Lucid Thunderbolt External GPU Demoed For Undeniable Ultrabook Gaming Boost

This week during Intel's Developers Forum, Lucid showed off a lovely Thunderbolt External Graphics solution that'll have you Ultrabook owners flipping over the possibilities. Here with this non-finalized piece of hardware, you'll be plugging in graphics power from Lucid with very little effort, bringing visual power from Lucid's external hardware that was never before possible in such a tiny package as your current-generation Ultrabook. What Lucid showed off here is your ability – in the near future – to turn your Ultrabook into a real hardcore gaming machine.

When showed to Laptop Mag, it would found that a combination of a prototype Thunderbolt graphics card from Lucid produced amicable results. With a combination of Intel's integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip on a standard Ivy Bridge motherboard, they showed 3DMark06 benchmark bringing up 28 frames-per-second – that's without this new solution. With the Lucid external graphic card plugged in through the test system's Thunderbolt port, great things happened.

With the Thunderbolt-connected Lucid-made system, here a AMD Radeon 6700 chip, 3DMark06 brought up a much more fabulous 89 fps. This system works extremely simply, with a plug in to the system resulting in a moment of black screen then the system appearing under Windows Device Manager under Display adapters. If you're in the mood to disconnect the system again, you'll simply be force-quit out of whatever application your in and the original Windows desktop will be up and ready to continue to rock without it.

This external video card solution makes it so the future of laptop-based gaming (or desktop-based gaming, for that matter) will bring upgrades with as simple as a cord plug. No more screwdriver action for you if you don't want! Prices and release dates have not yet been revealed – stay tuned for more Lucid action!

[via Laptop Mag]