The Glade 4.0
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"Homemade" External Graphics Card via Thunderbolt
https://gladerebooted.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10254		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  NephyrS [ Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:12 pm ]
Post subject:  "Homemade" External Graphics Card via Thunderbolt
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1616400

So by "homemade", I mean home-wired.

Pretty cool, imo, and I hope indicative of future commercial applications for external graphics cards.
Author:  Müs [ Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:16 pm ]
Post subject: 
That raises a good point, why *don't* we have external graphics cards?
Author:  NephyrS [ Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:46 pm ]
Post subject: 
I keep hearing noise about it, but no major progress seems to have been made.

The Mac Pro is supposedly going to have major expandability via external cards, so maybe they'll unveil something then.
Author:  Corolinth [ Tue Jul 30, 2013 4:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re:
Müs wrote:
That raises a good point, why *don't* we have external graphics cards?

Because it's not a particularly good idea.
Author:  NephyrS [ Tue Jul 30, 2013 4:55 pm ]
Post subject: 
Eh, depends how you define good idea.

If you want (as mentioned in the article) a very portable computer that you can hook up either at home or work to a large screen monitor with a more powerful graphics card, it's a great idea.

ATM, TB2 can get about the equivalent of PCI-E 4x with a single connection. It's not great, but it's been shown that it won't bottleneck most cards.

Add in an external PS and cooling, and it's an easy way to get more performance out of an ultrabook.
Author:  Corolinth [ Tue Jul 30, 2013 5:00 pm ]
Post subject: 
Perhaps it's time to consider that an ultrabook isn't the right machine for what you want to accomplish?
Author:  Stathol [ Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:51 pm ]
Post subject: 
It is with the addition of a better GPU.

Making high-performance, removable external PCI devices possible was one of the design goals for PCIe. PCIe is hotpluggable and can run about 20 feet over copper cable. Cabling and connector specifications already exist. The real question is why laptop vendors don't offer a full 16x external PCIe connector for this, ahem, express purpose.

The only problem here is his clunky implementation. That's forgivable since what he wants doesn't exist and I'm sure he doesn't have the luxury of designing and fabricating his own laptop. With proper vendor support, this is actually a brilliant solution to the laptop vs. desktop dilemma that more and more consumers face. Personally, I would probably not ever buy a desktop again if this existed.
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