AMD will share more info on standardised external GPUs soon

[HEXUS]

Promises its technical marketing head Robert Hallock.

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[dom99]

Please make this happen soon!

Plus make external GPU enclosures more afforable

[quantasm]

Also Radeon are doing an AMA on Reddit tomorrow on r/Amd

[lumireleon]

excellent idea! you simply plug 'n' play and the best of all you simply lend it to a friend for the weekend to render some jobs.

[J3FFW1SH]

This is something which would change my life! Awesome idea.

[Nifl]

Wonder if there is a market for rental GPUs ;D

[SteveWilliams]

Would absolutely love this tech!

However, being a Linux user, I bet it'd suck for us poor penguins

[MercutioUK]

I been banging the drum for this for about 5 years. There's been some really fringe setups that kinda worked (and that one that was basically unlicensed but in effect was 4x PCIe on a breakout board attached via thunderbolt) and yeah, lots of VERY expensive, limited setups that weren't worth it.

This looks hugely promising though, if AMD want to shake up the market, this is almost certainly one way to do it. I can promise that a laptop costing a little less and a full fat desktop GPU in a box that could be added to it would move a pretty heft bunch of folks in the direction of laptops. At that point you probably don't even need a hugely amazing GPU on board (though still having the option is easy + nice ofc).

DX12 will allow multiple, different cards to be pooled to provide graphics processing power (there's already supposed to be the ability to put an nvidia and AMD gpu in the same box and have them work together with DX12 so this isn't really any different). Once you have a full desktop + something in the laptop that's worth talking about you definitely have something able to keep up with a desktop (just maybe needing a stronger processor, nothing crazy though).

AMD's been doing "all in one" chip a TIIIIIINY bit better than nvidia/Intel so it may be playing to a strength. I'd happily support them again though if needed for something like this.

Can we PLEASE have one that can take ANY card as well? I want big (maybe raid) storage, full soundcard AND graphics on something I can just plug in. 40GB a sec bi-directional is LOADS. PCIe3 is 1GB per channel (so 16x = 16GB). It's completely removed the bottleneck, lets just bridge the whole PCIe bus out onto thunderbolt, huh?

[CountBartok]

Now what would be really neat is if they could get to work with ps4 and x-box one. Not sure that is ever going to be possible though.

[EndlessWaves]

I been banging the drum for this for about 5 years. There's been some really fringe setups that kinda worked (and that one that was basically unlicensed but in effect was 4x PCIe on a breakout board attached via thunderbolt) and yeah, lots of VERY expensive, limited setups that weren't worth it.

Five years ago they might have been onto something, ten years ago even more so.

These days? It's starting to feel somewhat artificial not to be able to play the latest games on more and more capable integrated graphics.

[MaddogPepper]

Wonder if this was what Phil Spencer was talking about when he said the other day about an upgradable XB1?

[=assassin=]

To me, it still looks like a pretty huge 'brick' that is not much better than an mITX build, except one that is cripped by a slower laptop CPU, hard drive etc, as well as any lag from travelling down a cable rather than being directly connected to a PCIe slot. I suppose if that lag is not perceptable to the average 'gamer' then it'd be handy for using at home, but it's too bulky to start taking around with you in addition to the laptop IMO.

[Xlucine]

I'd be happy to accept an ultralight laptop with just integrated graphics combined with one of these - games aren't very CPU limited these days, so performance would be decent, and I'd still have portability for web browsing/word processing etc. Mercutio's hard drive idea looks useful as well

[anselhelm]

RTG (Radeon Technologies Group) should work together with others to help make a via standard that Nvidia won't want to ignore.

Naturally I'd recommend working with Intel (Thunderbolt) and the USB group (Type-C connectors), but failing that, they should consider joining forces with Razer and Apple to help push a new standard with existing connectors and technology.

If it weren't for Nvidia's desire for proprietory connectors over universal standards, I'd recommend working with them, but we know that Nvidia will be petty. (For the record, I have a 950M GDDR5 in my laptop which I love, but that doesn't stop me from realising that Nvidia does not play well with others.)