PC World - USA 2020-07)

8 PCWorld JULY 2020

NEWS AMD VS. INTEL

One of the coolest features of Thunderbolt 3 is the ability to use an

external graphics cabinet such as Razer’s Core X Chroma to give

most Thunderbolt 3 laptops real gaming chops.

MSI’s Creator 17 may be the first laptop to ship with a miniLED display, and it

will come only with an Intel 10th-gen CPU inside.

“one cable to rule them all.” Viewed from

2020, Intel has achieved that goal with the

ability to support USB-C, DisplayPort, HDMI,

high-wattage charging, and external graphics

using PCIe.

That last nifty trick is the most

compelling. If, for example, you decided

you wanted to add real graphics

horsepower to a 2.5-pound

thin-and-light laptop, or

your old gaming laptop’s

GPU were over the hill, an

external graphics card in a

Thunderbolt 3 eGPU cabinet

would do the trick.

That is, unless you want

an AMD-based laptop. The

reasons are numerous and

complicated, but the hard

fact is that we have yet to see

a single AMD-based laptop

with Thunderbolt 3 support.

Vendors have told us the

feature could show up later

shows in the shiny

parade of premium

laptops that use it, and

the selection of

premium features that

still can’t be found on

AMD-based laptops.

Yes, AMD scored big

with its Microsoft

Surface 3 Laptop with

Ryzen (go.pcworld.com/sf3l), but it’s still

more common to budget builds. While the

CPU is important, an OLED, miniLED, 4K

display or high-end GPU is equally important

to some.

YOU WANT THUNDERBOLT 3

Intel’s Thunderbolt vision was always to create