Would you trade an internal optical drive for better GPU?

IMO, the internal ODD is so rarely used that it doesn't deserve to take up so much space inside a 14" laptop. Why not use that precious room for a tier 1 GPU instead? Nobody complained when netbooks didn't come with ODDs, perhaps it's finally time to say the same for laptops?

 

Well, the next Macbook Pro's (Sandy Bridge, Light Peak) are rumored to be optical drive less (or at least have that option?), so I'd say that the optical drive's demise is about to officially begin with 2011.

 

Why not? I'm sure nearly all new notebooks sold today can boot from external ODD for reimage, and you can almost get everything through USB/interwebs today so no need for discs really except for people who don't know better.

 

yes. we need 15IN xfire solutions.

 

Even better, I would push for dual/triple drive bays myself (but not a gamer).

But the comparatively large volume of the ODD does leave the manufacturers a lot of room to give us better equipped systems in the near future.

I can't wait to see what we get!

Hopefully better gpu's for you and more drive bays for me (maybe even in the same notebook - CS5 can use both 'upgrades').

 

I'd trade the optical drive for flexibility. I love how currently I can swap out my ODD for an extra battery or an extra HDD and that the process is relatively simple.

 

After the NVIDIA class action suit, I think there are plenty of people who regretted getting a dedicated GPU. Perhaps NVIDIA will be able to rebuild in time.

Beside the reliability issues, dedicated GPUs have other downsides, such as heat and shortened battery life. Ideally, switchable graphics will solve the worst woes, but at the same time, integrated graphics have become so powerful that you only need a dedicated GPU for 3D applications and high end gaming. In other words, only a small subset of gamers and professionals truly need a dedicated GPU these days. Most consumers and business won't see any benefit from any dedicated GPU, let along a high end GPU that takes up so much space. As I said, a lot of consumers regretted buying NVIDIA GPUs instead of sticking with Intel integrated graphics. If you don't believe me, check out the class action suite.

I think the days of a built-in optical drives are coming to any end, but there might be better uses for the small and volume, such as more battery capacity or a second HDD/SSD.

 

Isn't that how it's been since integrated graphics first roamed the earth?

 

Think about all the people on this forum, we are power users. Sure it is true, most average Joe Schmoe doesn't need discreet graphics. But people scream for faster computers, and they learned IGP didn't run Vista very well (also the 1 GB RAM didn't help either). I've talked with plenty of customers and they wished they had better GPUs for their notebook.

Small subset of gamers need discreet GPU? Ever try playing half the modern games with IGP? lol it won't even load the game. Pre-Intel HD graphics would error out most games.

 

I would definitely trade an internal optical drive for much better cooling, preferrably a passive cooling system.

 

Cd-s went out long ago .. now almost nothing fits a dvd ..

And blueray ... 25Gb or 50Gb .. meh .. not worth the money when 1TB hdd-s under 100$. Calculate the GB/$ ...

Movies/music/apps .. 32Gb flashdrives dirt cheap nowdays to share with friends or move data.


Optical media is dead until they figure out how to go mainstream with 1tb+ discs.

So yes .. don't need or want optical drive in my notebooks or desktops.

 

I believe we are capable of building a graphics card able to fit modularly in any standard optical drive slot.

No one has made external MXM through mPCI-E, which is our only option, but there are a lot of other external MXM boards for servers and embedded systems.

The cheapest and most widely available MXM boards are for HP blade servers.

Its a proprietary mezzanine interface but its probably some form of PCI-E. I think it would be fairly easy to figure out this interface and use it as normal PCI-E. Here is one on Ebay: 256MB HP / COMPAQ FX560M MEZZANINE CARD 469067-B21 - eBay (item 400175971995 end time Dec-24-10 23:09:58 PST)
As you can see it is MXM 2.1 with an HE tab. I have seen these with high powered cards like the 3600m. Here is a picture of the other side and the bladecenter connector:


They are very small form factor.

My hope would be to get a custom adapter board into production by a custom PCB company of which there are many. But first we need to know how to use this on PCIE.
When I have the money I will buy one of these and do some diagnosis on that interface. I've also thought there could be an HP adapter to use these for PCI-E which would solve a lot of problems, but I haven't found anything yet.

 

The Alienware M11x implements the idea you suggest.

It is a 4.5lb 11.6" laptop with an nVidia 335M GPU. That GPU has more than enough power to drive the 1366x768 display of that laptop. And a large part of why they can get that much power into such a small laptop is because they chose to remove the optical drive.

The nVidia class action suit was due to malfunctioning GPU's because nVidia used cheap solder in their chip interconnects. The problem was a manufacturing problem, not a problem inherent with using a discrete GPU.

The problem could have easily occurred with any component of your laptop that uses a chip (e.g. motherboard chipset, onboard audio, memory controller, etc) if the manufacturer of that chip chose to use cheap solder.

As for switchable graphics - all Arrendale CPU's (Core i3/i5/i7) have an Intel GPU built into the CPU package. Sandy Bridge will continue this trend. That means that every single Intel laptop made from now on will have an Intel GPU in it, no matter what. Laptop manufacturers will no longer choose whether they want integrated *OR* discrete graphics. They now must choose whether they want integrated *AND* discrete graphics.

The sole reason nVidia created its Optimus technology was because of this fact. From now on, any laptop with an nVidia or AMD GPU will use switchable graphics. You will no longer see laptops that have only an nVidia / AMD GPU.

The problem with any kind of interface like MXM is that it has drawbacks with very little practical advantages. The idea of user-upgradeable graphics is wonderful. However, the drawbacks are tremendous.

First of all, MXM means added complexity. Laptops need to be larger to accomodate an MXM slot. GPU's and VRAM need to be mounted on MXM-compliant boards. All of that adds size, weight, and cost.

Second, MXM faces the threat of obsolescence very quickly. What guarantee do you have that an MXM-laptop you buy today will have any upgrade path at all? A GPU designed in 2013 could use totally different power and cooling specs than what we can predict today, in 2010/2011. Just look at the GPU desktop market. If I asked you to predict what desktop GPU's look like in 2013, you would not be able to tell me how much power they would consume, what kind of PCIe power connectors (6-pin, 8-pin, etc) they would use, or how much heat they put out. Laptops are under even greater constraints, because laptops do not have the luxury of having upgradeable power supplies and cooling designs.

While the idea of MXM is great, I really don't see it going anywhere.

 

I prefer an extra hard drive to an extra GPU for SLI/Crossfire. But when SSDs become cheaper at large capacities and if the cooling system can support 2 GPUs my opinion would likely change.

 

I would trade my internal optical drive for anything.

 

I am with you. I think i have not opened mine for over a month. Optical is dead if they don't put much more capacity in it, but then what would be the burn times, copy times and no automation we need to be there...With USB3.0 it will be even faster to transfer data between a backup disk, and if it is connected to the home network the timer can run the backup automatically.

 

In the grand scheme of things, an optical drive is a trivial cost, compared to a bigger juicer GPU with the cooling that entails.

Logic says keep the optical drive.

 

Optical Drives ought to be relegated externally:
1)It is slow doesn't matter if it is internal or external because it is_STILL_slow
2)People use them rarely, there are USB Optical Drives for that matter even Operating System Installer media are migrating to bootable Thumbdrives
3)It is huge
It takes up a lot of space because DVD/CDs are THAT big.
The space saving can provide better cooling (eg TimelineX 3820TG 2 cooling fans) and size savings.
4)Thumbdrives capacity greatly exceed optical media, reason they WERE important decades ago was because they had the largest capacities
but now it no longer matters. Optical Disks has fixed maximum capacities, the specification is not upgradable.

Hence Optical Drives should go the way of dinosaurs.

 

That is not really what we are talking about. We're talking about portable high powered gaming laptops with not just decent (which the m11x fails at anyway) but very powerful CPUs, and top of the line SLI or crossfire graphics cards.
Most 11.6" don't have optical drives so thats another reason what you are saying is not relevant.
Even for an ultraportable with graphics power the m11x fails horribly. 4.5lbs is quite ridiculous for a 11" laptop youll notice.

An example of omission of optical drive for better graphics is the LG p310. That truly is the only laptop that has successfully done what we speak of.
You act as if screen size is not a specification to be considered when it comes to games, which is ridiculous. The LG p310 has a 13" 16:10 screen, any socket P core 2 duo (at least 50% of which are better than the the m11x cpus) and the 9600m GT which is about matched with the 335m.

And it weighs about *3.5lbs.* This is why the m11x totally failed to be anywhere near as good as it should have been especially in terms of omitting an optical drive to make room for more power.

None of this is true for quad cores.

Let me search our forums on that for you.
non MXM: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4288
9lbs 4.5oz
MXM: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4417
7.7lbs
Same graphics card, chipset, screen size etc. you can calculate the dimensions from inches to cm if you want but Im pretty sure the 8710 is thinner and smaller in general.

Cost is irrelevant to ma

You seem to have ignored not only everything I said, but the entire history of MXM which has already come very far. Yes, I guess you don't see it because you haven't looked.
There are laptops that were released with Nvidia 6800m gtx cards which are capable of using gtx 280m cards. Smaller laptops released with ATI cards such as the x1600 are now using 4670 cards.

Thats 3 years for the first mobile video card interface standardized across brands. And you are implying that the second fully revised MXM 3.0 will not last 3 years?
And this:

You seriously just wrote a paragraph on the upgradeability of laptops, and you don't know that you can upgrade the power supply??
This is utterly ridiculous.

 

He's talking about the internal power regulation circuitry, not the external power brick.

 

The thing you plug into the wall.

 

... power cord .... , that plugs in the power brick that plugs in to the notebook (yes my asus powerbrick got it's own powercord)

Even an empty space for storage instead the optical drive with a door would be better to keep flashdrives

Or back to the powerbrick .. make1 that would fit in that space flat

 

For current quad cores, no, but it will be in a few months with Sandy Bridge.

The 8800M GTS and the FX 3600M are not the same card. As well, a large part of the reason the Gateway is larger is because it fits 2 hard drives, not just one as in the 8710w. This is not specifically to negate your point about MXM, just pointing out that the 2 notebooks you chose are poor representations of your point.

Now, personally, I'd prefer universal hot-swappable caddies for HDDs or maybe batteries over a graphics card; this has the added advantage that you could just make the ODD hot-swappable as well, for those that would prefer to keep an internal optical drive. Note that this idea (the one I'd prefer) is not new.

 

LOL to the top of the topic.

We all know the 2 most limiting factors in laptops today are the HDD (easily end user replaceable) and the GPU as laptops ship with quad cores, 4-8GB RAM. Unfortunately the GPU is not removable in most laptops and in the laptops you can, you have to completely disassemble your notebook for the most part to get to it. So I would gladly trade optical drives which for the most part are useless for a big GPU bump.

 

I disagree with most by saying I use my ODD alot. It is my portable home cinema coupled with my projector. Nothing can replace it for my uses that would be better.

The alternatives would not be as mobile and be far more costly. Also it is nice to own a hard-copy of media. I could easily rip my blu-rays as I already have the software (Any DVD) but there is no need

As for a better GPU I would love one and is the reason I bought a laptop with a mxm slot. MXM I think has a future however it is annoying that the form factor needlessly changes. For example mxm 2.1 needn't have been phased out. It supported up to 60W cards without a power tab so could have powered all and any mid-range card for years and years. If the 4670 512mb GDDR3 card works flawlessly on mxm II 2.1 with temps not even exceeding 55C at 25% OC then the newer generation mid-range cards would work perfectly and many of us would still have a GPU upgrade path. Yes however high-end cards did need to migrate to the newer mxm standard.

 

I'm happy with my 5650... I'd much rather have an OOD than a better GPU. If I were to switch it out for anything it would be for a new hard drive.

 

I mean sure a 5650 is a very good mid range card, but what if you could upgrade to say a 5850 for the cost of your ODD? Would you be willing? You can always buy an external ODD, but you can't always upgrade your GPU after the fact.

 

5850 would be nice, sure... but more heat and less battery life isn't worth it. Specifically the battery life.

Frankly the only bottleneck I've come across is my CPU since most of my gaming involves emulation.

That's me personally. I happen to rarely use my OOD but I did use it for a liveCD when I screwed up something.

 

Again, the Alienware M11x is not a portable notebook that can game. It is a gaming notebook that happens to be portable.

Other notebooks with the same gaming power as the Alienware M11x start at 14". The fact that they got that amount of GPU power in the Alienware M11x chassis (which has no optical drive) makes it extremely relevant in my eyes.

Again, the Alienware M11x is not a portable notebook that can game. It is a gaming notebook that happens to be portable.

Nobody buys the M11x laptop if their #1 priority is portability. If that were the case, they would buy a Sony Vaio Z (3.5lb 13.3" ) or a Macbook Air (2.5lb 11.6" ), both of which have discrete GPUs in them.

People buy the 4.5lb 11.6" Alienware M11x because their #1 priority is gaming (with portability as a #2 priority) and are willing to sacrifice some portability to get that gaming power.

The Quad-cores that are out are based on Clarksdale, not Arrendale. Clarksdale CPU's do not have an Intel GPU on the same package as the CPU. I specifically called out Arrendale.

There are people who read this thread to whom cost is not irrelevant.

External power bricks are easily upgraded. What you cannot upgrade is the internal power delivery to the components.

My point about future upgradeability is that you don't know what your upgrade path of an MXM laptop looks like, or if it even has one at all. In order to meet the increasing power demands of more modern GPUs, they had to create a new MXM spec (MXM 3.0) which is not compatible with previous MXM specs. Anyone with an original MXM laptop is S.O.L.

The people who consider buying MXM-enabled laptops are power-users that want the most power out of their laptop that they can possibly get. And it's very likely that every 2 or 3 years, they want an entirely new laptop altogether.

They probably want the latest CPUs, the latest in audio, the latest in networking technology, the latest in optical drives, the best and newest screen technologies, and the newest in connectivity (like USB 3.0 or SATA-3). They may want an active warranty. Or, they may just want to buy a new laptop, just for that brand-new-toy feel, and are willing to pay for it (like you, to whom cost is irrelevant). These are all things that you cannot get by just upgrading a video card via MXM.

 

But it wouldn't be the "cost of the ODD." You would nix the drive, and then pay out a lot more cash.

 

I would really like to see ODDs get axed from notebooks - I rarely use mine (I think the last time I used it was burning the Win7 student installation I purchased online), and with external CD/DVD burner combo drives selling for as low as $20, it just seems like a better idea to use one external drive, which you can use with all your computers as necessary.

In the space saved, I'd really like to see improved and quieter cooling systems, and more connectivity (eSATA, USBs, more video output options, etc).

 

ive openned my laptop many times and i cant see how additional cooling can actually take the place of the odd. you will need a fan, the heatsink and some copper all of which are quite thik. the odd, although it occupies a lot of space, is quite thin actually and imho it will take more than removing the odd for better cooling for a high end card.
i however would trade it for an additional hdd bay as like others i seldom use it.
but with that being said, i still have a lot of friends who use their laptops/odd's as portable media devices for bd's and dvd's. and although most power users would have their media stored in hdd's, i think the average user still makes significant use of the odd hence the market preference for having them internally.

 

As I said, I don't want to see them GO as much as I want to see more flexibility. The option of swapping out the spot of the ODD for an extra HDD or an extra battery is something that appeals to me and would probably give users more flexibility compared to their uses(if you want more storage, you can get it, if you want more battery life you can get it) and it'd give manufacturers another moneysink.

 

I thought certain older Dell business models are like that, like the D830 which you could purchase the modular bay battery. I don't know about newer ones.

And there is a pretty big thread on adding a 2nd SATA drive inside an ODD for a 2nd hard drive (or 3rd in some cases).

 

Its very easy to add a hd to any odd bay.

Its easier without the modular bay than with it actually

Its harder to add an external battery there though. I have not seen a diy extra battery

 

how do you do this?

 

I mean, its easier for a model without a removeable bay than one with it ala the thinkpad asus w3j or what have you.

For your standard notebook the cd drivee is held in with two bolts just unscrew then and its out.

Use an ebay hdd adapter and put it in. dont bolt it back in and it comes in and out super easily

Whereas the ones with this added extra feature like a thinkpad t60? Its a few steps more complicated.


some models have a large added software headache it will be described in teh diy 2nd hdd bracket here on this forum. But the switch is very simple about like changing an atari cartridge.

 

Yup some business class notebooks have the ODD easily swappable for each of the options I stated. What I'd like is for this option to become more standard so as to give customers a further chance to "customize" their notebooks to a certain degree depending on their needs without having to necessarily purchase a new system altogether.

For example, my T5010 is very easy. No screws involved(other than screwing the HDD to the modular tray). It's just a switch and you pull out the ODD, then you can latch on the modular bay battery or put the extra HDD in the tray and then snap it back in. All of it can even be done on the go save screwing the HDD to the tray.

This is a feature I particularly like because it gives me the flexibility to have an ODD, an extra HDD or more battery life depending on my use of the computer on x, y and z day.

 

Well I suppose manufacturers think that most battery life is acceptable. If you are absolutely going for battery life and more calculating power than a calculator (which some netbooks amount to) then you will go for pretty much the business models, or buy the Timeline series from Acer or buy expensive, overpriced batteries (like HP's 12 cell battery)

 

The OP's question was whether I'd trade an ODD for a better GPU. My answer was a conditional 'no', saying that I'd rather manufacturers trade ODDs for more flexible options, not necessarily a better GPU.

The point is that the ODD's space can be used for a lot, a better GPU being only one option which IMO 50% of people don't need; so with the apparent "death" of ODDs as some people in this thread are saying, I'm proposing a solution on how to use the space of an ODD in a more flexible manner than simply beefing up a power hungry GPU which people might never need.

 

Oho I'm not arguing with you lol. The reason why I vote video card is because that is the one thing that can't be replaced easily by the user. CPU, RAM, HDD, battery can all be easier replaced than the GPU. So why not use that space (or in some cases no space) for a higher end GPU? And I'm a hardcore video gamer so I always want better graphics power. But I guess it's to each his own.

 

With that much space to devote to cooling a single desktop card may be feasible. That would make me happy for cost reasons alone.

I propose we replace all optical drives with solid copper bricks!

 

The last time I made this thread, it turned into a flame war.

 

If it were a magic gpu that only uses as much energy/ produces as much heat as an OOD I would.

 

And you can do exactly that with a Thinkpad's Ultrabay.

 

I'd trade an ODD for pretty much any other feature; doesn't have to be a good GPU. I suspect ODDs make laptops less solid and strong.

 

I wouldn't say less solid or strong, just one more thing to fail on a notebook (because of moving parts).

 

Funny enough being a bench technician for 2+ years officially, I have only seen 2-3 "defective" optical drives where they died on their own, not counting idiot users who put baloney (yes someone actually did this) as well as SD cards, paper, part of a sandwich into an ODD. And the upper/lower filters thing fixed alot of "defective" optical drives too. And somehow people 'accidentally" put this into their optical drive..

 

never had one fail in six laptops as well.

HDs fail way more often.

but ttruth be told I dont use them a lot.

Once it got to the point where I dont even have many friends who want cds burnt theres just about no use for them.

Im not encoding a dvd movie for anyone it takes too long.

 

I've had a couple of optical drives fail on me. That's with excessive use though. I've had more hard drives quit on me though.