AMD Reveals XConnect - External GPU Processing Unit For Laptops & 2-in-1's | Analysis & Thoughts
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Ladies and Gentlemen in this RedGamingTech.com video we're going to be discussing AMD's External GPU solution known as AMD XConnect Technology.
Regular viewers might recall us talking about this technology a week or so back, but now AMD have formally revealed how it all works and so I thought I'd put together this video so we can try out a new format and also explain a few things!
Laptops and 2-in-1's are obviously a great deal more portable than a full blown desktop, but they do have a few issues. Firstly, as the device becomes better for gaming (ie, a better GPU) its weight increases dramatically, and another big problem is typically GPU's age faster than CPU's. Because you can't easily rip open your 2-in-1 and solder in a new GPU or more VRAM this leads to the device aging a lot faster than usual.
AMD's new solution is an external dock allowing you to connect in any of their AMD 300 range of cards of the Fury lineup of GPU's too. I imagine (but this isn't officially confirmed) the upcoming Polaris variants (AKA the 400 series) of Radeon's should also function with the Xconnect dock.
Simply connecting the device to a Thunderbolt 3 port will allow the device to recognize the GPU and then configure Windows 10 accordingly.
The bad news is that it looks like the manufacturer of your device needs to have a specific BIOS ACPI extension to hookup external GPU's and so far only the Razer Blade Stealth has been formally announced to support the technology thanks to the Razer Core which is the external graphics enclosure.
AMD have stated "Other Vendors might allow you to buy empty user-upgradeable enclosures that can accept Radeon Desktop GPU's" hinting that as time progresses their product listings will expand accordingly.
Why ThunderBolt 3?
External GPU solutions have had a big barrier in the form of bandwidth to overcome; and compared to the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x16 provides a total of 32GB/s bi-directional. Compare this to the paltry 1.25 GB/s Bi Directional of USB 3.1 and you can see why ThunderBolt 3 is pretty much the only option, as it provides up to 5GB/s. While this is still considerably lower than PCIE, it should be enough to handle most loads, but obviously we'll have to wait to see how different games and applications are impacted compared to their desktop counterparts.
According to AMD the initial results are fairly positive, and it's certainly a good step in the right direction. Using an R9 Nano AMD are claiming to be hitting between 70 and 90 frames per second with a wide variety of different benchmarks using an I7-6500U and 8GB DDR3 RAM.
Personally I've a feeling if the technology takes off it'll appeal to a certain type of gamer, though it's not currently something I need. But I imagine the ability to easily take the whole solution with you on say a business trip, take your laptop with you into meetings, come home, plug the Xconnect in then into the hotel's TV will certainly be a welcome change to others.
So, what do you all think? Is this something you'd use assuming you're a mobile gamer and what changes would you like to see made to the technology?
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