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Geforce/Radeon over USB/Firewire

F

Fi|th

n00b
Joined
Oct 11, 2003
Messages
36
I have been wondering for some time why there aren't USB/Firewire --> PCI/AGP conversion kits. Or atleast USB/Firewire versions of Radeon/Geforce products. It seems the bandwidth problems over USB were adressed w/ USB 2.0... what other keeps this from being a viable option?!

There is a demand for such items in the mobile computer market. I would love to come home at the end of the day and plug in my gaming video card :p
 
reason #1 power, neither give anywhere near the amount of power needed,
#2 bandwidth. firewire is 400mb/s I think, agp 8x is 2.1 GB/s, that is 42 times the bandwidth.
#3 latencies, relative to the agp bus, a firewire or usb card would have obscene latencies
#4 agp spec incompatabilities, the agp spec needs direct access to the system memory via the gart on the northbridge. usb and firewire are commonly done on either the pci bus, or the nb/sb link, so that rules it out.

edit- #5, the cpu usage to run such a device would be so obscene that it would compeletely negate any performance gain.
 
#1 external power (as most video cards require newayz)
#2 PCI bus max is around 100-120mbps (GeforceFX 5200 PCI) (so USB 2.0 is roughly 4x faster?!?)
#3 deffinitely a problem, but seems there should be a way to compensate (offboard processing)
#4 What about PCI?

#5 Off board processing...

I'd also like to point out that in most benchmarks there is little to NO performance gain betwen AGP 2x and 8x... so bandwidth plays a small role (for the time being newayz)

And what about PCMCIA adapters?
 
pci bus max is 133 megabytes per second. usb2 is 480 megabits per second, so that is the same as 60megabytes per second, so about half the bandwith that an already bandwith starved gpu has. not gonna work. and for 5, everything going over usb or firewire snoops the fsb, which will trash it with something like this not to mention that usb controllers use processing power too. the problem isn't with the converter it is with using so much bandwith continually, hence off board processing wouldn't help, also off board processing would increase latencies to obscene levels.
 
Originally posted by Fi|th

#2 PCI bus max is around 100-120mbps (GeforceFX 5200 PCI) (so USB 2.0 is roughly 4x faster?!?)
Click to expand...

PCI is 133 MegaBYTES per second, or over 1000Mbps, while USB2.0 is 480MegaBITS per second, or about 60MBps (Capital B denotes bytes and b denotes bits).
 
One major difficulty you'd run into would be having to completely rewrite the drivers to handle using some oddball extension device.

And you seriously overestimate the market for such a device. If you really want to game on your lappy, get a laptop that has decent hardware for it.


You just need to accept that laptops are fundamentally limited in expansion capabilities and they're already making a number of performance sacrifices (especially in the HDD). Of course there's always going to be somebody who wants to put a supercharger in their Pinto.
 
Your partly right, but not everyone who likes mobile gaming wants to sell their laptop to get better graphics. I personally love my laptop and its features (for one, a hotswap bay w/ 10-key/floppy/ and SUBWOOFER).

Sony VAIO NVR23
AthlonXP 1800+
512MB DDR Memory
15in. 1024*768 Geforce4 420GO (no dead pixels :D)
7200RPM 8MB 60GIG Hitachi Drive
 
the other detail that you haven't confronted, once you get the picture generated on this device, how do you get it to the monitor, there really isn't an external IO bus on a laptop that can handle that kind of data load. especially not in a sustained manner.
 
AYe. A much saner solution would be to demand upgradable graphics cards on laptops. We have MiniPCI, why not MiniAGP?
 
instead of it being a propritary alienware technology, there should be some Mini-AGP standard for all laptops.
 
that isn't likely it is more likely that every company will follow alienwares example (like dell already has) and create their own proprietary tech.
 
You guys still haven't answered if it would be possible to run a video card over the PCMCIA bus. Can't seem to find any information online regarding the bandwidth and/or latency of the PCMCIA bus.
 
PCMCIA is more or less a hardware bridge to PCI. You could theoretically put a PCI video card on PCMCIA with some tweaks.

Getting a video card into the power requirements and form factor would be difficult, and the bus still isn't steller.
 
even if you could get a vid card on the pcmcia bus you would have to deal with the fact that there is no bus big enough to get the signal back into the laptop after processing for display.
 
Now YOUR on the right track Tekara!!! Now if they would only throw a Radeon 9800 on that baby :p

How in the world did you find that NEwayz?!?! I searched for hours :p

Well there you have it... its been done. Now if Radeon/Geforce manufacturers could figure out how to jump onboard ;D
 
Originally posted by Merlin45
even if you could get a vid card on the pcmcia bus you would have to deal with the fact that there is no bus big enough to get the signal back into the laptop after processing for display.
Click to expand...

I never considered putting the display back into the LCD an option anyways. Most hardcore gamers dislike LCD screens as it is, so the most likely solution would be output to a standard CRT screen anyways (allowing for no ghosting, and a variety of resolutions).

This may limit the items "mobility" but not its function. The soundblaster extigy isn't meant for traveling with either, but that doesn't mean it doesn't do its function beautifully.

I'm not looking for a way to speed up my gaming graphics when I'm on the road or when I'm doing a research paper in the school library... I'm looking for a product that I can plug into my laptop when I get home and allow for competitive gaming. I have a feeling I'm not the only one too.
 
while 2d is possible you could never put a real 3d accelerator on the pcmcia bus and expect any more than you get with your geforce 4 mx go that you have now.
 
Originally posted by Merlin45
while 2d is possible you could never put a real 3d accelerator on the pcmcia bus and expect any more than you get with your geforce 4 mx go that you have now.
Click to expand...

The specs on the PCMCIA bus are almost identical to that of the PCI bus...

CardBus is the 32-Bit version of PC Card technology. Enabled in the February 1995 release of the PC Card Standard, CardBus allows speeds of up to 133 Mbps at 33MHz.
link to where I got the quote

I am still NOT seeing the limitations beyond the formfactor problem (which could easily be overcome with an adaptor of some sort that connects the interfact the the PCMCIA slot out to an external PCI SLOT / VIDEO card).

Both your bandwidth and latency issues are dealt with... and there are some very nice DIRECTX9 PCI video cards out there that would BLOW MY GEFORCE4 away :p
 
HOLY CRAP I FOUND THE GRAIL :D

CARDBUS TO PCI CONVERSION KIT !!!!!!

Just when Merlin's negative vibe was starting to get me down I find the motherload :p

The price makes me want to vomit ($900ish) since it probably costs around $75 to make :p But the technology is viable!!!

Now someone put together a similar tech boasting a Radeon 9200 or a GeforceFX 5200 in an external unit (swappable with newer tech of course in the future) for 1/2 that price and I will be first in line to buy one! Lets see... the videocard would cost around $100 US (or much less if purchased in bulk) and the CARDBUS to PCI interface would cost around $100 (to be fair) (not counting development)... you would make an absolute KILLING on the mobile market.

Some wealthy/bored/uber mobile techie needs to pick up one of those external units and a PCI Geforce/Radeon just to test it out. I am salivating just thinking about it :p
 
you greatly overestimate the market for such a device. also you overestimate the pci bus, there is a reason agp was created, the pci bus is not good for graphics, everthing must snoop the frontside bus, which trashes the cpu, the max bandwidth is very low, power supply is minimal. pci vid cards are not really gaming cards
 
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