Why aren't there external PC/laptop components?

Ksanti

Ksanti

Ksanti

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I've been wondering for a little while (since Fujitsu Siemen's Amilo PCs way back when) why external computer components, other than hard drives, pretty much don't exist? Given the rise of laptops but the inherent slow speeds, bulkiness and heat issues of putting desktop cards into laptops, why not have say a housing with a PCI-E slot, mains powered, that takes over from the laptop's graphics processor when plugged in? Most people have need of a laptop for whatever reason, and need to move it around, but very rarely need the graphics grunt when on the move. I know that the PCI slot is very big but I doubt that it'd be that hard to create a smaller port to connect to the hypothetical GPU dock.

I guess it could hurt actual gaming laptop sales, but given graphics cards are the main reason that gaming laptops are so thick, and cooling is the reason mobile chips run so much slower than desktop counterparts, why not?

I realise that that would make it a fair bit harder to convince people to upgrade their laptops to keep up with games, long run, but surely there's enough profit incentive to put a modular system like this out there?

Or have I just given away a million pound idea spitballing? Haha
 
It has been looked into, and done. I am pretty sure there are some external GPU units running over Thunderbolt.

Basically, is there a market for it? Likely no, at this moment in time.
 
Mac doesn't count, the cost of Mac GPUs alone makes it pointless as you still end up paying just as much for the performance. EDIT: I've looked into it. Given it's for the Mac mini and runs only a 6700 it's hardly what I'm talking about.

Why isn't their a market for it though? Very few people need their gaming laptops to put out gaming laptop performance when they use it to take notes at work on battery life, or in uni classes etc. and the added bulk that the internal gpu gives makes it unwieldy at least and ugly at worst. I'd much rather use something like a nice Vaio than either have the performance I want in a laptop and suffer the 5" chassis and pay for the privilege, or have to buy a desktop on top of a laptop if I don't feel like that. It seems awfully wasteful of the potential of the technology. SURELY it can't be that hard to create a laptop motherboard with hot-swappable graphics.

Personally I'd jump at the chance to have a something like a a Vaio S with the grunt of a desktop 7970 when I need it. Current top end laptops only just push ahead of single GPU high end desktops from 3 years ago - that's way too far behind for the premium they command imo
 
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This plus it's easier to dish out updates with each generation if you're only limited to what's inside of the laptop. Also if you try squeeze everything into the small case, components overheat, which again leads to more new laptops being sold.
 
Sin_Chase said:
Very few people have/want gaming laptops.

You answered your own question.

The gaming laptop market is tiny.
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Then why not clean up with an external GPU system? That'd likely pull people from desktops more than needing to pay £1.5k to get anywhere near a moderate desktop's performance ever will.
 
Ksanti said:
Then why not clean up with an external GPU system? That'd likely pull people from desktops more than needing to pay £1.5k to get anywhere near a moderate desktop's performance ever will.
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Because nobody (read: very few) want laptops with high end GPUs connected externally.

Those who need it for gaming are in the minority.
Those who need it for CAD/3D work don't do such work on a laptop.
Those who do not need the power will happily game at lowered details/on older titles on the integrated GPU.

I bought a half decent gaming laptop some years ago, it;s totally out of date now and to be fair I hardly used it.

The battery issues have already been resolved by switch-able graphics. All modern gaming laptops use discrete GPUs that can be turned on and off.
 
There's lots of information if you google for eGPU.

The current problem is that legacy Expresscard has nowhere near the bandwidth required and Thunderbolt, while better, still also suffers from having around half of the required bandwidth. It does work and you can use them for external GPU's which are better than mobile GPU's but they aren't yet as fast as desktop systems.

However there are improvements coming to Thunderbolt bandwidth.
 
Well yeah, that was exactly my point. Working out a massively throttled system defeats the point I'm making as you lose the performance. What I'm talking about is an actual PCI-e input to the motherboard with enough bandwidth to make use of the card. There aren't any systems which exist to allow that, as of yet, other than the old Fujitsu setup but that wasn't exactly a powerful card it was using.
 
Ksanti said:
Mac doesn't count, the cost of Mac GPUs alone makes it pointless as you still end up paying just as much for the performance. EDIT: I've looked into it. Given it's for the Mac mini and runs only a 6700 it's hardly what I'm talking about.
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am I missing something? I saw no mention of Mac!

there is a fair amount on the net about the MSI GUS (graphics upgrade shell), which suports any PCIe card up to 150w with a single 6pin (7850 springs to mind!) on either Mac or PC. main downside is that through a single thunderbolt port it can only achive the equivilent of 4 lanes of PCIe (although I presume that is PCIe 3.0, meaning the same as 8x on 2.0, not too shabby!)

also, assuming it isn't too difficult to parralelise the workflow, using 2 Thunderbolt ports ( I think they are scalable!) could yield 8x, which would be plenty

What I'm talking about is an actual PCI-e input to the motherboard with enough bandwidth to make use of the card.
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I believe I remember reading somewhere that physical distance is the killer here, as data at these sort of bandwidths probabbly wouldn't travel well through (for instance) a ribbon cable, in much the same way as ethernet doesn't work well above a few KM, hence why fiberoptic is used for the main 'backbone' of the internet
 
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The Mac was talking about the thunderbolt eGPU.

That last point about the distances is the answer I was looking for, if that's what stops us using a 7970 chained to a laptop. Is it possible that e.g. a USB standard will be quick enough in the future to run the graphical data through, or will GPUs always require more data than USB can channel at a time?
 
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