The MSI GS30 Shadow is a high powered laptop with the first external GPU that you can actually buy. The GamingDock is indeed rather unattractive and hefty on the outside but it is what is on the inside that counts, a full GTX 980 with its own dedicated PSU. The external connection is a rear mounted PCIe slot which allows the 980 to run at the speeds you would expect it it were inside a desktop PC. The laptop itself has a Haswell i7-4870HQ, 16GB of DDR3-1600 and pair of Kingston 256GB M.2 SSDs in RAID 0, with the only internal graphics being the Iris Pro 5200 on the CPU. Kitguru has posted a review here, though it would be interesting another review featuring a head to head competition with the GTX980M.
"When we previewed the MSI GS30 Shadow and GamingDock at the end of 2014 we were blown away by the combination of Core i7-4870HQ CPU in the laptop and the desktop GTX 980 graphics card in the GamingDock. The concept of using an external dock to add proper gaming graphics to a thin and light laptop worked superbly well and we could hardly wait for the official release of the final package of hardware."
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Why would someone want to
Why would someone want to carry this thing around if he/she was looking for a laptop?
And if someone is really desparate with high-end gaming, he/she could just get a proper laptop with 980M or get a desktop with 980.
“Why would someone want to
“Why would someone want to carry this thing around if he/she was looking for a laptop?”
You make it seem like the box has to be carried around with you at all times, which is simply not true. You could carry it around with you at all times, or even most of the time, but do you really want to carry it around with you if all you do when you leave the house is use it for school work, productivity of some kind, web browsing, very light gaming, etc? the answer is you’d leave the box at home pretty much all the time. For a LOT of people, the only times we would play a game while away from home is when in a dr’s office, in a line, taking a shit-break, etc.
Now, when you are ready to do some ‘heavy’ gaming, you take the laptop home with you and dock it and most likely you’ll have a bigger(and probably higher res) monitor.
“And if someone is really desparate with high-end gaming, he/she could just get a proper laptop with 980M or get a desktop with 980.”
You don’t have to be desperate to want a high-end gaming machine, your statement is laughable. ‘
What this solution does is make the productivity part of your highend desktop as portable and still have an upgrade path for your gaming gpu.
For the odd one who doesn’t
For the odd one who doesn’t want to spend much on a laptop but still have the opportunity to game.
For the odd one who doesn’t want to buy a new laptop when a new GPU upgrade is needed.
For the odd one that will still be able to show up at odd LAN parties and game.
For the odd one who receive a new GPU card but only has a laptop as a gaming PC.
This unit is not for me, but it does have it’s usage.
In future;
Perhaps this will become the upgrade component to your gaming console instead of requiring to purchase a whole new console.
Perhaps this is the unit to provide added features to a current PC.
LAN box?
this will also last
LAN box?
this will also last longer then a laptop with more upgrade-ablity!