News - MSI announces the GS30 Shadow 13.3-inch 1.3Kg gaming laptop

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Use the built-in Iris Pro graphics or your favourite desktop GPU in the MSI 'GamingDock'.

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Read more.

sorry MSI this is a strange concept, the laptop was enough though I prefer GTX series, If I need a powerful PC I just get one than adding a premium for a laptop desk

That's an interesting concept. Nice portable laptop with a little bit of gaming poke for out on the go, but when you get home you drop this onto the Gamingdock and you have some real gaming horsepower.

I am interested in seeing what that connector is though!

If executed and price well, this could be excellent.

The key is if the transition from laptop to dock is seamless. If only both the laptop and the dock are slimmer and sleeker. I have been waiting a long time for detachable graphics. How I wish the next Surface Pro has a Thunderbolt connection.

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Originally Posted by Zhaoman

The key is if the transition from laptop to dock is seamless. If only both the laptop and the dock are slimmer and sleeker. I have been waiting a long time for detachable graphics. How I wish the next Surface Pro has a Thunderbolt connection.

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It appears the dock can use even larger highend graphics cards and those need more power and decent cooling too.

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Originally Posted by Zhaoman

The key is if the transition from laptop to dock is seamless.

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Standardisation would also help. This should just be a standard cable from the laptop to the GPU host box, with a PCI-E slot 'mini-motherboard' in. Solutions have sprung up at various times from various vendors, but never taken off.

I'm confused, what's the benefit of this over a separate laptop and PC? As far as I can tell it looks like a PC that is crippled by the fact you have to attach your laptop to it for it to work?!

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Originally Posted by cptwhite_uk

I'm confused, what's the benefit of this over a separate laptop and PC? As far as I can tell it looks like a PC that is crippled by the fact you have to attach your laptop to it for it to work?!

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This way you have essentially one machine, so no duplication of RAM, SSDs, power supplies, CPUs, OS licenses, motherboards, etc etc. Potentially that'd save you a few hundred pounds

Putting aside the fact that trying to market a laptop with no dedicated GPU as a 'gaming' laptop is laughable, the concept here is very interesting.

Very much like the idea of having an external GPU to convert a laptop into a proper gaming machine. Although the actual hardware here looks a bit clunky - does it really need to be that big?? A non-proprietary connection would be nice too... I'm looking at you, thunderbolt...

You can already get external gpu setups for laptops (I've got one) but pretty tricky to get up and running as they're basically development boards and depends quite heavily on the laptop you're using as to the speeds you'll get from the gpu. Uses expresscard or mPCIe slots to connect.

I used one for a while but it's been basically retired now I've updated my rig, now use my PC for gaming and laptop for lighter tasks. Took a bit of fiddling around but did get great performance and managed to run games that we're completely unplayable before.

The image above looks like a commercial version of the eGPU boxes you see people build themselves but with speakers and a proprietary connection instead.

Vidock have also been making boxes for a long time that also do pretty much the same thing!

I believe what some people might be missing is that, if the article is correct, the dock will enable PCIe x16 bandwidth as opposed to the other eGPU alternatives that run at x1/x2/x4. And yes, software like games do take full use of a jump from x4 to x16.

I don't quite get it. If you buy a laptop for gaming, then it should have a dedicated GPU, thus giving you a portable 'gaming rig'. This doesn't have that, you HAVE to buy and carry around a huge GamingDock lol.

I like the idea of the dock from the point of view that you can effectively upgrade the graphics card (something you can't really do these days with notebooks), but it leaves a massive portability issue which is surely the idea of a notebook in the first place lol. You might as well carry around a mini ITX rig.

As much as I love MSI products, this will not be on my to buy list lol.

If I didn't already have a separate laptop and gaming PC, I'd snap this up straight away. I don't game on a laptop much, but if I did it'd be L4D and counter strike - the Intel HD graphics are capable of running those.

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Originally Posted by Jowsey

That's an interesting concept. Nice portable laptop with a little bit of gaming poke for out on the go, but when you get home you drop this onto the Gamingdock and you have some real gaming horsepower.

I am interested in seeing what that connector is though!

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Other sites are reporting it's a X16 PCI slot.

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Originally Posted by Breadcrust

Other sites are reporting it's a X16 PCI slot.

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There is no standard external PCIe connector unlike, for example, eSATA. So yes, inside the box there is a PCIe x16 slot but that tells us nothing about the connector or cable used from the laptop to the box.

As for the laptop itself. I would really like for there to be an external PCIe standard but not only does it look like nobody is really interested, Intel are probably against the whole idea. Remember that the Intel and Nvidia settlement specifically mentions that Intel are not to get rid of PCIe so as to kill of the GPU market and that clause must be there for a reason. A bit short-sighted as a standard external GPU box would surely mean Intel could sell more Ultrabook.