AMD’s Radeon Graphics on Intel Thunderbolt

MSI has been very popular lately considering, that it currently holds the record for the fastest Ivy Bridge notebook in the world. The company managed to impress many enthusiasts at this year’s Computex with their MSI S20 Slider convertible UltraBook/Tablet.

Now the company is reportedly  presenting its original external graphics technology that features an AMD Radeon GPU inside an aluminum case. The company promises it will make GUS II devices that will integrate video card solutions dissipating a maximum of 150 watts of heat. Considering the way the aluminum case looks, we say that a 250-watt version would also be manufactured and sold, but it’s on MSI to decide. MSI already conditioned the diversity of the product line with the fact that they’d monitor the market’s demand for such a solution, and only after will they decide on diversifying the lineup.

The interesting part is the fact that the GUS II external adapter uses Intel’s Thunderbolt technology to connect to the system and it’s nice to see AMD benefiting from Intel’s high-speed tech. The Thunderbolt connection will provide 10 Gbps bandwidth and MSI promises they’ll be selling GUS II adapters housing AMD Radeon HD 7870, 7850 and 6850 GPU beginning this summer. We would like to see many such technologies with more modest GPU using USB 3.0 connectivity for all those UltraBooks and notebook featuring Intel’s low-performance HD2xxx and HD3xxx graphics.

A cheaper GPU along with cheaper USB 3.0 connectivity would make the technology more accessible, and the market of USB 3.0-capable laptops is likely 50 times larger than the Thunderbolt market at the moment. Of course, we expect Intel will make everything it can to make such a combination difficult for AMD to implement, but up until now everything works great. If you like the technology you can sign up the petition that was put up by other external graphics fans here and give MSI a piece of your mind.

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