GPU specs

[Rogier]

Is the GPU going to be MXM 3.0 A? I'd say that would make sense for a 15 inch laptop. From what I saw, AMD's R9 M270X would do rather well, and at a fairly nice price. However, it has a TDP of 50W, and I could imagine a lower TDP being nice for a laptop without low power integrated GPU. That or we could try to add a PowerVR or similar low power GPU for basic rendering and work on hardware or (kernel level) software switch, along with drivers if needed.

[rabidz7]

950M or 960M are faster than 270M with same TDP. I would want at least a 965M, though.

[Rogier]

950M or 960M are faster than 270M with same TDP. I would want at least a 965M, though.

Unfortunately there are no proper NVIDIA drivers for PowerPC that I'm aware of (only Nouveau, which is hardly useful), whereas amdgpu is available in recent (4.2+) Linux kernels. But yes, I would otherwise also prefer NVIDIA.

[nemesis]

As i stated earlier, Nvidia GPU would exclude some OSes for example MorphOS. although MXM would make it ok if it would be selectable when shipping which GPU you would like, also agreeing on 1 GPU would make it easier for drivers and development i suppose.

[Carlos]

I would prefer M370X, TDP <50W
For nVidia GTX 850M, TDP <50W

I don't know if a MXM version is available. Besides the driver problem, I prefer ATi.

Here is a benchmark table of notebook graphic cards:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

[Carlos]

New AMD GPU Performance To Be Boosted By Linux 4.5
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amdgpu-45-next&num=1

[Carlos]

Good interview about Vulkan API, I think:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331651720139/

[sossego]

The nouveau driver needs some working. You may want to use XBMC for reduced memory access. Also, could there be dedicated memory for the card? Perhaps with extensibility for memory, the standard would be 256 megabytes as on-board/available memory.

[Carlos]

The Vulkan API could be a game changer for Linux:
https://fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/vulkan_graphics/attachments/slides/1007/export/events/attachments/vulkan_graphics/slides/1007/vulkan_fosdem_2016.pdf

[Carlos]

The only shop about MXM cards I found:
http://www.zentrica.com/product-category/embedded/tul/graphicscards/mxm/

Maybe we should contact AMD directly.