MSI's GUS II: External Thunderbolt GPU

I'm pretty sure that's the TH03 which is the lower end version of the TH05 IIRC.

 

you don't have a clue about what the TH03 is. it doesn't have nothing to do with egpu or pci-e. go see what it is.
I'm 300% sure that's a TH05. would bet my life on it. Those are pics from Bplus on their facebook page making a follow up of TH05 development.

 

PE3H is Thunderbolt to expresscard adapter.
Although It's not unrelated, nevertheless very diffrent.

 

the confirmation that thunderbolt stuff is hugely overpriced:
intel will provide 20gpbs thunderbolt falcon ridge in Q2 2013
a thunderbolt chip costs an amazing price of just $30. for just a chip the price is high but adapters costing $1000 are a nice profit for some companies.
there's no excuse for not making sub $100 thunderbolt to pci-e adapters.
also current and future chips are limited to 20gbps like the current specification states.

 

the cost of an individual asic is dirt cheap compared to the entire platform it will be tested, validated, and shipped on. this has always been true. go buy a smartphone, then look at how much a standard armcore SoC costs.

 

you can buy smartphone with high end specs for $200 easily.
the proof that is extremely overpriced is on other similar devices. like for example an asus pci-e to thunderbolt adapter that costs $40.

a thunderbole egpu is nothing more then a thunderbolt to pci-e device so it should cost no more then that. $1000? seriously. get real.

 

One more for the cause. Cant wait for a egpu solution to my macbook air.

 

Has any one checked out the ViDock as an alternative to TB? It uses expresscard 2.0 which many mid-size to large notebooks have. Not a solution for Ultrabooks unfortunately.

Village Instruments : ViDock

Looks interesting, and is already on the market.

 

been on the market and in use for a few years now. I use a DIY version on my x220 and X230. its actually a very nice piece of equipment and even allows Optimus graphics switching etc.

 

that has nothing to do with thunderbolt. very offtopic.

 

gah I want this so badly, signed. So just to confirm there is no thunderbolt to PCIe adapter that would do as good of a job as this product? Any thunderbolt eGPU solutions available?

I really want to jump into this eGPU thing especially looking to the future of buying a new laptop vs. buying a desktop pc.

Also as a new member I would like to recommend that thunderbolt eGPUs would be discussed in the DIY experiences FAQ, if it's there already then I apologize for my tired eyes deceiving me.

 

there are some, you can get from magma (the most expensive one), sonnet and mLogic

 

been following this thread for months but still not out yet
the thing I'm now worried about is whether or not thunderbolt will even continue to be used in future notebooks. Not too long ago Intel was defending its decision not to demand thunderbold ports on ultrabooks. there's still only a handfew of thunderbolt port equipped notebooks

 

imo the decision why intel wasn't demanding is because thunderbolt is relatively expensive, a chip is like $30 plus connectors and pcb cables it will be like $60 to implement. sure that's not a lot but multiply by thousands and you get big numbers. the reasoning is related to the ultrabook scene. chips were too expensive back then and ultrabooks were just too expensive for the consumer so they had to make cuts. not demanding thunderbolt helped that.

thunderbolt is NOT made for egpu use. it was never intended for that. if it was it would never be implemented, this has been discussed many times. much more profitable selling new notebooks then just upgrades. the thing is that thunderbolt it's an intel "feature" and since it's intel that makes the rules it will be implemented. haswell chips will have NATIVE thunderbolt support so you'll see many thunderbolt notebooks in the future even if it's not demanded by intel. it will be similar to usb3.0. at first there were very few then almost everyone has it.

good for us because thunderbolt is really great for an egpu. not perfect, but good. you can't add an sli or crossfire setup @100% performance. actually even single cards will be crippled by 5%-15% even with 4x thunderbolt.
but even so it would be easier, less expensive, much more capable, to have implemented external pci-e connectors and cables. all they need is to produce something with it. the specs have been around for years, connectors and cables have even be made, just watch my avatar. but we all know there's no interest in that for notebook manufacturers.

 

do you know of an updated list of notebooks with thunderbolt? I only know of those that are from summer 2012

 

they are basically the same.
you have some macs, that I don't recommend for obvious reasons.
then you have: acer s5, lenovo T430s, lenovo S430, asus G75 VX, asus G55 VM, HP SpectreXT Touchsmart 15 and that's it.
but you have to check the variants of those models as some don't have thunderbolt.

 

I heard the Iconia W700 tablet was originally supposed to have TB. If they reintegrate it in the next model, it would be an awesome combo for MSI's GUS II. Desktop power docked, and the versatility of a tablet abroad. I would go for that in a heartbeat.

 

and microsoft and intel made acer remove it from the tablets. if you open one you can even see the place for the connector and everything. I guess it would be too good. Imagine playing crysis @max just using a very small and light tablet.
This will eventually happen with haswell. The thing with ultrabooks and tablets is that they don't have upgradable cpu's and that ULV cpu's are a piece of crap compared to other normal voltage ones. also the most capable ones are still very expensive. it's the price of portability plus novelty.
But that's what the future will hopefully bring.

 

Greet another pre-sale form-submitter waiting for GUS too