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  • Manch - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    It's interesting enough that I may look at Alienware laptops for the first time in a while.
  • erwos - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Yeah, I had much the same reaction. The Alienware 13 is the first laptop in a while that's tempted me to replace my desktop.
  • Manch - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Then I went and looked at prices....ummm nope. I can understand 300 for the external case and proprietary connection that allows you to run at full speed. The laptop is so damn overpriced though for what you get
  • Hace - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    I mean is it that bad? An i5 + 860M is nothing to sneeze at.
  • ddriver - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    I'd totally sneeze at it.
  • Samus - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link

    What the hell else is better for gaming in a 13" chassis? Alienware has always pushed the OEM envelope in design and capability. It's actually amazing when you remember they're part of Dell. Obviously the partnership hasn't dissolved Alienware engineering creativity.
  • Gigaplex - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link

    Maxwell would be way better.
  • Jumangi - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link

    The 860M is a Maxwell part. If your talking about the 970M/980M then this laptop would be well over $999 for one of those, assuming it could deal with the thermals.
  • Harmattan - Thursday, October 30, 2014 - link

    The 860m is a Maxwell OR a Kepler part. Not sure what version AW is using in their 13 though.

    eGPU has always just been a curiousity for me. I just can't see pumping GTX 980 using an eGPU chassis and PSU (all costing 60-70% of you laptop) into a 13" screen.
  • gw74 - Thursday, October 30, 2014 - link

    970?
  • hyno111 - Friday, October 31, 2014 - link

    There is a laptop called Aorus x3 ,with a slightly larger size and lower weight. Armed with 4860HQ and 870M, it is surely more powerful. The support is not gonna be as good as Dell's, though. And the price is a LOT higher with 256G*2 SSD RAID as minimum. Still, it is better as a 13'' gaming laptop.
  • ggathagan - Friday, October 31, 2014 - link

    Since the Aorus x3 doesn't have the ability to connect to the graphics amplifier that is the subject of the article, it's a moot point how good the laptop is.
  • gw74 - Thursday, October 30, 2014 - link

    Not all i5s are created equal. This is a ULV 17W. Noooooooooope.
  • jann5s - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    I would definitely consider this if it would work on my non-alienware laptop, but still, well done dell.
  • hpglow - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Does your laptop have some kind of external PCIe bus? This box doesn't connect through magic. At $300 for an empty enclosure with no card they can keep it.
  • Cygni - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Mine sure does, its called Thunderbolt.

    Proprietary connector for an alienware laptop pretty much guarantees its market failure, though.
  • Notmyusualid - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    As an Alienware fan, sadly I'd have to agree. Why couldn't they have gone for Thunderbolt? The laptop community would have wet their pants to be sure.

    Sometimes I think the Anand community could run many a marketing department / product development department much better than many a corporation.

    I guess this means my M18x R2 wouldn't be compatable either... Oh well, I have about enough GPU anyway...

    Still, full marks for trying...
  • MrSpadge - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Yeah, even your old Alienware won't be able to use it with a new proprietary connector. I know Thunderbolt chips are rather expensive.. but at 300$ there was surely room for another one.
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    "Why couldn't they have gone for Thunderbolt?"

    Several companies have designed external video card chassis for Thunderbolt now. None of them have ever made it to market.
  • Manch - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Will those Thunderbolt connections allow full bandwidth to the card or is it handicapped?
  • Alexvrb - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Handicapped. That's why they didn't use Thunderbolt. It's way too slow, at that point you're far better off using a high-end discrete mobile GPU!

    They got tired of waiting for a decent industry standard external PCIe connection and made their own. I don't like proprietary connections but since nothing even remotely suitable was available, I don't blame them one bit. I still wouldn't buy one, though. But perhaps they can push the industry to create a decent standard for something like this.
  • Guspaz - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link

    Thunderbolt 2.0 enables a single card to get the equivalent of a PCIe 2.0 x4 slot (its 20 Gbps single-device bi-directional throughput is higher than the PCIe x4 interface to the Thunderbolt controller), and modern high-end cards (at least as of the 780 Ti) are not going to suffer much of a performance hit in most games. Thunderbolt 3.0 (which doubles throughput) would further improve the situation.
  • GruntboyX - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    My guess is that Thunderbolt doesn't have enough bandwidth. This is a PCIe X16 3.0 port. So In theory you can run any card and have access to the full bandwidth that any desktop card can put out. So I think its a homerun. Yes its proprietary. But considering the uniqueness of the offering. 300 bucks is not bad. I am willing to pay the early adopter tax on it. Hopefully it catches on. Even if it doesn't the fact that its a standard X16 port means the solution should have longevity and shouldn't be tied to specific video cards.
  • extide - Thursday, October 30, 2014 - link

    It's a 16x port but not actually 16 lanes. It's in the range of 4-8 lanes.
  • SpartanJet - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Your thunderbolt port is a toy compared to this. There is a reason why there still isn't a viable thunderbolt external GPU device yet...its called bandwidth. This will offer full PCIe 3.0 x16 bandwidth thunderbolt can't touch that.
  • SirKnobsworth - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Do we know that it's a full x16?
  • extide - Thursday, October 30, 2014 - link

    No, it is not full 16x b/w, it is 4-8 lanes.
  • twtech - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    If you owned an Alienware laptop, would you really care if it was proprietary or not?

    What I would actually like to see is a long-battery-life ultrabook that turns into a gaming machine when plugged into this thing.
  • MattVincent - Sunday, November 2, 2014 - link

    Agreed. A lot of people want this
  • ddriver - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Thunderbolt doesn't have nearly the bandwidth of a full size PCI-E slot. I don't know if that's what alienware's proprietary connector is, but it surely looks big enough to be it, otherwise what's the point, they could have just as well sued thunderbolt.

    As of whether thunderbold will be enough to feed a high end GPU - that remains to be seen, but the lower bandwidth may very well result in frame stalling as data is transferred to the GPU.
  • foxtrot1_1 - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    This is pretty cool, but a proprietary connector? Come on.

    Isn't this what Thunderbolt is supposed to be all about? If, you know, Intel actually cared about increasing adoption.
  • Kumouri - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    From what I've heard, one of the big things that is keeping the few Thunderbolt external video card interfaces we've seen as prototypes from shipping as final hardware is that Intel is refusing to validate any thunderbolt device for external video cards. So Intel is specifically stopping this from happening. Hence the proprietary connector.

    Beside that issue, Thunderbolt v1 is 10Gb/s each direction for 20Gb/s total, and v2 is 20Gb/s total. With PCIe 2.0 being 4Gb/s each direction, that puts us at 2.5 lanes per direction per thunderbolt cable, or 5 PCIe 2.0 lanes total. From what I've seen you barely lose performance going from x16 2.0 to x8 2.0, but you start to really feel bandwidth bottlenecks around the move from x8 to x4. So if you wanted better performance you would NEED to use a proprietary connector.

    It really is a shame that they have to use a proprietary connector but it was certainly their best/only option. Hopefully someone (or Dell/Alienware) can reverse engineer the whole thing and we can make some converters or something. Or maybe they can just sell a PCIe card or USB 3.0 card (with worse performance) or something that converts to the proprietary connector.
  • SirKnobsworth - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    1) Both TB1 and 2 are 20 Gbps in each direction. The difference is that TB1's two links can't both be dedicated to the same use.

    2) Anandtech's <a href=http://www.anandtech.com/show/7987/running-an-nvid... testing</a> suggested that the performance drop was minimal over TB's PCIe 2.0 x4 interface.
  • Kumouri - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    1. I must have read that wrong, that's my mistake. I forgot they had 2 channels.

    2. It shows little drop in some cases, but significant performance drop in others. I would call TB2 a stop gap, at most, with more bandwidth definitely needed.

    3. Intel still isn't allowing companies to use TB for external GPUs. They won't license it and aren't doing validation, from what I've read. Here is a <a href="http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=16829... to the macrumor's forum with mentions that Intel is blocking all eGPU enclosures from using TB. I haven't researched this in a while, but you should be able to find more mentions of it if you google it. (hopefully my link works correctly xD)
  • SirKnobsworth - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Yeah, the biggest problem with Thunderbolt it Intel's policies on it.

    And TB3 should offer some bandwidth increase, though the PCIe link will still be only x4 (but 3.0 so you get 32 Gb/s).
  • FITCamaro - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    I definitely would like to see the performance of this versus a desktop with roughly the same hardware.
  • A5 - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    I somehow get the feeling that I could just build a desktop for what this thing is going to cost...
  • phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Sure, but could you take your desktop to the coffee shop, or the library, or the office as easily as you could the laptop?

    Yes, if you never, ever move the laptop away from the amplifier, then a desktop would be a better value. But if you only need the amplifier some of the time (home to play games or do CAD or graphics) and want the portability of the laptop for the rest of the time, this makes sense.
  • Michael Bay - Saturday, November 1, 2014 - link

    If one has a modicum of taste, he`d never take anything by alienware anywhere.
  • MDX - Sunday, November 2, 2014 - link

    Just asked my gf what she thought of the alienware. Her answer "they look cool, and I love the lights!".
  • MDX - Sunday, November 2, 2014 - link

    Comments like this on gaming laptop reviews crack me up. You clearly aren't the target market for this sort of product. We both know it. Why waste your time with pointless comments?
  • invinciblegod - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    It's too bad it's not thunderbolt, but I understand the limitations of that interface. Now I will just wait for the windows tablet that is compatible with this interface!
  • adityarjun - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    I don't really see a use case scenario. If you are on the road, it is highly unilkely you will be carrying this around. If you are at home just use a small form factor chassis. That way, you can use a desktop cpu too along with that gtx 980 and not be bottlenecked by i7 mobile series.
  • Kumouri - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    It's probably for people who want a laptop but only have the money (or the know-how) for one thing. $800 is enough to build a desktop if you know what you're doing, but if you have no clue then it's easier to just get the laptop and this. Then you can work on the road and come home and just plug it in, restart, and you're gaming.
  • SirKnobsworth - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    A high end mobile processor shouldn't be a bottleneck for a single GPU.
  • Notmyusualid - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    +1
  • SirKnobsworth - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    On the other hand, the dual-core U series processors they're putting in the Alienware 13 might not quite be able to keep up...
  • Wolfpup - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    I'd carry this with me if I thought there was a chance I'd be using it. And full blown mobile CPUs are very, very fast.
  • dakishimesan - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    You know if this would be great for? College and Lan parties. Anywhere you need a semi permanent set up for space is at a premium, that isn't as larger big as even a small form factor desktop.
  • adityarjun - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    @Ryan, in case you are reading this, how about an article on small form factor desktops? Not the ultra small ones (UCFF) but something a bit more balanced.
    Is it possible to build a decent desktop (i7 + gtx970?) in a chassis that is near the size of this graphics amplifier?
  • asendra - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    I have a pretty decent setup with a 4770k with a Corsair H90 AIO, 16gb Ram, a GTX 770, 2 SSD + 2x4TB WD Reds all in a Node 304. Granted it seems to be a bit bigger than this box (not sure how much, can't find measures) but I also have quite a bit of storage which could reduce the volume a bit.
  • adityarjun - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Just googled Node 304. Looks great! Your setup sounds ideal to me actually. I would just change the 770 to 970 if I buy it now.
  • bobbozzo - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Yeah, Node 304 + Silverstone 450W SFX PSU (cables are annoyingly long on ATX PSUs).
  • nevertell - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Having this only be available on a limited set of Dell devices means it's DOA.
  • ToTTenTranz - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Let's hope Alienware will put a little more weight into this than AMD+Acer did with XGP...

    http://www.dailytech.com/AMD+to+Give+Notebooks+a+B...

    I actually bought an Acer Ferrari One, back in the day. The XGP connector is there but external graphics cards were never made available to the public.

    I would actually pay quite a premium for the ability to use an external graphics card in my laptop.
  • fokka - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    it's nice that the extGPU scene is getting into gear at last, but the design, form factor, price and proprietary nature of the solution dampen my enthusiasm considerably.
  • TEAMSWITCHER - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    I don't get it. Are they saying that their gaming laptops will never be as fast as a desktop? Or do they really want to sell you a gaming laptop without discreet graphics hardware? It's probably the later.
  • Wolfpup - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    It's the former, plus more. The first notebook that supports it already has a very solid GPU in it (for the size at least), but this means you can use the best of the best with your notebook, AND means you can do upgrades when you want to.
  • MrSpadge - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    > Are they saying that their gaming laptops will never be as fast as a desktop?

    Of course! Big gaming laptops are realistically limited to about 100 W GPUs. You can put up to 375 W into this thing, which can provide almost 4 times the performance, given similar power efficiency. In practice you can still expect a factor of 2 to 3 higher performance from a high end desktop solution, because it will be driven harder and experience reduced power efficiency.
  • JNo - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    For the money, size and limitations, why not just build a mini-ITX build with same GPU for not much more. Then you've also got a second PC a similar size which can act as NAS, fileserver, whatever as well as the laptop.
  • Wolfpup - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    SWEEEEEET!

    I'm not sure what "blower" cards are? Just that it blows the hot air out the back? Don't all cards do that?

    My other concern is...does this just use regular Nvidia or AMD drivers? Or require something special? Because if it needs some proprietary drivers, that kills it. I'm guessing it just works with Nvidia's desktop drivers though...

    Obviously it's disappointing you can't add it to any notebook...I'd buy this + a Geforce 980 for my 680m based Alienware M17x-R4, but at least going forward this is yet another reason I'd stick with Alienware (besides the fact I've found them very well built and designed.)
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Look at the GPU in the 2nd picture. It has a small fan at the front and a shroud mostly covering the heatsink over the rest of the card. That' s a blower cooler; it works by blowing hot air out the back. Most reference designs use them because they're marginally cheaper and will work in almost any case.

    The other major style of cooler is what's known as open air. They use 2 or 3 fans and don't have a shroud to direct the air out the back. Instead it's dispersed into the rest of the case. Because they use more and larger fans these designs are quieter; and in a well ventilated case generally somewhat cooler as well. However if you put one in a case that has little or no ventilation of its own; everything is going to end up baking.

    http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtool...
  • zodiacfml - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    lol. that is huge. that's already the size of a mini-itx, and probably in price too.
  • jtd871 - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    It's smaller than mITX - looks just big enough at the end for a standard ATX PSU and a triple-slot (including the USB? ports). It is reminiscent of Silverstone's T004/Asus XG2. For the $300(?) cardless price reported above you could get a FT-03 mini and a SFX PSU to put a mITX system in and have change left over.
  • zodiacfml - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link

    agreed. i just can't see any practical purpose......unless someone has more money than time on their hands.
  • meacupla - Saturday, November 1, 2014 - link

    I think there are two different ways to look at this.

    Portable gaming laptop w/ full desktop graphics and monitors at home
    -or-
    mITX gaming PC that requires separate monitor, keyboard and mouse to use

    The former is better if you want to travel lightly, but the latter is better if you don't mind carrying the monitor or buying another one locally.

    IMO, the latter would work better if laptops or tablets accepted external inputs, as those are the perfect size to pair with mITX PCs.
  • SirKnobsworth - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    I'm curious if this box can power the laptop as well or if it still requires a power brick...
  • Gunbuster - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Would be neat if they had designed it so you could dock the laptop to it for power and extra cooling.
  • coburn_c - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    Welcome back Michael Dell.
  • Morawka - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    where is the ipad air 2 review?
  • Sm0kes - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    "...but in practice the only way to acquire such a rig has been to build it yourself, combining an ExpressCard slot and its pokey PCIe 2.0 x1 link with an external PCIe chassis."

    Ryan, unfortunately you're a few years behind the latest developments in the DIY eGPU space. There are now several cost effective TB / TB2 solutions available (Akitio Thunder 2, Sonnet III-D, Sonnet SEL) that offer significantly improved performance.

    I would suggest swinging over the TechInferno eGPU forum and checking out the dozens of example implementations and real world benchmarks: http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/65...

    The bottom line is this solution is dead on arrival. The proprietary connector will limit the success and adoption of this. Although, I don't blame Dell here. Intel's unwillingness to certify any Thunderbolt solution aimed at graphics cards is forcing vendors to resort to alternative interfaces.
  • NA1NSXR - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link

    They should've used a 1U sized PSU.
  • Manch - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link

    Looking at the prices for the option, yeah it is. Alienware makes nice machines. Before Dell bought them out, they were the machines I wish I had. After Dell bought them I was concerned but they have continued to produce nice hardware albeit still expensive. I understand you're paying for the name but I had hoped being bought by Dell would enable them to leverage those perks and bring down prices a bit.

    I really like the concept of an external graphics card so I can replace my DT & laptop with one system. I however am just unwilling to pay the premium they're charging. Until prices come down to earth for a feature such as this, Ill be happy with syncing my data accross my devices.
  • MDX - Sunday, November 2, 2014 - link

    The machine + box is cheaper than the other machines I was considering before the announcement (Aorus X3 and Razer Blade). Not sure how price is the barrier there? I just wish it had macro keys like the Aorus ;)
  • cjb110 - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link

    People keep mentioning the Intel policy issue re eGPU and thunderbolt, anyone know more about the why? It just seems unlikely Intel would have this without a damn good reason. Is there some certification, health and safety type thing people aren't aware off?
  • rhx123 - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link

    I made this post on T|I a while back but my theory still stands:

    They don't want a docked laptop to be as fast as a desktop, so when someone needs mobility and desk-bound performance, they are forced into buying a laptop and desktop both with Intel silicon.

    The same shows with Ultrabooks, they are not pushing displayport at all, and when you do get one with displayport, MST isn't supported so you can't really run multiple monitors easily. I think Intel now see most laptops as companion devices, or at least more dumbed down than stuff like the proper EliteBooks.
    This is further evidenced by the dropping of 16x 3.0 PCIe lanes from Haswell ULV.
  • extide - Thursday, October 30, 2014 - link

    I think they totally missed the opportuinty to have this essentially be a full docking station. What I mean is that it should:
    -Provide power TO the laptop
    -and include support for ethernet and audio jacks and such

    so that you basically only need to hook up the one connection and boom, your laptop has everything connected.
  • MDX - Sunday, November 2, 2014 - link

    I spoke with dell's director for product dev at PAX yesterday, and he said the cable and the connector are not proprietary to dell and that dell has not patented them. He said the only thing proprietary is their software solution that prevents accidental cable disconnection from potentially damaging the hardware.
  • MDX - Sunday, November 2, 2014 - link

    Forgot to mention that he also said they're going to include broadwell as soon as intel releases it.
  • vang024 - Monday, November 3, 2014 - link

    I'd get it if it will work as a docking station for a Surface Pro 3 or Yoga 2 Pro.

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