2016 and Beyond: What are we missing in laptops/notebooks?

AfterShock Forge15R/XMG Apex 15 is one such model now available.
The system is even ready for Ryzen 4000 series desktop CPUs in months to come!
However... to date, there's no 17inch version in plan.

 

https://www.hidevolution.com/product/gaming-laptops/l/amd-ryzen-7/17-3?___SID=U
Take your pick! All AMD/ATI Red Meat ingredient, or a little mix of Greens.
Or best of all... Take both!

 

Unfortunately... it's either the manufacturers are too conservative, or... INTEL is giving to much incentives to manufacturers such that INTEL based products could occupy close to 95% of product range in manufacturers catalog.

 

for the first little bit undoubtedly. But I think as mindshare grows a lot of manufacturers are gonna be forced to start jumping over....especially with the hot and loud chips intel are pushing right now.

I think once the new GPU's come in we are going to start seeing maybe 50/50, most likely 30/70 at my estimate.

the 3950X in the 15 inch laptop caught my attention, now I am just waiting to see if they can push a 17 inch with a full GPU to catch my interest.

 

I have been dreaming about this potential gaming laptop for quite a while now, and with the RTX 3000 series cards coming out with the ridiculous wattages, I felt like I needed to share it somewhere, if just so I can get an explanation on why it would suck in reality from someone smarter than me xD.

Anyway, I would really love a thin and quiet gaming laptop with a desktop CPU but no internal dedicated GPU. If all the cooling was focussed on the CPU, even something like the i9-10900K should be able to be cooled with relative ease if my quick maths of 45W + 90W = 135W > 125W is not horribly misguided.

Then you could use some e-gpu solution for graphics, although it would be even more incredible if, although this is way out-there and probably unfeasible for some reason I don't understand, to the right of the keyboard (maybe in place of the number pad), there could be a full PCIe 16x slot with some sort of pop-out mechanism. You would obviously need more power than the PCIe 75W for high-end GPUs where this theoretical laptop would make the most sense, so perhaps there could be a couple 8-pins that also pop out or that come from the power adapter (a bit of a mess for cable management, but might save some space inside the laptop).

With this solution in place, the only real disadvantage compared to a desktop machine would be the bandwidth cost of having to send the display signal back through the PCIe cable, but this should be pretty small, and you could attach an external monitor for a true desktop equivalently performant, portable, fully upgradable machine, and if it had PCIe hotswap (which is probably a crazy difficult feature to implement but hell, this is a dream laptop, and it does at least somewhat exist in some high-end motherboards so I can't think of any obvious reason it couldn't also be here) you could go from set up to packed and vice versa pretty darn quickly, with only the added bulk of carrying around the GPU separately (which whilst not completely insignificant, at least for me, would not be that much hassle.)

Maybe this idea is only really tuned to my specific use-case and the RnD cost would not be close to worth it, but damn, a laptop that came out with these features would be an instant purchase for me (given the price isn't super extortionate).

 

Closest I've seen to this is the Lenovo Legion Y740S where it has a H-series CPU but no dGPU and relies on the TB3 port for an eGPU. Would be interesting to see something from Alienware so it uses their graphics amplifier port since that gives PCIe x4 speed instead of the restricted TB3

 

Personally, if they came up with a pretty decent setup with something like the XbX APU built in and gave me a PCIE port to a Egpu I would probably be all over that.

 

Your idea sounds like a very good one. For starters, most of us who use gaming laptops game while plugged in anyway. Furthermore, the iGPU is better for gaming on battery power if you want it to last as long as possible. I have done tests with an HD 4600 iGPU and a GTX 1060, and the 1060 draws about anywhere between 1.5x-1.8x as much power to render 30 FPS.

Pair this laptop with a 100 Wh battery and you've got a DTR with amazing battery life, and amazing performance when plugged in (provided you connect a dGPU to it). GPU upgrades would also be much cheaper too since MXM modules usually command a multi-hundred dollar price premium over their desktop counterparts.

You are correct in that it would be easier to cool the CPU as well, allowing for higher overclocks. 2 fans and a beefy heatsink cooling a CPU is going to yield very good temperatures.

The closest laptop to your idea is the Eurocom Commander 2 laptop. I'd say it needs to be developed on further, but it mostly only needs a PCIe x16 slot to match your idea in its current state. It also needs to have a 17 inch form factor variant to satisfy those of us who like large screens.

 

So with Nvidia's RTX 3000 series GPUs looking to be power hogs, I'm not looking forward to how much they neuter them for laptops.

HOWEVER, AMD looks to be going more for efficiency than raw power with rumors and leaks pointing their flagship to consume less than 300W and with performance between a 3070 and 3080. While none of this is confirmed, it does give an interesting question: will AMD be more competitive with GPUs in the mobile market?

If efficiency is their goals for RDNA2, they could possibly pull ahead of Nvidia in laptops where it matters the most.

 

I'm not sure if I'd put money on it. look at all the manufacturers deliberately gimping AMD based laptops. Though that being said I'd hold my purchase to see whats up before settling with something.

 

FINALLY! Looks like 1440p 165Hz laptops are going to be the standard for the future of laptops. AND they aren't more expensive than the current 1080p 240hz laptops which is neat. Trying to get a laptop for 4K gaming was just stupid.

 

Variable TGP GPUs that dynamically ramp up or down based on the output of the power adapter. You can go to work with a 100w adapter and leave the chunky 330w brick at home.

 

Just got my first Alienware laptop with a Nvidia 3080 GPU

 

Since I have to run all sorts of clients for my drivers anyways. I'd like to be able to set individual FPS targets for games and have it auto configure from there.

IE, HZD breaks beyond 60fps so why not let me lock that in with the game profile/driver level settings and work from there turning up eye candy, Then if I switch to DOOM which has unlimited FPS capability let me have unlimited toggled and run with that without me having to jump into control panel to change it every time.