There are some very nice gaming laptops on the market, such as the recent released Fangbook III. For mobile gaming, that is great, but when you make it home, it is time to bring out the desktop for the full experience. Now, if you are like us, then you don’t have the luxury of affording both, so you have to pick one or the other… unless you have the new Alienware Graphics Amplifier.
The Graphics Amplifier is way to turn any laptop, gaming or otherwise, into the graphical powerhouse you always dreamed. Stop trying to figure out why the “M” on your graphics card name seems to have demoted it from Superman to Clark Kent. Buy the $400+ graphics card you want, get the Alienware Graphics Amplifier for $299, and enjoy desktop level graphics with your laptop. It’s not quite a computer, not quite an accessory, but it is all awesome… sorta.
The Graphics Amplifier gives you all the features you want: upgradability, multi-monitor output, a 4-port USB hub, and compatibility only with the new Alienware 13 laptop. Oh, you didn’t want that last feature? No one else wants it either, but the proprietary PCIe based port/cable ensures you will not be using this $300 accessory with any current Alienware laptops or any other laptops for that matter. This turned from awesome to downright disheartening fast.
This definitely isn’t a new concept. In fact, MSI Computer has been toying with this for quite some time, using Thunderbolt. And more recently, GIGABYTE has been toying with this as a means to upgrade graphics on their BRIX mini systems, using mini SAS.
Source: Engadget