Mobile Nvidia NexGen 1080-Something

[Ertaz]

Son just finished his senior year in HS. He did his part and got scholarships for school, so I am going to get him a nice gaming laptop that will need to do a little school work as well.

This is where I'm reaching out to you guys for help:

He's got 2 years of gen-eds to do, so he won't need anything specific hardware wise. I'd like to get him a laptop that will do it all, but I'm concerned with his battery life when he's using it for class. Is it plausible to get him a nice laptop with the integrated graphics and then a thunderbolt adapter/1080 for when he wants to game? Or do I just need to bite the bullet and get him whatever the highest end mobile part is in August?

 

[ShintaiDK]

The external GPUs via TB is via x4 PCIe.

If he absolutely want a gaming laptop and want high performance maybe this will do:
http://hexus.net/tech/news/laptop/9...g-gpu/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

 

[R0H1T]

Son just finished his senior year in HS. He did his part and got scholarships for school, so I am going to get him a nice gaming laptop that will need to do a little school work as well.

This is where I'm reaching out to you guys for help:

He's got 2 years of gen-eds to do, so he won't need anything specific hardware wise. I'd like to get him a laptop that will do it all, but I'm concerned with his battery life when he's using it for class. Is it plausible to get him a nice laptop with the integrated graphics and then a thunderbolt adapter/1080 for when he wants to game? Or do I just need to bite the bullet and get him whatever the highest end mobile part is in August?

If CUDA isn't a necessity then Polaris 10 (or 11) based mGPU would be a better choice IMO. This is very early of course, since no benchmarks are out yet, but AMD's OpenCL performance could be more than handy, also depending on the applications that'll be used for daily &/or schoolwork. This aside from the fact that GCN ages better, especially for games.

The external GPUs via TB is via x4 PCIe.

If he absolutely want a gaming laptop and want high performance maybe this will do:
http://hexus.net/tech/news/laptop/9...g-gpu/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

And what Shintai said, here you're limited to AMD for external GPU's IIRC.

 

[4K_shmoorK]

Razer blade with razer core?

Core will support nV/AMD gpu over TB3. Think you get $100 off the core if you preorder the Blade.

 

[4K_shmoorK]

Or just get him a cheap laptop and build him a good desktop. That gets my vote. Mobile gaming is too expensive for what you get IMO.

 

[RoarTiger]

I would suggest a tablet for notetaking in class and PDF reading. Can always supplement with a budget or midrange gaming desktop back in the dorm to play games. Not only would he have better convenience with the tablet option, it is probably more cost effective to buy two devices than a single top of the line gaming laptop.

 

[Ertaz]

He has an i7 4790 desktop now with a GTX 660 in it. I think the PSU is 450W. I guess I could buy a nice PSU and graphics card for that and a moderately priced tablet/ultrabook, but it's a dell so that may not be an option. I just wonder how much prices are going to inflate if I wait for back to school season.

 

[ShintaiDK]

And what Shintai said, here you're limited to AMD for external GPU's IIRC.

You can use any GPU.

 

[R0H1T]

You can use any GPU.

Not what I remember ~ https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-xconnect-external-gpu-technology-for-radeon-graphics.html

Otherwise he'll probably have to go with Dell's proprietary solution to enable use of Nvidia's GPU via TB3.

 

[sm625]

Thunderbolt solutions are just too expensive. For the money of just the enclosure, you could almost buy a decent non-gaming notebook and plow the balance into a desktop. Heck, once you remove the need for gaming from the notebook, it could just be a chromebook.

 

[Piroko]

Son just finished his senior year in HS. He did his part and got scholarships for school, so I am going to get him a nice gaming laptop that will need to do a little school work as well.

This is where I'm reaching out to you guys for help:

He's got 2 years of gen-eds to do, so he won't need anything specific hardware wise. I'd like to get him a laptop that will do it all, but I'm concerned with his battery life when he's using it for class. Is it plausible to get him a nice laptop with the integrated graphics and then a thunderbolt adapter/1080 for when he wants to game? Or do I just need to bite the bullet and get him whatever the highest end mobile part is in August?

Personal opinion:
Don't buy one of those gamer laptops. They're large, heavy, most of them are noisy in a class environment and have poor battery life.
The Notebooks with graphics dock are quite a bit better, there are a couple models out there (MSI, Razr and the likes). Though they do tend to get scorching hot while gaming as far as I know. And I believe you have to restart them whenever you dock/undock.

I think it's better to have the right tool for the job, one not too expensive, light and quiet unit to carry around and a dedicated gaming machine to keep at home.

 

[Headfoot]

everytime I run the numbers it almost always ends up being better to get a cheap and light portable for notetaking/mobile work and a midrange desktop for real gaming.

You can run off of an ipad in most cases unless you're in the STEM side of things where you have to run particular software packages

 

[boozzer]

Not what I remember ~ https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-xconnect-external-gpu-technology-for-radeon-graphics.html

Otherwise he'll probably have to go with Dell's proprietary solution to enable use of Nvidia's GPU via TB3.

wow, 3rd generation already. this could work. I can buy a laptop with a good cpu and use another k on something like that. desktop on the go sounds very, very appealing.

 

[DaveSimmons]

He has an i7 4790 desktop now with a GTX 660 in it. I think the PSU is 450W.

That's still a good CPU for gaming. The GTX 1070 will probably be very fast and may work with the 450watt PSU since the 1080 uses 50+ watts less than the 980ti. You'll need to wait a month or two for the 1070.

 

[Despoiler]

Not what I remember ~ https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-xconnect-external-gpu-technology-for-radeon-graphics.html

Otherwise he'll probably have to go with Dell's proprietary solution to enable use of Nvidia's GPU via TB3.

You can use any GPU, but AMD has the better implementation that can seemlessly hot swap between external and iGPU.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Not what I remember ~ https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-xconnect-external-gpu-technology-for-radeon-graphics.html

Otherwise he'll probably have to go with Dell's proprietary solution to enable use of Nvidia's GPU via TB3.

http://www.razerzone.com/store/razer-core

Supports compatible AMD and NVIDIA cards

Supported NVIDIA® GeForce® graphics cards (at launch):
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX Titan X
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 980 Ti
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 980
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 950
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 750 Ti
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 750

http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth#razer-core-specs

 

[Ertaz]

That's still a good CPU for gaming. The GTX 1070 will probably be very fast and may work with the 450watt PSU since the 1080 uses 50+ watts less than the 980ti. You'll need to wait a month or two for the 1070.

A month or two is probably doable.