Any recent news on the Razer Core Thunderbolt eGPU case?

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AVT

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Still waiting on release. Originally, they were talking March/April release, which clearly hasn't happened.

I'll be buying one the day it comes out, with either a top of the line Nvidia GeForce card, or a mid-range Nvidia Tesla card. I develop algorithms used in scientific computing applications (statistics, machine learning, etc), and having one of these to develop with locally is going to be way better than dealing with ssh, etc.

Any recent news on how long until it comes out?
 
Not that i know of. Been looking into this myself for a great work/ gaming laptop all in one.
 
My pre-order changed to Boxed Shipment and my card was charged today.

EDIT: Shipped..will be here Friday!
 
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[+Duracell-] said:
My pre-order changed to Boxed Shipment and my card was charged today.

EDIT: Shipped..will be here Friday!
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Keep us updated. I need OS X support as well which turns out isn't there in current Macs so have to wait until Apple releases Thunderbolt 3 compatible Macs - hopefully within a few months, after which I'm sure the necessary drivers will quickly show up.
 
Maybe it's been answered, but for folks with smaller cases that really only support dual gpus, anyone heard if you could do a Crossfire setup and then hook one of these up over Thunderbolt and do Crossfire + XConnect?
 
MotionBlur said:
Maybe it's been answered, but for folks with smaller cases that really only support dual gpus, anyone heard if you could do a Crossfire setup and then hook one of these up over Thunderbolt and do Crossfire + XConnect?
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You probably can, but I'm not sure how good the performance would be. Crossfire requires additional communication between GPUs, and Thunderbolt will perform worse than vanilla PCI-E in terms of both bandwidth and latency. If the additional synchronization costs are bad enough to make Crossfire not worth it, AMD may just disable the option in their drivers.

Similar issues will occur with some CUDA applications, and anything that is IO bound. Thunderbolt's bandwidth just isn't as large, and may be a bottleneck depending on what you are doing. Very little difference for most video games because they tend to not be IO bound.
 
AVT said:
You probably can, but I'm not sure how good the performance would be. Crossfire requires additional communication between GPUs, and Thunderbolt will perform worse than vanilla PCI-E in terms of both bandwidth and latency. If the additional synchronization costs are bad enough to make Crossfire not worth it, AMD may just disable the option in their drivers.

Similar issues will occur with some CUDA applications, and anything that is IO bound. Thunderbolt's bandwidth just isn't as large, and may be a bottleneck depending on what you are doing. Very little difference for most video games because they tend to not be IO bound.
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That's what I figured, but it would interesting to test nonetheless (if it isn't disabled in drivers).
 
Very interesting concept, I could see the idea of a portable PC/device with fast storage with basically a desktop with more CPU GPU memory storage power through a high speed dock or connector being the way of the future.

Maybe it's even more portable, like an iPad or something, basically one computing device to rule them all, possibly with a cloud storage component. Just dreaming haha

The IO seems fast enough for a single GPU based on their published cable specs. In my imaginary future application there'd be a CPU/GPU direct connection to the mobile computer to access it's storage. Obviously one would have to weigh the transfer speeds vs computing power and how it all works together, it's certainly a cool prospect though!
 
Got mine yesterday and dropped a 750Ti into it (waiting till mid-June to make a real purchase unless I can snag a 980Ti for cheap). The thing is pretty damn solid. Easy to set up, but the included TB cable is super short. It's not completely quiet either; there are some fans on the bottom of the unit to circulate air up the case (assuming to cool the PSU).

No other complaints so far!
 
I'm looking at getting a RC asap. How did you guys get yours so quickly from Razer?
 
Are you using it with a razer blade or stealth? How does the switching work, and how does it perform compared to a local PCI-e slot?

Really surprised you got yours before all the tech sites posted reviews!
 
Ruoh said:
I'm looking at getting a RC asap. How did you guys get yours so quickly from Razer?
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Pre-ordered as soon as I could. Shipped 5/23, got it on 5/27.

schizo said:
Are you using it with a razer blade or stealth? How does the switching work, and how does it perform compared to a local PCI-e slot?

Really surprised you got yours before all the tech sites posted reviews!
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Razer Blade Stealth. If you're plugged into the Core, it uses the external GPU. Otherwise, the internal GPU is used. Tested it by disabling the laptop monitor when the Core is plugged in. Works like how you would expect a normal docking station to work, except with a GPU. There was a few times where it didn't switch righ away, but I don't know if it's because I'm on a Windows 10 preview build or drivers are still a bit in flux. I did run all the update steps Razer required me to take, however.

IIRC, most cards are not bandwidth limited even with a PCI-E 3.0 4x slot (which this is equivalent to). I can't really comment about performance (using a 750Ti...waiting for Polaris to drop before upgrading), but I can run certain games pretty decently. Probably about the same as when it was in my HTPC with an i3.

The only wonkiness I've noticed is that I have to use fullscreen and not borderless in Overwatch, at least; I get way better FPS and no monitor lag going fullscreen (not sure what the correct term is here...it's not input lag, but the monitor is refreshing slower than 60Hz for sure, even though it's set to 60Hz and I am getting >60 fps).
 
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