hi everyone.
As we all know, laptop technology has the problems of heating and limited performance because of the portability requisites. No matter how much marketing they put on gamer laptops, they cannot match a desktop PC on performance. It is true that some laptops as the razer blade still provide decent performance given the limits I have mentioned. But still, that power lasts 1.5 years in average, after that the laptop cannot run any game at high settings.
Some companies have realized about this, and started selling laptops that support external desktop GPU. Ask yourself, at what moments do you game seriously without interruption; at a party? at the cafe? in the bus? No, we do the hardcore gaming at home with a beer at hand. This solution is just perfect; external GPU stays at home for the hard gaming, and take the laptop outside for the typical laptop usage outside home. At least this works for me, because I do not have the money to buy a $2k laptop each 2 years, neither I can have a notebook and a desktop computer, its too much.
MSI and Alienware support this:
1) MSI GS30 laptop + dock.
http://www.msi.com/product/nb/GS30-2M-Shadow.html#hero-overview
2) Alienware 13 + amplifier dock.
http://www.dell.com/content/product...-amplifier?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&sku=452-BBRG
Razer does not provide this option, which I believe is, for the first time, the solution for serious gamers, who do not want to mantain a Desktop PC anymore. At the moment my blade pro 2013, which was ~ US $2.8K, can no longer run 2014 ~ 2015 games at decent settings, take for example Dragon Age Inquisition --> must run it mid-low. With this I could play literally at ultra settings, and the only moment I play such demanding games is at home.
But the most important advantage in my opinion, is that with this my razer blade pro 2013 would be useful for many more years, I could forget about updating it for 4 more years easily, and instead update the external GPU. If you consider the price of a GTX 980, updating the graphics instead of the razer is 5 times cheaper, and provides a performance one will never have on a laptop.
For some laptops that do not come with this officialy supported, it is possible to buy an accesory that allows this:
The only requirement for the accesory to work is to have a mini PCI-express slot on the laptop motherboard. The people that have teared down the blade, have you seen this slot? I plan to try if its possible, since I cannot game decently anymore.
What is your opinion about this alternative?
-
My use case is lap desk+blade+recliner/sofa.. No external graphics for me, don't want it.
-
Neat, but I doubt it will work with our Razer Blades due to lack of MiniPCI por. Am I right?
-
wont work with a razer blade. it only has usb and that is just too slow. even if there is such a slot on the mobo, how do you plan to connect it? leave the case open?
edit: also, you wont get the whole performance of the external gpu through mini pcie as far as I know. -
You are right on that, the mini-PCI express bandwith is less than desktop PCI express slot. Nevertheless, we are still talking about a performance that is beyond a mobile GPU.
External GPU on razer blade.
Discussion in 'Razer' started by neoideo, Feb 24, 2015.