It seems that powerful computer gaming is set to go mobile. Robert Hallock, AMD's Head of Global Technical Marketing, posted on Facebook that there is a huge demand for a more portable version of gaming laptop than current gaming notebooks offer. His answer: “External GPUs with standardized connectors, cables, drivers, plug'n'play, OS support, etc.”.
I know plenty of people who game on their laptops but either their laptop doesn't have a good enough GPU (if it has one at all) or the laptop does, but it's extremely heavy and often quite large which somewhat defeats the whole point of having a laptop. The ability to simply plug in a dock and use whichever graphics card suited your needs could be the next step for laptop gaming.
There are already external GPU docks available through manufacturers like MSI but it seems like AMD is cooking up a more standardised version of the hardware. Currently, the existing GPU docks available are all locked to the manufacturers proprietary connectors whereas it sounds like AMD want to create a streamlined and universal updating of the technology.
Hallock's post is very sure that there is a bigger market for laptop gaming than exists already. It's a fairly attractive prospect – the ability to be able to upgrade or add a more powerful GPU to a modern laptop would give people the freedom to be able to play more of the higher end games that smaller, thinner laptops just don't have the power to play.
There's no other information available yet but with the Games Developer Conference just around the corner, it's more than likely we'll see a more official reveal around then.
