AMD XConnect External GPU tech launched!

[Megafisshy]

"AMD has officially introduced its XConnect Technology to enable easy plug'n'play usage of external GPUs. As was briefly covered in the news earlier today, of the Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.3 (Hotfix) release, AMD XConnect Technology provides initial support for external GPU enclosures configured with modern Radeon GPUs connected via Thunderbolt 3. A new Radeon Software 16.2.2 graphics driver will be made available very shortly (this news release NDA expired at 2pm), featuring XConnect Technology."

Laptop Gamers Rejoice! A cool feature is that the output from the external GPU can be displayed on the integrated laptop monitor.

AMD XConnect Thunderbolt External Graphics.

TB19_575px.png (111.31 KiB) Viewed 11305 times

Sources:

• http://www.anandtech.com/show/10133/amd-xconnect-external-radeons
• http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/amd-xconnect-external-gpu/
• http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/91184-amd-xconnect-external-gpu-technology-launched/

[Mr V]

This has always been a dream of mine to have an reliable fast External GPU solution paired with a powerful portable laptop.
I have been waiting for some time for this development to happened.

There have been many attempts to create EGPU solutions in the past, however most of them weren't that reliable and fast.
This was mainly due to the fact that there was no real interface/port that could handle the amount of bandwidth required for GPU to communicate to the computer/laptop.
Slowly technology got better through the iterations of USB and Thunderbolt ports until it brought us to this point of Thunderbolt 3 which runs at 40 Gbit/s and supports PCI-Express 3.0.
Thunderbolt 3 Wiki

The next Laptop I get will defiantly have to have Thunderbolt 3 support and then I'm going to pair it with an External GPU Enclosure with the latest NVIDIA or AMD Desktop Graphics Card to power my games while I'm at home but also provide me the capability to take my laptop out for work.

[BlackSt0rm]

A very interesting read on that topic.

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http://www.cnet.com/news/thunderbolt-3-and-usb-type-c-join-forces-for-one-port-to-rule-them-all/