Having already seen it
run Crysis, we've been itching to know if Fujitsu Siemens'
AMILO Sa 3650 laptop and GraphicBooster had any other tricks up their sleeves. The
Notebookcheck crew ran the dynamic duo through some tests and found it to be an impressive pairing, although the laptop itself takes a few jabs for shoddy case design, stiff touchpad keys and an underperforming AMD processor. By its lonesome, the integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 GPU is better than the usual Intel GMA fare, but the GraphicBooster and an external monitor puts this machine nearly on par with a decent desktop rig. Without that external monitor, however, the GraphicBooster only provides marginal improvements to the laptop's performance, due to limitations in the bandwidth connecting the add-on to the port. The second display is connected directly to the booster via DVI-I or HDMI. An asking price of 1300 Euros (US $1,810) seems a bit steep to us, but they say it's worth the premium, calling it an "unprecedented fusion of performance and mobility." Hit up the read link for a full analysis.
[Thanks, Jamil]
posted Dec 24th 2008 12:34PM
laptops are meant to be portable, so who would put an external monitor on it with the GraphicBooster?
laptop+GraphicBooster+external monitor=desktop
So you can dock it into that when you get home.
I don't think you comprehend the system here.
i do understand the system but i prefer my laptops ultraportable and being able to travel anywhere in or out my house w/o having to dick around with cables
Exactly. The add-on video processing power allows you to have a reasonably power desktop machine at home and laptop for traveling needs.
You don't keep the two together at all times.
its obviously not the laptop for you
but anyone who wants portability and gaming this is the first real solution
although my only complaint about the system itself is that I can understand if it was made for wide range of laptops, then the available interface options probably wont have enough bandwidth but since the graphicbooster is made only for this specific laptop they should have figured out a way to make a high bandwidth connect to allow the video to be passed back to the laptop LCD. Really it's not even that complicated, just the same connection they have now, with like more pins for a hdmi, dvi, or displayport in that would go to the monitor and swtich the monitors input from the HD 3200 to the external HD 3870
@1234321
Thats the only reason im not buying this thing. They give you all this power and tell you that its only available via docking solution... WHAT A WASTE!
I understand it makes a great portable, but i was thinking along the lines of me being able to play gta4 when/wherever i wanted, not next to a stationary flatscreen. If i wanted that, id just play on my ps3. So, although i was willing to spend the full price (just under 2k), im not, its no longer what i want.
honestly what did you expect, if you wanted to spend upto $2000 there's plenty of gaming laptops for you, just don't expect them to be light
@1234321
We can all dream right? lol, someday... I WILL PLAY CRYSIS ON A 13 INCH SCREEN! MARK MY WORDS!
yes, i do understand that
i meant that i like to keep everything simple and just buy a good graphical laptop instead of this rig
This will seem extremely ridiculous in 5 years...
agreed
Wow!! 5years blew by fast! Thanks for the memories, Engadget!
"By its lonesome, the integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 GPU is better than the usual Intel GMA fare"
Except that their benchmarks for this GPU are about half of what I get in 3DMark 03 on my Intel 4500MHD (which is what they say the Radeon is "considerably better" than). Something does not compute. Unless they're talking about pure DX10 performance, which I haven't really measured on my Intel. Who's going to run a DX10 game on an integrated GPU, though?
I realize comparing the integrated graphics of this machine with anything else misses the point, but now that Intel has actually produced a half-decent integrated graphics chip, it would be nice to not see them continue to get ripped apart so mercilessly.
what doesn't compute is that the "usual intel GMA fare" isn't the 4500MHD of yours
Yes it is, the 4500 is GMA4500.
3DMark03 is really outdated. Try 06.
No chance of user-upgradeable video cards for laptops yet? Hrmph.
I think you might be able to swap out the card in this. I know at least for the ASUS ROG XG Station that never came out, reviewers were able to swap out the card and put in a different card since it was effectively just an external PCI-E slot. I think this might be the same but faster since I don't think it's limited to PCI-E 1x.
Right away I noticed that it looked kinda like a Macbook. Except it looks more contemporary.
I noticed that too... Like the fact that it has a keyboard in the same area, and it has the screen that folds up and then folds down for protection. And it has a handy trackpad right under the keyboard... And that it comes with a power supply, BUT ALSO the internal memory... Similarities are endless...
Just what I wanted: an external cpu, external gpu, external HD, external RAM and etc.etc.etc.
Compuostomy?
It's already cumbersome to have to carry a video box, but the extra insult of not being to use the laptop's screen is just ridiculous. This is an engineering failure, sounds more like some university engineering dept. research hack than an actual product.
if you plan on carrying around the graphicbooster all the time, you should just get a gaming laptop
this good if you just want a light laptop that can play games when your home
Gah, gloss...harsh..gradients..too..much..contrast...eye..pain.
remember the glory days of laptop docks
what I would want is a air/envy/adamo type laptop with a dock
the dock would do all the standard dock stuff as well as have an external graphics card and optical drive
If the booster thingy had a 4870 x2 or something like that, I'd buy it.