HEXUS Lassos ATI

Graphics

Published: Sunday 4th March, 2007 | Author: Steve Kerrison
Companies: ATi Technologies (All ATi Technologies content)

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Portable computers can compete quite well against desktops in terms of performance, even at the high end, if you like your laptop heavy, but one area where they slip behind is graphics. Not any more, if ATI's Lasso can deliver what we think it can.

Fitting one, let alone two high end graphics cards into a laptop, and then powering them is, well... a bit of a bugger. What would be really cool is if the GPUs could be housed externally, interfacing with the laptop rather than residing within it. "But wait Steve, we've already seen such a solution" you shout, yes? Indeed the ASUS XG station strives to do that for lappies with ExpressCard slots. ATI's working on a little something of its own, however.

They're calling it Lasso and it'll go a bit further than having an external graphics card for a laptop. Lasso will be able to house multiple graphics boards providing what could frankly prove to be hilarious processing capabilities... and those of you keeping up with the GPGPU scene will know that it's not about games performance. Modern GPUs can do some serious general purpose wet-work, leaving the CPU cores to work on other things.

Details right now are scarce, but imagine having a pair of R600s plugged into your laptop, or indeed augmenting a small form factor PC, or a workstation...

"But Steve, we want pics!" OK then, folks, here's a look at some naked lasso currently in development:

HEXUS.community :: your right2reply

Posted by daniel.phillips - Sat 3rd Mar 2007, 2:39pm

:drools:

Any idea on a release date ? And whatever happened to the Asus one, looked pretty finished...Quote

Posted by GingaNinja - Sat 3rd Mar 2007, 5:14pm

If either this or the ASUS XG station really deliver and are practical, I'll ditch my gaming rig AND work machine (both desktops) for something along the lines of a Dell 9400 with an ATI X1400. The big downside of the ASUS seems to be the need for an external monitor. If there were any way to output to the laptop screen, well that would be amazing.

GingaQuote

Posted by Whiternoise - Sun 4th Mar 2007, 5:18pm

This sort of thing is already out: http://www.getcatalyst.com/board_pic/pcie2exp.jpg

but it costs waaay too much at the moment. That particular one goes in the expresscard slot in laptops.Quote

Posted by Sinizter - Sun 4th Mar 2007, 5:31pm

Well hopefully there will soon be a time when the external GPU can meaningfully improve general performance on a laptop by supplementing the CPU.Quote

Posted by nope - Fri 1st Jun 2007, 10:25am

something differentQuote

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