Laptop graphics practice

My uninformed opinion is that PCMCIA is a gigantic bottleneck. Aparently it's only good for 132MB/s according to http://www.pcmcia.org/faq.htm

I'd imagine with enough time and energy it'd be possible, but what's the point of developing such a thing with such a horrid bottleneck?

Edit: Oh. That's an ExpressCard adapter. Good question. Heh.
 
Actually it is feasible: The Asus XG Station:

http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=5369
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/hands-on-with-the-asus-xg-station-external-gpu
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/laptops/asus-xg-station-cracked-open-easily-upgradeable-250402.php
http://www.4gamer.net/news/history/2007.04/20070403202840detail.html

However, it looks like it's vaporware now. No new news of it has been released ever since it was first announced.

But it is feasible. Just dunno if its cost effective and heavily bottlenecked.

EDIT: Oops, the Asus XG Station isn't the only external graphics out there:

Magma ExpressBox (Pretty damn expensive though):
http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/expressbox1/index.html

Luxium by MSI:
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/08/23/msi-displays-external-pcie-box
http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/601237/msi-demos-external-pci-e-graphics-box.html

And all of the above external graphics connect via ExpressCard which is equal to the speed of PCI-Ex1 or 250 MB/s.

Amazing little website Wikipedia is. :D

EDIT: Looks like The XG Station isn't vaporware afterall:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/13/ces_asus_xg_station/
 
Can you just plug the card in to the adapter and have external graphics? It is a pci-e slot so it should detect it.
 
The main problem is space. I own a Dell M1730 with 2 8700s in SLI. Its a freak of tech nature. Its huge!It is truely a desktop replacement. If you have ever ripped open a laptop, you know that there is barely any room for a few air molicules much less a full size card. Laptop video cards are actually about half the size (and smaller) than your average desktop card. The heatsink is usually also a seperate setup that gets put on at the same time as the cpu heatsink does. Case in point, the HP wx9440. Its a business grade laptop with internal graphics. It actually has a mini PCIe slot that these cards (either ati 1600 or an Nvidea quadro) slap into. So the connectors and cards are there, but to add something to a laptop that is already built is becoming more and more difficult due to the compact design which limits the space for extra connectors that the external card would hook up to. Not only that, but as mentioned, the throughput of PCMCIA is just not good enough to process anything that we really play in this day and age unless you are running nintendo roms.
 
Shmuckety said:
Can you just plug the card in to the adapter and have external graphics? It is a pci-e slot so it should detect it.
Click to expand...

No idea.

However the problem is that you need to provide power to the video card and the fact that connector is only for PCI-Ex1. If you look at newegg, the selection of PCI-Ex1 cards is pretty damn slim. In fact, the PCI-Ex1 cards on newegg are barely any better than onboard graphics. Considering the costs and performance of the those cards and the fact that you can get a better PCI-E x16 card for the price, it's simply not cost-effective or worth it to get a setup like that.

@ Kidfinger
If you check the links in my last post, all of those external graphics card solutions connect via ExpressCard, not PCMCIA. ExpressCard has a max speed of 250 MB/s while PCMCIA has a max speed of 132MB/s. There will still be a performance hit but not as bad if it was connected via PCMCIA.
 
My issue it this. I have a laptop. I may not want a desktop. Why is it so hard to have a dock that has extra horsepower for you when you are at home? When you are on the road battery life is important, when you are at home its not.

I really don't think that even the latest integrated graphics are that great, but even if they are they are using extra battery power up on the road.

Do these companies not see this issue? They do things similar to this all the time. Creat a standard connector (maybe integrated in to the dock) on the back that gives you even pciex4 and that would greatly improve your gaming, then you can unplug it when you go on the road and you have more battery life.

The laptops they have now from dell and whatever are cool "desktop replacement" but the battery lasts 1 hour or less. Thats pretty bad, makes the laptop angle almost pointless.
 
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