Asustek XG Station external graphics card

ya that says clearly it needs an external monitor.

Do you see a plug going into your notebooks lcd anywhere?

 

Well if you have a VGA-IN port on your laptop, can't you just use your own LCD then?

 

I don't think many notebooks have VGA-In, only VGA-Out...

 

No such thing...

 

There probably is such a thing, but as far as I know, almost no notebook has video input. I thought about it too, but it wouldn't be all that useful to have it on the laptops screen anyways, they are way too small for any useful gaming, and it wouldnt be all that mobile because afaik the XG needs a power supply, like a desktop.

Stamar: inside the laptop, there is a cable between the LCD and the Graphics controller, but not on the outside. Now if there was a way to go for dual inputs and then pull a port from the LCD to the case on the outside....That would be a rather interesting possibility if it could be done.

 

Oh.. W2 has video input, but i m not sure which... maybe is those RGB styled.

 

yes it absolutely could be done

but quite a project there.

if you have that level of electronics down you might be able to make your own xg station really.

 

Oops, tried as hard as i could to find the line about not needing a seperate monitor but it seems the radiation from my samsung A10 has melted my brain. Sorry to throw out false info and get people excited.

Typing on this old girl is precarious at the best of times because A. It's a French language notebook and B. It gets so hot I burn my fingers on the touchpad and she just turns off whenever she feels like the heat's getting a little bit too much...

I'm still eagerly awaiting the release of the XG station because i've invested in a laptop which processor wise is economical and ram wise is upgradeable. The integrated graphics hamper longevity but with an external system designed to be as interchangeable as a desktop this extends the shelflife somewhat.

Now I need to convince my girlfriend that a flat panel lcd monitor would look sweet on her desk.....

Dug this up on Cnet -

"The XG Station will be available between March and April this year, with pricing details yet to be released. The docking station will come bundled with an Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS graphics card."

With regards to pricing I think Asus are going to ask us to pay through the nose for this puppy. It looks gaudy and a little tacky but hey, that's always been my experience of Asus. As has paying massive prices for useless accessories and crap games bundles.

 

$600 is the price that is being spread around most. For that price they can count me out. $600 is a hyper inflated price for which I expect to get an included 19" wide screen monitor as well (not that they will). $450 seems a reasonable introduction price with shop prices being around $400. I will start getting interested at below the €400 mark.

 

600$... i ll skip it and get a PS3.

 

Tsk tsk guys, they are around, just not common

The idea came to me when I remembered that before Christmas, I was playing the Wii on my friend's Toshiba laptop. Luckily, we didn't end up doing this. Both HP and Toshiba have laptops with VGA-In, as well as some Asus Ensemble units.

So, if the external GPU business really picks up, I'll be getting one with a VGA-In for my next lappy.

 

orly?

Haha, never knew, as it would be quite a good advertising pitch.

Any more info on it?

 

That would still require the info to go through the GPU and that is not likely to work. The problem with VGA-in on your notebook is that it does not simply put the picture it receives on the screen. It does make it possible to, say, watch tv but it needs special software to make it all work.

It's a nice idea but don't believe it is possible.

 

Ahh I'll need to ask him what model it was, but here's a Gateway lappy with VGA-IN. Still, pretty rare though, even if it's a very handy feature to have on your laptop---especially if you're a console gamer.

You can connect your Wii, Xbox360, and possibly PS3 to your laptop if you have VGA in. They all have cables you can buy (I think the Xbox 360 one is called "360 Laptop Connect Cable"), and it displays the picture exactly as it would onto a normal LCD monitor or your television. The consoles all have GPU units, and the XG would be no different---it's just primarily a GPU. So yes, it's possible and would work just fine, but it also warrants extra hardware and the associated manufacturing costs to the laptop makers make it uncommon.

 

I don't think you are getting the intricacies of what this entails. In all the examples of you mention it is a foreign device giving input to the notebook, here we are talking about the notebook itself giving the input for the notebook. It is like standing with a mirror in front of a mirror.

It could only work if you could use your notebook screen as a separate monitor screen without any input from the notebook and doing so while the notebook itself is running.

I'm in no position to say it is impossible but it is extremely unlikely to work.

 

Are you sure it's not S-Video in than VGA in?

Edit: Nvm, just saw your Gateway link.

Edit2: The Gateway you linked to doesn't actually have VGA in, the article screwed up. Here's a link to the latest version of that tablet.

http://www.gateway.com/products/gco...&seg=hm&system_id=cx210x&sg=hm&ph1=8773622210

I still think you have S-Video in confused with VGA in.

 

Nope, I don't get these "intricacies" you're getting at. Then again, I'm a simple guy who happens to work around open box servers, connecting the actual hardware, and writing the software to use the hardware for video encoding and decoding.

Dude, the LCD monitor on your laptop is no different than the LCD monitor on your desk, if you have one. "The notebook is not giving itself input", as you would say. When you launch a game, it will load the necessary data from your HDD into your system RAM. The RAM feeds data to be churned in the CPU, which then communicates with your GPU via the PCI or AGP lanes (wires) on your motherboard. Graphics data then gets sent to the GPU's RAM to be held for processing in a similar fashion. I know there's a lot more to this, but I'm not interested in writing anything tedious or boring right now.

When you put the XG station into the mix, instead of your CPU sending the data to your onboard GPU, it sends it to the XG via the ExpressCard slot, which is PCIe x1 if I'm not mistaken. This cuts your GPU out of the loop. The XG processes the information, then sends it to its output port...much as your internal GPU would. The difference is, instead of using the internal connection to your LCD to raster the pixels, the VGA-IN connection is used instead, connecting the output port of the XG.

Then again, I could be mistaken and the XG could work in some other...mysterious fashion. But this is the general concept, and I've always wondered why the manufacturers haven't taken a serious look at it until someone enlightened me about manufacturing costs.

 

That is not true. Because laptop LCDs are dedicated to the laptop, they have different control circuitry from a regular desktop LCD, and some of it is on the motherboard as opposed to being on the monitor like it would be with a desktop. It's all highly integrated, and it speaks a language called LVDS when talking to the panel as opposed to normal DVI, so you *can't* just hack into the cabling. There is no normal DVI or VGA signals anywhere inside your laptop.

What you are talking about is S-Video in. It uses a protocol called 'Zoomed Video' to put an NTSC/PAL (television) signal directly into the laptop GPU framebuffer. But NTSC/PAL are resolutions of 720x480 or 720x576, hardly something you would want to use to play a modern game, but quite sufficient for connecting an external TV tuner or game console.

 

My initial post was to spark interest in the matter of VGA-IN ports on laptops. However, it seems people do not take well to that kind of approach. Well, let me tell you here and now then, that it is possible to have a VGA input into your laptop screen, and that external video output devices such as a gaming console or the XG Station already do and will continue to use this particular approach. I mean, the idea of external GPU's is relatively new, and I can remember a few months ago when I brought the idea up that I got similar reactions from quite a few people. If the XG does well, and the major OEM's adopt its design and eventually miniaturize it and advertise it as a portable gaming peripheral, you will see more and more laptops with VGA-IN (or perhaps DVI-IN by then) for this use.

Jumper: I am not talking about S-Video in. I think I know the difference when I see a VGA-male to VGA-female cable linking two devices. Also, laptops with VGA-IN have the necessary hardware to convert the signals for proper display onto the laptop LCD screen. All it is doing is transforming the laptop LCD into a regular monitor for display, it is not hard to do. However, as I've said several times, the problem is the manufacturing cost of the additional hardware as well as the consumer demand for VGA-IN on laptops.

 

Give me a specific model number of a laptop with a VGA input, and a link to manufacturers specifications please.

This is from the official XBox 360 Forums, the top sticky on the audio/video section:

 

It seems obvious that the XG will receive and transmit over the PCI-E bus just like a desktop video card would. So it should display on the notebooks screen.

As far as the actual transfer rate of PCI-E 1X, it should be sufficient for a 7900GS, but I suspect that may be one of the more advanced cards that wouldn't be limited by the interface.

 

A normal desktop card outputs to the display device via the plug on the back of the card. The frames generated by the card are converted to a DVI-I signal, by chips on the card dedicated to the process. They never travel over the PCI Express bus. With good reason too:

32 bits per pixel (color) * 1280x1024 pixels * 60 frames per second = 2516 Gb/s. PCI Express 16x = 32 Gb/s.

Uncompressed video is crazy high bandwidth......

It *will* be limited. It's getting 1/16th the normal bandwidth, less then an AGP connection actually.

 

This is addressing people who try to plug in a male VGA cable from an output source into a VGA output port. They physically won't fit in the first place.

I just don't see what you're arguing. I acknowledge that VGA-IN ports are rare, and that manufacturers don't like to make them because of the cost and demand. But a laptop liquid crystal display is no different than a desktop liquid crystal display, the software written on the internal controller chips may be different but if the laptop's mobo supports a VGA-IN then the hardware is there.

Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up...and if I do make something up, it'll be more elaborate than "laptop LCD's can display an external VGA source". I'll try and take a picture of my coworker's laptop this week, maybe that will clear up some confusion.

 

I just spent about a half an hour using all of my Google-fu to try and find some mention of a laptop with a VGA input.....

 

VGA-in.. never heard of it, but for AV-in, there's quite some... or at least a few.

Will this work?

 

Take SLI without a bridge connector for example. Some mainstream cards can do this. You've got off-loaded processing going on on the second card which gets sent back over the PCI-E bus to the master card. Same thing here. Take also for example a Physics PCI card which does the processing and passes it back to the CPU.

I'd also like to know how the SZ works, does it have two physical connections from the mainboard to the display or is there one phsyical connection which has a different signal passed through it depending which GPU is active. My guess would be the latter in which case the 7400 in that notebook would function the same as the 7900GS in the XG except that it's internal instead of external.

 

No. Any time you convert analog to digital, there is a loss of quality. Performance with such a setup would just not be acceptable.

 

There is a reason that most SLI setups do use a bridge. If SLI without a bridge had plenty of bandwidth left over then manufacturers wouldn't be wasting money making bridges. If you've ever tried to program a 3D game you would know that physics and collision data is no where near graphics data when it comes to the bandwidth required. The ExpressCard connection is closer to the bandwidth of a PCI connection than an AGP 8x connection.

PCI (32 bit): approximately 1.1Gbps or 133MBps
ExpressCard (PCI Express x1): approximately 2.5Gbps or 313MBps
AGP 8x: approximately 17.1Gbps or 2133MBps
PCI Express x16: approximately 40Gbps or 5000MBps

Even if you do decide to send video data back there is not enough bandwidth. At 1280x1024x32bitx60hz you have 2.5165824Gbps of data. You have already exceeded the theoretical bandwidth of ExpressCard.

 

You can't send anything other then NTSC/PAL (standard TV resolution) over one of those. 720x576 or whatever. The quality would be horrible.

Hyper, that's not how SLI normally works. The information being sent between the cards over PCI-e normally is the pre-rendering geometry, shader, and texture information, and information to coordinate the SLI mode, which is orders of magnitude smaller then the final rendered frames themselves.

Bridgeless SLI mode is slowwww... It's normally used on low end cards now... It's bandwidth starved over PCI-e x16 let along x1.

There is no magic solution that is going to put this output back on the laptop screen, not without making significant design changes to the laptops.

 

Well... there's PCI Express 2.0 out there, like launched today, wonder if they would affect anything seriously... (said to raise the 2.5gbps to 5gbps)

 

is this thing supposed to be like an external video/card? because my video card is integrated and it sucks, and i need a new one and dont have the money to buy a new laptop, and i dont think i ever will lol.

 

Ok guys I've moved my response to here so it might spark some more interest with the NBR community.

 

I read through that gator, while your right about being able to use a laptop LCD, I can't see people doing that to their actual laptop screens and still using the laptop, that just wouldn't make sense.

 

I'm not sure about what doesn't make sense, so I'll take a guess and say you're referring to how to actually switch between the internal and external input sources to the LCD. I am not sure how the manufacturers do it either for the few laptops that have the port because I've never opened one up. However, if you've used a KVM switch, which costs about $10-$20, the idea is the same.

 

No, switching inputs can't be too hard if you are rebuilding the freaking inputs. What doesn't make sense is having all of that wiring hanging out of your laptop in an effort to keep it portable for use with an XG Station. Lets be honest here, whats the point of the XG Station? To move around? No, you buy a laptop with dedicated graphics so that its portable and then when you are at your desk you plug in to become a power house. I know people want to game with this, but the internal LCD usage thing is really not a big deal, and it wouldn't make much sense for them to do that.

 

only huge unportable notebooks carry real power under the hood, hear me out

you could buy a nice 12.1 with a 2ghz core2duo take it out to work or class its so light, then when you bring it home connect it to a 7900 or even the new 8800 series via the pcie.

you just cant get anything over a mid range card inside a 12 or 14" laptop

 

Yeah, but you can build or buy a desktop that will easily out game the XG station for cheaper. Or throw the $600 into your notebook budget and step up to a G1 or something.

Also, there is the 13.3" with 8400 coming soon.

I just see this thing having limited practicality. Maybe it will sell like crazy cause people think it's neat and/or just can't cope with anything bigger than a 12" screen.

 

A 13.3" with 8400 with like 2.5 hours of battery life?

versus a 13.3" with integrated with 6+?

 

Fine. Buy an extra battery for $80.

 

I'm not too familiar about hot swapping batteries in laptops without secondary battery bays. Is there a way around turning off the laptop to swap the batteries if you don't use the AC cord?

 

Heh funny you ask. I just got my 2nd battery.
And try as I might it seems theres no way to suspend and switch the batteries.

You have to hibernate.

For some reason I thought you had like 20 seconds like a digital clock but that suspend light goes off instantly.

So I have it set to hibernate at 3% and then I resume

 

maybe its just me, but standby/suspend means the current state of your o/s is stored in ram, which is why ram continues to use power and allows you to start up so quickly. ram requires constant power to hold data.

since ram requires constant power, the moment that power is cut to it, the standby/suspended image in the ram is gone. since there is no other battery in the notebook to power the ram, im not sure where you got the idea that you had 20 seconds.

with hibernate, the current state of the o/s is stored on the hard drive, which does not require power to hold data, which is why you can swap batteries and still resume from hibernation.

 

Point taken.

This may be making me just look more foolish, but how do you recharge the second battery if it isn't in a hot-swappable bay? On my current notebook at least, I'm pretty sure the AC cord plugs into the notebook not directly into the battery

 

Um

If you dont have an external charger

you have to charge the batteries in the notebook.

theres no external charger for my notebook. If there was one, Id buy it and actually get a third battery.

Im trying to add into the conversation that multiple batteries work but there is surely some hassle involved.

 

Well that was my point exactly.

The benefit of having a notebook with good battery life is that its good battery life, and you don't have to sit there switching batteries every night

Then again, I'm not sure how much the external charger costs

 

You'd charge it in the notebook then take it out and set it in your carrying case and take it out whenever your primary runs out. Might be a bit of a hassle to remember to charge both the night before if you need 6 hours of battery per day. Very very few people are going to need 6 hours of useage per day without access to a wall outlet or car. And if they did, I can't see them getting home rarin' to go for a WoW all-nighter.

But then you've got a notebook that's not going to game worth anything and you'll need something at home. The question then becomes, how do you have room for the XG Station but not a desktop?

 

In a dorm room at least, from my perspective at least, the less space taken the better.

I guess the major point against the XG is the price. So far it seems like $600 is the overprice of the season, with PS3, Apple IPhone's and the XG going all for that price. The IPhone will most likely see big price drops, and I don't think the XG is selling at a loss at $600 so, hopefully we'll see something change in the future.

 

Yes long battery life in one notebook is very desirable.
You can get a quite cheap notebook a great deal like my a8js, the dell e1405 it goes 6 hours on one 9 cell.

The total price of a e1405 and a xg station ( at $600 mind you, that is the actual price verified I dont know if someone posted that) is actually still less than my a8js.

The last step for a comparison is what the xg station with a 7900 gs actually is. Is it like a 7400 internal card even? I have no real data on this.

 

Will the XG Station be released without the 7900 GS? If so any idea how much that will cost. Also does the XG Station support DX10 cards?

 

I think there was a rumor of that somewhere on one of the webpages saying there will be two models, but ever since, there's only been mentioned of a bundled version. There are two different colors if I remember correctly though. And I'm pretty sure it will be able to support DX10 cards, I think thats right in the Asus press release, about its expandability with PCI-E yadda yadda.