MSI has showcased at the 2012 CES Show the GUS II, an external graphics card enclosure prototype, which adds dedicated desktop-class GPU power to laptops with a Thunderbolt port.
Besides the current MacBook Pros, Thunderbolt high-speed I/O technology will be incorporated into Intel Ivy Bridge-based laptops. The GUS II will utilize it to connect these laptops to external Nvidia or ATI GPUs for extra graphics power. However, from the demonstration video below we can conclude that GUS II can indeed increase graphics performance, but it uses an external monitor instead of laptop’s.
There were external laptop GPU solutions in the past, such as the original MSI GUS and Asus XG, but they also required an external display and weren’t widely adopted. The only exception from that rule we have seen so far is the Power Media Dock for the Sony VAIO Z, which displays graphics on notebook’s screen.