By Joe Osborne
Gaming laptop manufacturers have been wrestling with the issue of performance versus available power and space since their inception. While chip makers like Nvidia are quickly closing the power gap between mobile GPUs and their desktop counterparts, notebook vendors like MSI and Alienware aren’t about to sit around waiting for that day.
That’s why MSI has developed the GS30 Shadow with GamingDock, a 13.3-inch gaming laptop that’s just 0.77 inches thin. But here’s the kicker, it comes bundled with an enclosure that houses just about any desktop GPU you can muster (GeForce 600 Series on and an array of AMD cards), a 3.5-inch drive bay for extra storage and a 450-watt power supply to feed it all.
Built exclusively for the GS30, the dock accepts the laptop through a PCIe 3.0×16 slot up top with a sturdy locking mechanism. That PCIe connection is important, because MSI has Alienware’s Graphics Amplifier – which uses a proprietary PCIe 3.0×4 cable to connect to its line of notebooks – square in its sights.
MSI claims that, because its GamingDock uses a full-bandwidth connection (i.e. 16 connectors), it can achieve better performance than its competition’s four connectors. While I haven’t been …read more
Source: techradar.com – PC and Mac