I'm debating purchasing a MacBook Air. Assuming the rumored specs are correct, I expect it to have a Sandy Bridge CPU coupled with 4-6 GB of RAM and a (pathetic) Intel GMA HD 3000 GPU.
I love the aesthetics, and the hardware specs are sufficient, but the GPU is anemic. I'm curious about the potential of attaching an external GPU via LightPeak/ThunderBolt, using something like this: http://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/index.html
I know ThunderBolt's performance isn't as fast as a direct-to-motherboard PCI Express interface, but I'm wondering if it'll come close--and perhaps the only downside would be loading/buffering (adding textures), the rest of that data would be primary handled on the card's internal memory?
Anyhow, I'm looking for opinions, as otherwise my aging desktop with a Radeon HD 4850 still (sadly) blows most mobile GPUs out of the water, including the GeForce 5xx series.
I love the aesthetics, and the hardware specs are sufficient, but the GPU is anemic. I'm curious about the potential of attaching an external GPU via LightPeak/ThunderBolt, using something like this: http://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/index.html
I know ThunderBolt's performance isn't as fast as a direct-to-motherboard PCI Express interface, but I'm wondering if it'll come close--and perhaps the only downside would be loading/buffering (adding textures), the rest of that data would be primary handled on the card's internal memory?
Anyhow, I'm looking for opinions, as otherwise my aging desktop with a Radeon HD 4850 still (sadly) blows most mobile GPUs out of the water, including the GeForce 5xx series.