on price. If it is the price of the of a desktop computer, what is the point since every game solution has cloud saves. Just get a desktop. If it is cheap and you only are really out the price of the GPU then this could be awesome.
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I completely agree, but I suspect the enclosure will cost as much as the gpu. And that the only laptops that will be certified will be at least $1300+... I have an ultrabook and a mac mini that could both use something like this, but I'd want it to be like $200 all in including a mid-range graphics card, and neither machine is TB3 with the supported BIOS. A high end graphics card like a 380/390/Fury is a waste for the systems I'd be hooking it up to. Here's hoping somebody like Asus makes one. I don't need a 375w power supply or even for the gpu to be remove-able. Just a midrange card in the 100 watt range would be plenty fast for my purposes. My desktop isn't going anywhere.
 
AMD's after a market that doesn't exist. While I'm sure some people will want this, but I'm sure people would rather have a powerful laptop with them at all times.
 
DukenukemX said:
AMD's after a market that doesn't exist. While I'm sure some people will want this, but I'm sure people would rather have a powerful laptop with them at all times.
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Maybe they have found a market for all those left over Nano cards? I kid....
 
I think this could be adopted quite quickly, IF and ONLY IF AMD put in the effort and get OEMs on-board with pumping these things out, and for a decent price.

I would love to see ultrathin notebooks get 'docking station' graphics. Essentially a new way to keep your one PC without getting a heavy, 5Kg flamethrower around with you.


All Nvidia has to do is hand over a bit of cash and ask OEMs to overcharge for these things and then it will be a colossal waste of AMD's R&D money.
 
From what I am seeing, AMD is not pushing anything.

AMD is providing an open framework and support for OEMs to work with them. AMD are not manufacturing the enclosure themselves, we can see Razor has interest in this for their own thin & light laptops. I wouldn't be surprised if Razer tried to work with nvidia first given their close relationship, but got the big finger and Plan B was AMD.

Gaming laptops are not exactly thin & light, never mind the PSU brick... or cinder block in some cases... that come with them.

I would really like to see a NANO sized stylized enclosure, that may come in time if there is a market for it.
 
I'd be happy if they just made a native thunderbolt GPU (IEC power plug, a thunderbolt port, displayport, hdmi port) about the size of a power brick. Skip the PCI-E slot compatibility and form factor. In fact since you can charge your laptop over thunderbolt, this can be a replacement for the normal power supply. I usually carry my clevo and xps 13 everywhere, but with an egpu, i can ditch the clevo, and stop relying on btsync to sort-of keep my two laptops and desktop in sync.
 
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I just looked up the Razer Core on their website, and it does support both AMD and nVidia cards. I love how the video made it sound like an AMD exclusive...
 
ldbadger said:
I just looked up the Razer Core on their website, and it does support both AMD and nVidia cards. I love how the video made it sound like an AMD exclusive...
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Yeah, they just came late to the party, Nvidia already released a driver to explicitly support eGPUs. Probably makes sense since the other Razer products were already using team green.
 
DukenukemX said:
AMD's after a market that doesn't exist. While I'm sure some people will want this, but I'm sure people would rather have a powerful laptop with them at all times.
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Not at all. AT ALL. There is most definitely a market for this. I don't know how you can say otherwise. Being at one point a pretty avid laptop gamer I can tell you that the demographic for this most definitely exists.

ldbadger said:
I just looked up the Razer Core on their website, and it does support both AMD and nVidia cards. I love how the video made it sound like an AMD exclusive...
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I think AMD definitely helped make it happen. Nvidia is supported simply because the product can support any GPU manufacturer. It's just Nvidia didn't do anything to help make it happen.
 
Taldren said:
Sure, if you want to spend at least $750 more than you have too. If you can utilize your laptops CPU, Motherboard, Memory, PowerSupply, Battery/UPS, Audio, and SSD/HDD ... then why would you purchase them again to make two stand alone systems? Sure you can get more out of the stand alone computer as an enthusiast, but you are paying for something that is going to be idle while you are away using your laptop which is idle when you are home. Come home, dock ... hey, a gaming system with large external montitors. Undock, travel ... hey something that isn't breaking my back carrying it with great battery life because it isn't powering a highpower GPU to drive my tiny screen.
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"although I am sure there are some folks that would want this, just not many." And I am sticking to that.
 
Mut1ny said:
There isn't a metric shit ton of people but I certainly think there's more than you may think there are. Plus, with the majority of people moving away from full on PC systems I feel that external GPU's will only get more popular through the years.
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This way my first real thoughts about gaming laptops too, but those are still a pretty small segment of the market.
 
There's got to be some kind of latency or other problem introduced from the cable length or something though right? I mean why else do GPUs mount directly to slots in the MB.

If this actually performs well, would it not mean we could do away with all those gigantic slots on motherboards and just have a bunch of internal Thunderbolt ports? You could mount your GPU(s) away from your MB and have a more compact case with better cooling.
 
GaryJohnson said:
There's got to be some kind of latency or other problem introduced from the cable length or something though right? I mean why else do GPUs mount directly to slots in the MB.

If this actually performs well, would it not mean we could do away with all those gigantic slots on motherboards and just have a bunch of internal Thunderbolt ports? You could mount your GPU(s) away from your MB and have a more compact case with better cooling.
Click to expand...
 
There's latency but not so much from cable length but from the protocol conversion. The main reason we have slots is because of legacy form factors back when we used mostly parallel signaling and needed a lot of pins synced to a single clock and you had to keep your signal traces within careful tolerances. Pretty much since we switched to pci-e we could have gone with new and creative form factors because we have separate serial channels and we have some examples of include the alienware graphics synthesizer and the MSI egpu dock but thunderbolt makes it easier to implement and allows for longer cable lengths. FireWire was kind of intended to be used this way too but didn't catch on. Now that laptops and SFF devices are more popular than desktops, this opens up possibilities for expandability via modules instead of stuffing everything in a chassis. In a way this is a bit like the way we use USB hard drives and printers at home, now we can add the GPU to the list.
 
GaryJohnson said:
There's got to be some kind of latency or other problem introduced from the cable length or something though right? I mean why else do GPUs mount directly to slots in the MB.

If this actually performs well, would it not mean we could do away with all those gigantic slots on motherboards and just have a bunch of internal Thunderbolt ports? You could mount your GPU(s) away from your MB and have a more compact case with better cooling.
Click to expand...

It's not latency. Thunderbolt is not that much higher in latency than PCIe.

The reason PCIe SLOTS is used is because the slots are designed to be inexpensive to manufacturer. This is why the slots have to be so close to the processor: it means they don't require any extra I/O hardware to attach devices to the bus, because they keep the traces under X inches in length.

Thunderbolt adds costs by adding an extra layer of I/O to the bus, in order to make it LONGER and more portable. This means you need two Thunderbolt chips, and an active cable to connect them.

And you're going to constrain the performance of your graphics card unless they can gang two Thunderbolt 3 links together, because you only have 40 Gbps (4x PCIe 3 link).

EDIT: as Miikun also mentioned, the I/O also had to be the same form-factor as old Parallel I/O. But I doubt they wold have gone with anything besides a card edge connector for cost reasons. You can change the shape of your connector, but PCBs WILL ALWAYS BE FLAT. So why not make the connector flat?

You still have to supply 16x amount of connectors to run in parallel to achieve enough bandwidth, and you still have to supply Y connectors to push 75w safely onto the card, so why not an edge connector?
 
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defaultluser said:
It's not latency. Thunderbolt is not that much higher in latency than PCIe.

The reason PCIe SLOTS is used is because the slots are designed to be inexpensive to manufacturer. This is why the slots have to be so close to the processor - it means means they don't require any extra I/O hardware to attach devices to the bus, because they keep the traces under X inches in length.

Thunderbolt adds costs by adding an extra layer of I/O to the bus, in order to make it LONGER and more portable. This means you need two Thunderbolt chips, and an active cable to connect them.

And you're going to constrain the performance of your graphics card unless they can gang two Thunderbolt 3 links together, because you only have 40 Gbps (4x PCIe 3 link).

EDIT: as Miikun also mentioned, the I/O also had to be the same form-factor as old Parallel I/O. But I doubt they wold have gone with anything besides a card edge connector for cost reasons. You can change the shape of your connector, but PCBs WILL ALWAYS BE FLAT. So why not make the connector flat?

You still have to supply 16x amount of connectors to run in parallel to achieve enough bandwidth, and you still have to supply Y connectors to push 75w safely onto the card, so why not an edge connector?
Click to expand...
 
I'm confused: why did you just quote my entire post, but than add nothing of your own?

There's a like button there for a reason :D
 
I think the connector format isn't really the question, more like a computer can be built using modular chassis, with external connections. Think how we have all these external devices (two printers, die cutter, 3D printer, scanner, storage array, KVM, monitor). Now we can move the GPU you if the box. I'd stil
defaultluser said:
I'm confused: why did you just quote my entire post, but than add nothing of your own?

There's a like button there for a reason :D
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Haha sorry easy to touch the wrong button on my phone, especially when it gets laggy and I have to fight auto correct.
 
KazeoHin said:
I think this could be adopted quite quickly, IF and ONLY IF AMD put in the effort and get OEMs on-board with pumping these things out, and for a decent price.
All Nvidia has to do is hand over a bit of cash and ask OEMs to overcharge for these things and then it will be a colossal waste of AMD's R&D money.
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ONCE AGAIN, I AM A MOTHERF***ING PROPHET.

Razer to charge $500 USD for Graphics Card Enclosure
 
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