I often read Topics about users searching for powerful Laptops that are capable to play actual games or even for VR. A big disadvantage of Laptops are, that Laptops with modern and powerful Graphiccards are very expensive, often big and heavy. So they are not very attractive as a real mobile laptop. In addition, you can't easily upgrade your components. The last years shows, that it is often only the graphiccard that needed an upgrade to be able to play modern games. But if you want or need that with a laptop, that means, that you need to buy a new laptop. Today I read an article that shows a solution for that problem. With a Laptop equiped with a Thunderbolt 3- Interface you are now able to use Standard-Graphic-Cards in an external case. Have a look at the article here: http://www.ultrabookreview.com/10761-razer-core-review/
It's a great idea. But 500 bucks, just for the case? For that kinda money you can build a decent PC around your graphics card instead of just a casing. Once there's competition and prices drop below 200 this will be sth worth considering.
Yepp - thats true... at the moment it is still expensive as it is quite new... Laptops supporting Thunderbolt 3 are expensive too, atm. But as you said - with more competition on market the prices might drop. So if someone is considering buying a new gaming or vr-capable laptop in the next few month he might have a look at that.
I was under the impression, ATI\AMD had had these or something simillar available for a long time, thats from memory of reading a tech site a couple of years ago.
You have to know that these solutions are in their very early days. And they are not "standardized" For ex the razer extender case in only meant to work with a razer laptop. It might work with another laptop with tb3 but there's no guarantee for this. And to be honest for the price of all of this you can now have a laptop with a 1060 gpu which will be able to run most of our racing game (and r3e for sure) at 1080 or even 1440p This King of solutions is still for high end hardware for high end performance.... At very high price.
imo if you shell out the money for a vr device, don't save on hw and get a dedicated PC for best experience. No down clocking due to heat on any components, no compromise. There is small cases these days that make a box rather mobile, too.