New laptop tech announced from CES a complilation

CES 2013 was light on actual product announcements but there were actually some interesting tech announced at the event. I've gathered a few and if others know of any more, please add.

• Primesense 3d camera. It looks like it will be too big for phones and tablets but should easily fit laptops. It's basically a smaller more precise Kinect. Would be really cool to be able to do swipes on Win 8 without touching the screen. Not sure how it will perform in lowlight. If it works well, it could be a real revolution to do touch-like gestures without touching. Coffee shops will look like a house full of crazy people doing ninja gestures.
• Touch as a requirement for ultrabooks. Intel has added touch as a mandate for Haswell+ notebooks to be ultrabook certified.
• High dpi screens. The 15.6" Acer was spotted behind closed doors. It has a resolution of 2880x1620. Probably coming after Haswell is released. Let the high DPI floodgates begin. Windows and Linux will need to make consideration for these resolutions.
• WiGig. FAster than current WiFi but cannot pass through walls.
• 10 Gbps USB 3.0. Basically thunderbolt speed. Also demonstrated was usb powering a laptop from a monitor. Kind of crazy but if throughput is high enough, it could be useful.
• Gorilla glass 3. More gorillas something something.

There were some tablet laptop hybrids such as the lenovo helix which was pretty cool but they'll be a dime a dozen. No real GPU announcements. AMD announced 8000 series but were just rebadges it seems. New CPU's from Intel and AMD talked about. Was there anything else laptop related of interest?

 

I could definitely see dual-lens 3D webcams being used for hands-off gestures this year.

The super USB 3.0 there is interesting, as it would make eGPUs much more viable. It might even allow eGPUs that don't need an external power source if it's able to push that much power (and the laptop's AC adapter's rated high enough, I guess).

I like the high-DPI thing, but 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 is already good in a 15" screen, I'm more concerned with brightness, black depth, viewing angles, and color reproduction than DPI at that point. Meanwhile WiGig sounds kind've stupid to me. I've never even come close to maxing out the bandwidth on my first-gen wireless N router, but I use it from the opposite side of the wall all the time.

 

eGPU with USB will be problematic with lag. ExpressCard is usually on the Northbridge so it really isn't problematic so much. USB and Thunderbolt even are on the southbridge. It'd be ok for regular desktop work but for gaming, the lag might be a bit problematic not to mention some jerkiness or stuttering occasionally due to interrupts.

edit: WiGig sounds ok to me, but the fact that it doesn't go through walls doesn't help much. That being said, I would love it because it means I could go untethered to my gigabit switch since I have a 5GHz N access point (actually router acting as access point) about 20 feet from my laptop 90% of the time. For normal stuff wi-fi is ok, but when you want to make use of your gigabit home server for regular file saves, gigabit is essential. I actually transfer files at ~ 90-100MB/sec over hard line. Best I can ever get over Wi-Fi N is ~ 30MB/sec.

 

The eGPU community has been excited about Thunderbolt since it was announced. If USB 3.0 (3.1?) matures to allow the same bandwidth as Thunderbolt, that presumably means the same eGPU performance (may be issues I'm not aware of, though) on a more ubiquitous port, which in turn means more viability for eGPUs. If it's that simple, I would imagine USB running at that speed could potentially push eGPUs to near-mainstream status. Okay, maybe that last one's a bit of a stretch, but I'll say this much: my next laptop won't have a discrete GPU, and I won't put a priority on Thunderbolt, but I would be happy to have an upper-midrange eGPU when I want the extra power. If a faster iteration of USB makes that possible, I'm all for it.

 

I would definitely like to see eGPU become mainstream, albeit with a reasonably powerful internal GPU if desired. I'd hate to see most everything go to IGP with eGPU. I still like to game on the go when I can. If AMD can get on the ball though, that would be a great combination. Asymmetrical CrossfireX with eGPU options. So basically IGP + mid-grade dedicated GPU with option for eGPU would be awesome. Just need to be able to route the image to the laptop screen though.

 

Is that not possible with current eGPU setups - i.e. you have to use an external monitor? I've wondered about this, but assumed it must not be the case since I've never heard anybody mention a massive limitation like this. If so, it's a dealbreaker,

 

There are some implementation that exist now that is able to route back to laptop screen, but there is another performance hit compare to external monitor.

Probably need to dig/ask the forum or find nando on TI.

 

So for maximum eGPU performance you would need a high-speed port for the eGPU (Thunderbolt or 10Gbps USB 3.0), and then video-in on the laptop that allows the screen to run as a monitor while the internals are running. My blind speculation on eGPUs, having very little knowledge of how they run, always ran up against the wall of how the eGPU's output made its way to the built-in screen, but I just ignored it because I assumed I would have heard if you needed an external monitor for an eGPU setup. I assume the speed loss in the implementations you mention is caused by information flowing in both directions at once on the single connection?

 

well if you're on the eGPU line then why not have external monitor as well ? .... since you will be having external video card and power supply anyways. Kinda stupid to still use your "small" laptop display.

nowadays people are still getting plenty of performance with eGPU over ExpressCard 2 slot.

 

There's only a small possibility that I would do this, so maybe it's moot, but here's my thinking:

A - An external monitor is an added cost - probably at least $200 for a halfway-decent one, which approximately doubles the cost of having an eGPU setup.

B - A smallish eGPU would be a great travel companion for an ultrabook or other small notebook, when you want to game in hotel rooms or airport layovers while also desiring the portability, battery life, and style of a non-gaming notebook for other mobile computing needs. If an eGPU could efficiently route to the notebook's internal monitor, you could get a $600 ultrabook and a $200-$300 eGPU to game adequately wherever you have an outlet while still being supremely portable when you need it to be.

 

you dont want to travel with eGPU setup, trust me on that part. Better get laptop with dedicated graphics if you travel quite a lot and need the graphics power.

 

The suggestion I'm making is that, if eGPUs were a viable option for more consumers, the market would develop for small-form-factor, portable eGPUs (think mobile GPUs). If I could carry around a $200 device the size of a 3.5" external HDD that allowed me to get 660m graphics performance on an IGP-only ultrabook in a hotel room or my parents' guest bedroom when I visit them in the summers, I would be happy to carry the extra weight and bulk on the train or the plane in order to get the performance at my destination. I wouldn't buy a gaming laptop, on the other hand, because it's always bulky and heavy, not just when I'm traveling between destinations.

This is all purely speculative, but if 10Gbps USB (or Thunderbolt) were available on the majority of laptops on the market, there would be much greater incentive for the (still immature) eGPU market to develop and produce something like this.

 

rumor had it IBM/Lenovo was/is developing or researching and gpu that could go in the dvd bay.

 

Do you mean the lenovo ideapad y500? That's already on the market right now. You can swap its dvd drive for a second gt 650m. Or do you mean a more universal one that uses the sata interface of the optical drive?

 

That's a cool concept, but it still goes into the notebook, meaning it's more limited by its size and especially its connectivity. If 10Gbps USB were standard, virtually any current laptop could use an external GPU that connected in that way, not just those that have an ODD, or, even worse, the specific machine it's designed for.

 

thats not even my take, but what out there.

check out the barely extremely expensive magma 3t, it can go with a 680 without an added psu or anything, the entry line products of sonnet, owc and mlogic can also be had with a 7750

but for me the most important thing is to get more devices with thunderbolt to gain traction be it on the notebook side or on the gadget side. and to up the bandwidth

USB3 is a power solution for egpus, because there is always a good fluctuation in terms of bandwidth during its use, its not constant, aside that it never reaches the specified speeds

 

Gigabyte also announced a new gaming laptop at ces 2013 with a 660m. It's thick for a 660m but maybe it'll be cheap .

 

maybe it has good cooling?

 

I'd almost rather see the external device more like a dock. something you set your laptop on and it plugs in directly. That way you can take it with you, it offers the ability to tilt up your keyboard, could even double as a cooler, doesn't get in the way and easily removable when not needed.