AMD May Bring External R600's To Laptops
For a college student like me who needs a laptop for school, the possibility of being able to plug a external graphics card into my ASUS W3J for playing games is awesome. Graphics power for a long time has been one of the limiting factors when it comes to laptops but AMD may have a new product to remedy the situation. AMD's Lasso, the codename of the external graphics card based on ATI's 600 series, is currently under development and may bring some newfound graphics muscle to the laptop scene. While the card may be primarily intended for use with desktops, it will also be useable with laptops featuring PCIe x8 and x16 connections.
Lasso is AMD's codename for external graphics card which will utilise the same external PCIe x16 connector. While this is mostly aimed at desktops, with the PCIe x16 bus-card that will be installed inside desktop PCs, it will also be compatible with upcoming notebooks that feature x16 and x8 connectors. This will bring high-end graphics power to the notebooks for the first time. External CrossFire will come to market probably before summer, oriented towards competing with Quadro Plex.
