External Graphics card for laptops?

M

Marvelous

Supreme [H]ardness
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Apr 26, 2003
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Is there a external graphics card for laptops. If not why isn't ATI or Nvidia making these products for laptop users? I really want a 3d video card on my laptop. Most laptop owners have some crappy 3d cards.

Hey ATI and Nvidia please make some graphics card for laptops. I wouldn't mind having a external module if I can play games on my laptop.
 
Not available and ain't gonna happen. Heres why.

1. Little to no market for such a thing
2. Exactly how are you going to get a external video card to correlate with a predesigned and built laptop with onboard video on it?
3. What bus connection are you going to use that enables fast enough data bandwith? Especially on older laptops with no USB 2, Firewire?
4. Another external AC plug to keep track of to power the video card itself
5. Laptop manufacters WANT you to buy a new laptop if you wanna play games. Making such a device would reduce sales
 
Matrox makes a dualhead2go which has a 3d accelerator. If matrox can do it so can ATI or Nvidia.

There would be a lot of people willing to buy it. Most people are stuck with integrated graphics card that pushes 90mpixels.

If they can make 1 or 2 models for cards people would eat it up. People pay big premium to buy a laptop with a good graphics card. Why wouldn't people buy a external module when they can get better performance and cheaper cost?
 
No reason to since u can get laptops with high end cards in them already......

and all the reasons above.

the interface would be the biggest bottle neck and kill any performance.
 
Marvelous said:
Matrox makes a dualhead2go which has a 3d accelerator. If matrox can do it so can ATI or Nvidia.

There would be a lot of people willing to buy it. Most people are stuck with integrated graphics card that pushes 90mpixels.

If they can make 1 or 2 models for cards people would eat it up. People pay big premium to buy a laptop with a good graphics card. Why wouldn't people buy a external module when they can get better performance and cheaper cost?
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K, dual head to go, thas fine, but the video card is still built into the laptop no ? not some external USB connected video card.

u can get a radeon 9700 64mb that has DVI and VGA on it - but u can only use the LCD and VGA, or DVI, but both DVI or VGA at the same time

matrox is know for high end 2d, not 3d - good luck gaming on that matrox with any decent performance.
 
You still can never upgrade your video cards on laptops. Why am I stuck not enjoying some games with this POS integrated graphics?

I don't want to buy sluggish matrox card g200 performance. I want ATI to make some.
 
Coldtronius said:
3. What bus connection are you going to use that enables fast enough data bandwith? Especially on older laptops with no USB 2, Firewire?
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USB and firewire wont even do it. we're talking about 2.1 gigabytes per second for agp8x speeds which would be about 5x the USB 2.0 speed. To have any decent solution for a graphics card it would be impossible with these types of speeds.

So, even if they did have them (and they do but they suck, about as good or worse than the onboard gfx card u have) they would suck due to bandwidth limitations.

~Adam
 
There aren't any external video cards because there is no easy way to do it, and it would be a waste of time to make it so that laptops could support it. It's much easier to have the hardware built in. If you want to play games on your laptop, buy a new laptop.

The first question you asked is if there were external graphics cards for laptops, and the answer is no. It would sortof defeat the purpose of a laptop if you had to carry around an extra box too..
 
Marvelous said:
Matrox makes a dualhead2go which has a 3d accelerator. If matrox can do it so can ATI or Nvidia.
Click to expand...

Matrox's *head2go products do not have any sort of acceleration. It takes an image, of a wide resolution, that has been rendered by your laptop's graphics processor and splits the image to multiple monitors, each of which has a smaller resolution than the initial image.
 
alexj69 said:
There aren't any external video cards because there is no easy way to do it, and it would be a waste of time to make it so that laptops could support it. It's much easier to have the hardware built in. If you want to play games on your laptop, buy a new laptop.

The first question you asked is if there were external graphics cards for laptops, and the answer is no. It would sortof defeat the purpose of a laptop if you had to carry around an extra box too..
Click to expand...


Ah yes, good point. Make that # 6.

Look if you really wanna play games on your laptop, go searching on ebay, I gaurentee you'll find a screaming price on a laptop with a decent onboard 3d accelerator.
 
About 2 years ago, Gateway tried to sell me a solution where they'd stick a device into a PCMCIA slot. I could never get any specs out of them except that it was based on the radeon 9000 (I had the 7500). I never went for that, ultimately I bought a new laptop.

As far as the point about carrying around extra stuff goes...what about the external sound card that Creative has? I saw those all the time at LAN parties. Gamers will go to great lengths to get more life out of their current hardware when an entire new system is stretching the budget too much.
 
tHeEvILTwIN said:
About 2 years ago, Gateway tried to sell me a solution where they'd stick a device into a PCMCIA slot. I could never get any specs out of them except that it was based on the radeon 9000 (I had the 7500). I never went for that, ultimately I bought a new laptop.

As far as the point about carrying around extra stuff goes...what about the external sound card that Creative has? I saw those all the time at LAN parties. Gamers will go to great lengths to get more life out of their current hardware when an entire new system is stretching the budget too much.
Click to expand...

A simple soundcard is one thing. A power and bandwith hungry video card to run todays games externally on a laptop is totally different.
 
*sigh* I said 2 years ago and radeon 9000. Hardly something to attempt to run today's games on. Obviously the technology hasn't been followed up on with gamers as a target audience or we would have seen it here on the [H].

The original point was an extra box, said nothing about power or bandwidth.


Coldtronius said:
A simple soundcard is one thing. A power and bandwith hungry video card to run todays games externally on a laptop is totally different.
Click to expand...

Coldtronius said:
It would sortof defeat the purpose of a laptop if you had to carry around an extra box too.
Click to expand...
 
^^ that is why now u can get the creative z PCMCIA card :D 5.1 on your laptop - i own one, great little thing.
 
Gateway used to offer a docking station where you could put PCI cards inside. I always wanted to buy one and put a PCI video card and a Voodoo 2. That was quite a while back in the early Pentium 3 laptop days.
 
Too bad manufacturers don't make docking stations with PCIe x8 to allow video card expansion, that would be awesome.
 
That extra box is, as others have said, not laptop worthy. To use it you must be stationary, which begs the question: "Why not use a desktop?"
 
tHeEvILTwIN said:
The original point was an extra box, said nothing about power or bandwidth.
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Actually he did so in the reference to game playing. Any kind of gaming card would suck your bandwidth dry.

bLaCktIGErs91 said:
**cough** Go 7800 **cough**
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**cough** Batteries **cough** :D


BTW, aren't there laptops with interchangeable video cards (Both ATI and nVidia made them)? What happened to them? If you wanted the ability to upgrade your video card, aren't those available?
 
Sly said:
Actually he did so in the reference to game playing. Any kind of gaming card would suck your bandwidth dry.



**cough** Batteries **cough** :D


BTW, aren't there laptops with interchangeable video cards (Both ATI and nVidia made them)? What happened to them? If you wanted the ability to upgrade your video card, aren't those available?
Click to expand...

Only if you buy the laptop through Alienware.
 
Actually Dell laptops have graphics cards u can take out and replace. I've seen just the cards on ebay.

~Adam
 
CleanSlate said:
Actually Dell laptops have graphics cards u can take out and replace. I've seen just the cards on ebay.

~Adam
Click to expand...

Exactlly, the Insprion 9100+

i think any system with a ATi Mobile 9700 /9800 or newer x1300 / x1600 can be replaced

i could put a mobile radeon 9800 256mb (last agp laptop card made) into my inspiron 9100 if i wanted, currently it has a mobiliy 9700 64mb - but for $300 that dell wants, i will pass.
 
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