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Back at CES, Razer began showing off its own external GPU solution, the Razer Core. Since then, AMD has backed the product, with it being one of the first to support XConnect technology using Thunderbolt 3 and now, we finally have a price and shipping date for it.
The Razer Core external graphics enclosure is the world's first plug and play solution to use Thunderbolt 3, this also means that it isn't limited to any specific laptop maker and will work on any laptop that uses Thunderbolt 3. It also supports AMD's XConnect technology, which is essentially direct driver support for external AMD GPUs.
The Razer Core will support quite a few GPUs ‘officially' at launch. On the AMD side, users can equip the Core with a Radeon R9 280, R9 290, R9 290x, any R9 300-series card, the R9 Nano and the R9 Fury X.
On the Nvidia side, you can use a GTX 750/Ti, GTX 950, GTX 960, GTX 970, GTX 980/Ti and the Titan X. The Razer Core will hit the market at $499 but if you own a Razer Blade 2016 or Razer Blade Stealth laptop, then the Core will cost you $399 instead. This is a US launch to start off with so we don't know when the Core will show up in other territories just yet. The Razer Core starts shipping in April.
KitGuru Says: Moving external graphics enclosures over to Thunderbolt 3 for wider system compatibility seems like a good idea. Do any of you currently, game on a laptop? Would you think about picking up an external graphics enclosure like this?
Following normal pricing convention, this will probably be around the £350 mark. Now call me crazy but I just couldn’t justify spending that sort of money just for the ability to have an external GPU, which I’d also then have to buy as well!
So to answer your question directly Kitguru, no and good lord noooo.
So you must have a Laptop + A Discreet GPU + This GPU Dock = Buy High End PC
Doesn’t justify the price, except for the people it was originally intended (will pay 2500+eur for a light high end laptop). There have been minipcie “riser” cards on ebay since a long time for a fraction of the cost for everyone else. Small psu + a small cheap case you get a similar capability for a fraction of the cost
Most laptop’s mpcie slots will severely limit a GPU
very true, but so will many of the laptop cpus. There are however other cheaper thunderbolt based boxes, but not much cheaper and not thunderbolt 3. Anyway, lets hope the chinese catch up :p
Pricy. It might be an indicator for how they might price the Xbox bolt ons.
Ahh .. sry read minipcie as ‘mincepie’!
Seriously though, for that price I’d rather just put it towards a gaming HTPC or a better laptop!