Razer Core

I saw that a while back....really doesn't make a lot of sense to me...a laptop to me is supposed to it...if i have to drag that other parts with it i just a well build a custom small rig to bring on the road. I do like the actual size of the tower it self...that part is nice:)
 
primetime said:
I saw that a while back....really doesn't make a lot of sense to me...a laptop to me is supposed to it...if i have to drag that other parts with it i just a well build a custom small rig to bring on the road. I do like the actual size of the tower it self...that part is nice:)
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makes sense to me.

one scenario is a college student. gets a good laptop with highend CPU, takes it to classes and wherever. gets home and plugs it into a gpu.

only thing I'm worried about with this is any kind of weird lag or latency that comes from it being connected over that cable instead of usual pcie.
 
DF-1 said:
makes sense to me.

one scenario is a college student. gets a good laptop with highend CPU, takes it to classes and wherever. gets home and plugs it into a gpu.

only thing I'm worried about with this is any kind of weird lag or latency that comes from it being connected over that cable instead of usual pcie.
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My thought as well.

Walking around a college campus, I see tons of students with giant gaming laptops. This is a good solution instead of carrying a huge gaming laptop around.
 
primetime said:
I saw that a while back....really doesn't make a lot of sense to me...a laptop to me is supposed to it...if i have to drag that other parts with it i just a well build a custom small rig to bring on the road. I do like the actual size of the tower it self...that part is nice:)
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You're not dragging other parts with it - that would defeat the purpose. Think of it as a docking station for your display with a built-in graphics card.
 
AVT said:
You're not dragging other parts with it - that would defeat the purpose. Think of it as a docking station for your display with a built-in graphics card.
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If you have the room for a monitor + kb/mouse + razer core to hook to your laptop you should also have the room for a mATx/mITX setup.

Just get a laptop with lower spec for mobility.

Pretty sure you'll save some cash too going that route since being a high end razer product wont make it cheap.
 
Seems pretty cool, TBH. Overpriced, of course, because it's Razer, but other than that it's nice to see this external GPU dock idea coming about.

Also, can we talk about a 4K 12.5" screen? Crazy!
 
The only thing that I'd want to know about the Core is if it can be plugged into any USB-C Thunderbolt certified machine (like the Dell XPS13, or presumably the next Surface Pro). Would be a bummer to be stuck with a gaudy "gamer aesthetic" Razer laptop.
 
primetime said:
I saw that a while back....really doesn't make a lot of sense to me...a laptop to me is supposed to it...if i have to drag that other parts with it i just a well build a custom small rig to bring on the road. I do like the actual size of the tower it self...that part is nice:)
Click to expand...

You wouldn't be doing that though. The point of a laptop is mobility. If it wasn't, then you would just get a desktop. Except gaming laptops are hardly mobile, so if you want something which is still suitable for school and work, this is perfect. It gives you mobility when you need it, and graphics power when you want it.
 
xmadror said:
If you have the room for a monitor + kb/mouse + razer core to hook to your laptop you should also have the room for a mATx/mITX setup.

Just get a laptop with lower spec for mobility.

Pretty sure you'll save some cash too going that route since being a high end razer product wont make it cheap.
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And then I have to deal with having files on two systems and all of the other overheard associated with managing that.

There's a reason my work issues everybody a laptop and gives them a 27" display to plug it in to when they are in the office.
 
AVT said:
And then I have to deal with having files on two systems and all of the other overheard associated with managing that.

There's a reason my work issues everybody a laptop and gives them a 27" display to plug it in to when they are in the office.
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Exactly. Sometimes I wonder if the people that post here use their machines for more than just games and porn.
 
TorryHolt81 said:
My thought as well.

Walking around a college campus, I see tons of students with giant gaming laptops. This is a good solution instead of carrying a huge gaming laptop around.
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I never understood why kids do this? Are they trying to play games in class as well as at home?

I mean, seems like it would be a lot better and probably less expensive to just get a decent enough laptop to take notes on (not to mention it would be a ton lighter and get much better battery life), and a decent gaming desktop for the dorm room.
 
primetime said:
I saw that a while back....really doesn't make a lot of sense to me...a laptop to me is supposed to it...if i have to drag that other parts with it i just a well build a custom small rig to bring on the road. I do like the actual size of the tower it self...that part is nice:)
Click to expand...

It makes perfect sense. You can have total portability at school, work or whatever. Then you can come home and plug your laptop into the Core system and get real GPU performance for gaming. My girlfriend's brother is a college student and does exactly this. These things also have USB ports and you can leave a larger monitor connected to it.

Granted, many people don't need that much portability, so it's a niche thing for sure. The guy came to me looking to build a desktop and get a laptop and I told him to go this route. He spent about the same as he would have on a desktop, but got the portability to go a long with it. Plus he doesn't have to deal with file syncing or anything like that.

DF-1 said:
makes sense to me.

one scenario is a college student. gets a good laptop with highend CPU, takes it to classes and wherever. gets home and plugs it into a gpu.

only thing I'm worried about with this is any kind of weird lag or latency that comes from it being connected over that cable instead of usual pcie.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

As for latency, what do you think Thunderbolt 3 is? Basically Thunderbolt is and has always been external PCI-Express. USB 3.0 has an "alternate mode" which allows it to pass other signals over it.

Darakian said:
Looks like asus is making one too.
http://anandtech.com/show/9963/asus-booth-tour-at-ces-2016-10g-switches-external-gpu-dock-usb-c/2
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It's about time. I told them to get on this years ago. This could have been done with Thunderbolt 1, I don't know why no one but Alienware bothered.

Kor said:
The only thing that I'd want to know about the Core is if it can be plugged into any USB-C Thunderbolt certified machine (like the Dell XPS13, or presumably the next Surface Pro). Would be a bummer to be stuck with a gaudy "gamer aesthetic" Razer laptop.
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You should be able to use any USB 3.0 Type-C connector on any Thunderbolt 3 certified machine.
 
primetime said:
I saw that a while back....really doesn't make a lot of sense to me...a laptop to me is supposed to it...if i have to drag that other parts with it i just a well build a custom small rig to bring on the road.
Click to expand...
Have you never seen a laptop docking station before?

This is something that you leave at home, plugged into a few monitors (like any docking station). Dock your laptop for gaming in your home-office, un-dock it to take it on the road without a giant desktop-class GPU dragging down battery life.
 
Give it some more time. Intel seems genuinely interested in getting these eGPU solutions into the mass market.
 
Dan_D said:
IYou should be able to use any USB 3.0 Type-C connector on any Thunderbolt 3 certified machine.
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Operative word being 'Should'. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some stupid firmware/driver softlock in place for "approved hardware". Hence my original speculation.
 
Kor said:
Operative word being 'Should'. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some stupid firmware/driver softlock in place for "approved hardware". Hence my original speculation.
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I doubt they will. It doesn't benefit Razer to lock anyone out given how little market share they have with their own notebooks.
 
Does anyone know how much bandwidth USB C has in practice? Is it about the same as PCIE x16 or less?

I've recently become more and more interested in using parallel algorithms in my work (statistics / machine learning) and would like to learn CUDA. It would greatly simplify things to be able to develop and debug locally, which could be done using OS X and an external Nvidia GPU.

Unfortunately, this is a non-starter if USB C has too little bandwidth, because the specific algorithms I'm interested in will require quite a bit more data moving in/out of the GPU than 3D graphics do.
 
This is probably so expensive that it's cheaper to just build a separate computer with a good GPU. I've never really understood the point of gaming laptops when they're always rather expensive and still have subpar GPU performance compared to their desktop counterparts. This might change with next gen GPUs hopefully but even then desktops will be ahead.
 
AVT said:
Does anyone know how much bandwidth USB C has in practice? Is it about the same as PCIE x16 or less?

I've recently become more and more interested in using parallel algorithms in my work (statistics / machine learning) and would like to learn CUDA. It would greatly simplify things to be able to develop and debug locally, which could be done using OS X and an external Nvidia GPU.

Unfortunately, this is a non-starter if USB C has too little bandwidth, because the specific algorithms I'm interested in will require quite a bit more data moving in/out of the GPU than 3D graphics do.
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Depends on the protocol. Thunderbolt 3 is 40Gbps, USB 3.1 Gen2 is 10Gbps. The Thunderbolt connection is enough to provide 4x Gen3 PCI-e with some overhead to spare.
 
kasakka said:
This is probably so expensive that it's cheaper to just build a separate computer with a good GPU. I've never really understood the point of gaming laptops when they're always rather expensive and still have subpar GPU performance compared to their desktop counterparts. This might change with next gen GPUs hopefully but even then desktops will be ahead.
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For my purposes getting a 2nd system makes no sense because I can just rent one on Amazon AWS. The advantage of this is easier debugging because I don't have to deal with SSH, etc, which may be worth the few hundred bucks an enclosure costs.

Part of me is just tempted to buy a Mac Pro and learn OpenCL instead of CUDA.

Kor said:
Depends on the protocol. Thunderbolt 3 is 40Gbps, USB 3.1 Gen2 is 10Gbps. The Thunderbolt connection is enough to provide 4x Gen3 PCI-e with some overhead to spare.
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That's not too bad, but any halfway serious algorithm of the types I'm thinking about will saturate all of that bandwidth -- but it may enough for development and debugging purposes. I can always rent instances on AWS with Nvidia Tesla cards that are much better than any consumer-level GPU designed for 3D graphics when it comes to high-performance computing.
 
Article on PC World.
The Razer Core can boost any Thunderbolt 3-equipped laptop with an external GPU

Robert Hallock's Twitter
Robert Hallock on Twitter

I'd like to see how a Titan X would perform in there. Someone from Razer should send one to Kyle for testing.

CcZ6ov9UAAAp7Mh.jpg:large
 
Since this supports Thunderbolt 3, I'm hoping that means it will work out of the box on the new Macbook Pro.

Would be really really awesome. I'll buy one and put a Titan X in it. Not having to do debugging remotely is going to be so much better!
 
Two things put me off about the Razer Blade Stealth... The small 12.5" screen and the dual core CPU. Would that even have enough processing power to handle a GTX 1080? Now. Mating the Core to a low-end Razer Blade Pro with its own GTX 1080 with a real quad core CPU and 17" screen would seem like a better match to me.
 
I think it's cool, but I'd wait for the technology to mature a few generations.
 
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