ASUS XG Coming Soon!

Looks like the wait will be over some time this year.

ASUS XG Station

Now I wonder what models of GPU will be supported?

And I also wonder what kind of impact 1x Express throughput will have on performance? Are we talking 1/16th? 1/8th? 1/4th?

I suppose it will be based on the card inserted and the game being played.

I.E. An 8800GTX playing Crysis will perform at a fraction of normal while a 7600GT playing HL2 will work closer to 1:1.

I don't really need one of these anymore, my 8600m GT works well enough for me, but I've always liked the concept!

Now AMD/ATI needs to get their external VGA device going! That one was supposed to function in such a way as to output the video to the laptop screen. It was announced YEARS ago.

 

You could have Google'd for some seconds. : D

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/hands-on-with-the-asus-xg-station-external-gpu/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XG_Station

Do you really want to hookup your laptop to a external monitor and gpu to play games?

 

Interesting tid bit. 1 year and still counting...

Com'on Asus, don't fail us again.

 

Yeah, those links are over a year old though.

As I mentioned in my post, I don't personally want one, I am just excited to see the technology finally hit the market.

Also, I DO in fact have an external monitor that this would work splendidly with.

I'd consider the XG station a dock-style application to be used when near a large monitor anyway. It isn't something I'd want to travel with.

 

Oh..okay.

Yeah true that, carryng a external gpu and monitor takes away the meaning of .. portable computer. : P

It's cheaper to buy a top-notch laptop with a good gpu, rather a bad lappy with two external piece of hardware, so I personally doubt it will be a hit.

 

This particular piece of hardware works well for people who might only own their laptop but did not consider the GPU in the specs when they purchased it.

Most modern laptops are actually pretty powerful dual-core systems with a decent amount of RAM. In almost EVERY case the bottleneck is the integrated GPU.

The XG just finally solves the problem of mobile GPUs being impossible to upgrade. The other hardware is fine, but some people just want to play 1 or 2 games and don't have the option to simply because their GMA950 sucks.

I honestly think this will find a healthy niche market with people who realize they can't play a game they enjoy on their mobile system because they don't get the GFX hardware bit at purchase.

 

Now for the hardware specs and price behind this thing, it will still be a gimmick to all but the users belonging to the specific niche the product is catering for.

Looks quite big as well from the screenshot, score one for portability.

 

I wonder how much it would cost. If it's over $400 (XG and GPU combined), might as well buy an Xbox.

 

6.7 times an intel integrated (and a slightly old one at that) performance. Errr get an inbuilt x600 or up for that anyway?

 

When I was researching these a while back I was really looking forward to this but when I saw the price I wasn't really interested. I'm mean really if it comes with anything above an 78 or 79 series itll cost more than my laptop!!

 

HA! ! ! ! ! !

I KNEW IT ! ! !

I TOLD YOU GUYS IT WOULD COME OUT ! ! ! HAHAHA

ok im done now...

Pricing is my main concern... if I would buy it...

I think once this is out and it will inspire them (hopefully they are NOT listening to me right now) to create an external PCI-e (full fledge) or even PCI-E 3.0 or 2.0 whatever that newest one is....

That would revolutionize all of this portability and power

 

or it could flop and they could say "wow, that was a bad idea" and never speak of it again, and instead make CPU swapping in laptops more desktop-like, which would be a much much much better idea and much much cheaper.

 

Honestly, if the bare XG Station goes for anything over $100 it'll be a waste and overpriced. I don't know why it needs the flashy screen on the side.

All it's doing...ALL it's doing...is bridging a PCI Express x1 slot.

 

Well done with your glorious insight on the release date of this long-delayed product. Not exactly stopping you from buying your dream 8800gtx laptop either.

As for the technology it took them over a year just to get a product using PCI 1x interface to work, it may not technologically possible right now for better transfer speeds.

TheGreatG****Ape may beg to differ, but the tomshardsware website itself states that Asus is launching this as an experimental product with zero idea on its potential marketability and profits. When more specifics on its capabilities are released we'll be better placed to judge it.

 

well, its a good thing. at least people who have integrated chips who come wondering if they can upgrade their hard drive to play games will have an answer other than "buy a new laptop"

maybe one day laptops will come with an XG-port or something thats a direct link to the pci xpress slot...

 

USB/Firewall...
it just makes me wonder if it is even going to perform as X1 unless of course usb 2.X or something like that is released

 

Well, I am glad they started this "prototype" to the external graphic solution. Just imagine one day, you get to have upgrade your graphic card when needed and still be portable at times.

 

That said, when this product is released we can ask Chaz to place the details on ordering and installation in his Graphics Card Sticky. It could easily be appended after the content on MXM slots.

 

As a sidenote, I'll believe it when I see it.

It looks no closer to release than it did a year ago.

Maybe by the time it comes out, we can use it to play Duke Nukem Forever.

 

If this gets released together with Duke Nukem Forever we'll go buy lottery tickets, chances of actually hitting the jackpot will be higher than seeing both of these long-delayed products hits the shelves at the same time.

 

Now you guys aren't being fair to the XG Station. Asus has only had this in the works for a couple of years. DNF is a decade old and still vaporware.

 

You'd think the XG was in development forever with the enthusiasm some users on this forum have for proposing it as a solution for notebook graphics upgraders.

I still stand by my last statement that the odds of both products being released around the same time is lower than striking the lottery.

 

Didnt they state that they had problems with Vista compatibility?

I think that was it, because they where showing it off on XP a year ago...

I am 60% sure that this will continue but in a modified way, as in Express Card will become more standard and in a year or two introduce PCI-E external with 8 lanes maybe even 16....

Or maybe someone will rethink MXM by then... and make it way easier for us... but that makes them not sell as much adlqkm woprj3029j blablablabla hey if we stop buying new laptops since later on technology will advance at a faster rate, they will be forced to do so.

Didnt this happen with RAM and HDD? And its slowly happening with CPU's and GPU's ?

 

Well, if this thing is REALLY cheap, it might be worth it if you have an IGP. But if you already have a mainstream gpu(x1600 and above) it wouldn't be worth it because the bandwidth limitation(pci-e 1X-yeah right) would bottleneck the gpu.

 

This hinders a laptops portability no less than the "portable" power brick for "gaming" laptops.

People act like not being able to use your external graphics card to play crysis on the bus to school is a big deal. If I did buy it for a couple hundred bucks it'd outperform my 8400M GS which I paid $1850 for.

I could really rant forever about this but I'll stop because it's futile.

 

Well, you can't really make that comparison, your WHOLE laptop cost you the 1850 dollars, not just the 8400m GS.

Now if this thing really does what is claimed to do, then it doesn't really matter if it is heavy like the power brick for "gaming laptop". The point of this external graphic card, is so that you can game on a 14'' or even smaller laptop that only carries Integrated Graphics. I can only imagine the combination of a 14'' laptop + power brick+ XG station lighter than a full 17'' gaming laptop + it's gaming power brick.

 

my 12" laptop will appraciate the xg station at home.... and is way better than carrying an alienware to school, quieter too. dont see why some are ranting so much about the xg

 

This has been rumored to be 'coming soon' since I bought my XPS M140. And that was what, over two years ago! Almost two and a half years in fact.

So if you really think the XG is actually going to get released, think again.

Vaporware.

 

Statistically, no.

If they're both to be released this year, that's only 1/366 * 1/366.

For those that are lazy to whip out a calculator and do the math, it's only 1/133956.

You think that's LOW?

Take a look at winning a lottery like the 6/49:
(If you're not familiar with the rules, you simply pick 6 numbers out of 1 - 49, no repeats--if you get all the numbers correctly, you winz!):
1/49 * 1/48 * 1/47 * 1/46 * 1/45 * 1/44

Which equals....

*Drum Rollllll*

A whopping 1/10068347520!!!

Note: Yes, I know you were trying to be humourous with your post, and not serious--but I'm a jerk .

Yep... very possibly. Heh.

Much like the Phantom--now, that just pulled a phantom on everybody!

 

Its coming out, either that or the whole idea gets canned and they shift to a new interface. This is very first-gen technology. If GPUs continue to be a problem in mobile systems (may not be the case with Fusion or Intel's allegedly 10x performing IGP in 2010) then this technology will eventually mature.

Really though, at some point graphical integration will reach the point where running a game like HL2 or Bioshock or even Crysis on mobile IGPs is simple and worth-while. 10 years ago, around when HL came out (I think it was a year later), I didn't have much luck getting it to run at medium settings on my laptop.

10 years later and IGP can run HL:1 at max with no sweat.

10 years from now we can take the top of the line of 2008 and run it on a mobile system with max settings.

So yeah, if the XG doesn't prove its worth for current gen games, the whole concept goes down the tubes (internet).

 

The XG Station only works on external monitors. It's basically like plugging a new video card into your desktop; it's only useful on the monitors it's running.

The XG Station is a cute idea but sorely lacking in practicality, and with IGP power ramping up like it is, may not even make much of an impact.

 

Yep, Dragonpet, you forgot to add the weight of the external 17" monitor
IGP will still be lacking in the future. Yea, maybe the Intel X4100 will beat the crap out of a 7800GTX but then, it ll be pulverize by the theorectically nvidia "14800" GTX and the cycle will go on and on... If Asus could reroute the XG back into the laptop monitor, then it's a sale for me personally.

 

Not bad, but in my country the lottery is a pick of 4 numbers between 0001 and 9999, so statistically 1:10000 is actually more likely to occur than 1/133956. Then again being a US-centric forum I often forget to explain some of the technicalities in my posts.

 

lol crysis maxed on an IGP...

 

That'll be the day!

Is it definite that you need an external monitor to actually use the XG? That's an even bigger turnoff for most users looking for graphics upgrades, the need for an external monitor just for better graphics makes one wonder why notebooks are even purchased for gaming or other graphics intensive applications. There's also the portability problem of an external monitor to consider.

 

Asus EEE mods?? But yea.. the cpu will be the bottleneck.