external graphics for laptop

L

LoBoxJa

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 5, 2008
Messages
153
So I currently have a Compaq C571NR laptop with Intel 950 graphics and was wondering about external graphic card for the laptop since I no longer have my desktop, I remember Asus was coming out with something like that but haven't seen it around.
 
Asus I think scraped that idea for the fact it is not practicle. You are sol imo. sorry.
 
it was officially 'launched' but as for pricing or release dates I haven't seen anything.
 
i always thought it was such a good idea, no idea why they would scrap it


step 1 , sell external gfx port idea of laptop makers.

step 2 make a external box that you can put a full size video card in, it would include it own power adapter for the video card.

step 3. let people put use what ever video card they wanted in their laptop.


i would be so thrilled if i could pull the video card out of the desktop and put it in my laptop when i went on trips or lan party of something. it wouldn't be for everyone but nearly every regular on these boards would be sure they next laptop had that add on port. hell chances are i would buy a second video card just for it. they would sell even more high end 3d card.

i think it was amd/ati that posted they where going to do it wasn't it ? i thought right there that is going to make a huge difference in my next laptop purchase.

laptop with no 3d card = cheap to well priced
laptop thats only difference is good video card 500$ more for 50$ worth of video card more.
 
There're several companies selling USB adaptors. USB bandwidth is too low to support video/gaming. You can use them for web/chat/office use though. Your only other theoretical option is via the express card bus, which is a PCIe 1x slot. That limits you to 250/500MB/sec bandwidth (1.0/2.0 spec). For comparison standard PCI can only do 133MB and AGP8x is 2GB/s (in the fast direction). You're not going to be able to run anything other than a relatively low end card.

Assuming ATIs decision to only make a 4650AGP instead of a 4850 (same level as the 3850) indicates that anything faster would bottleneck, the fastest card you could run on a 2.0 express card would be a 4550. Dropping down to a 1.0 slot you'd only be able to support a 3450 (the 4350 is just a 4550 with slower ram). Since used PCIe bandwidth isn't a published stat, I'm using texture fill rate as a proxy, dunno how accurate that is though.
 
i always thought it was such a good idea, no idea why they would scrap it
Click to expand...

It was a terrible idea.
First off the price of gaming capable laptops have dropped like rocks. Im looking at a nice MSI with 9600M in it for well under $700 shipped.

2nd and most importantly the bandwidth available in USB is just too little to support graphics. I believe the highest card you could put in their show model was a x1600. Why even bother when you can get more powerful built in gpu's for cheaper than it would cost for your hardware and a graphics card?

A lot of people forget that it didn't run on the laptop's screen. You needed an external monitor to run the external hardware. Its a nice idea in thought, but a terrible idea when you get down to the numbers.
 
You can put together something cheap just for gaming for very little money ($300-400 depending on the graphics card).
 
Aside from the USB & PC card slot, there's one other possibility for a very small number of laptop models.
Some manufacturers make docking stations with slots in them. I'm pretty sure Lenovo has them available for some higher end Thinkpads. The catch is they're expensive, several hundred $. You'd probably be better off just building a desktop than getting something like that even if one is available for your machine.
 
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