External Video Card

Here you go. An External video card for the cheap cheap cheap cheap price of 1500$ USD. Enjoy.

http://www.amazon.com/Connect3D-300...5?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1186592976&sr=8-2

 

That is not external. That is PCIe...as in PCI-Express. Not PCI-external.

EDIT: Wait...what the heck? I bet that is only for desktops though...I'd like to see an actual picture to prove that is not some crap phantom ware BS.

 

this is theoretically impossible...lemme look more into it.

EDIT:

Product Features

* Tandberg Data 3003 420LTO External Kit

Technical Details

* Model: 3003
* Item Package Quantity: 1
* Hardware Platform: PC
* video_output: Graphics adapter
* form_factor: Plug-in card
* video_output_interface: PCI Express x16
* Graphics Coprocessor: ATI Radeon X300
* maximum_external_resolution: 2048 x 1536
* memory_technology: DDR SDRAM
* Graphics Ram: 128 MB
* video_input: None
* television_interface: TV out


Tandberg Data 3003 420LTO External Kit....ok I found out what this is under the part spec in that card...what I dont get is that why is a external tape drive(storage device) is part of the specification... I wouldnt trust this.

 

A scam on amazon.. 1st time i heard of it.

 

Its actually not Amazon. A company called WonderElectronics sells and ships the product.

 

X300? I will keep 1150 igp thank you very much. When I get $1500 I will just buy a Vostro w/8600m GT and maybe 8700m GT if I wait long enough for that kind of money.

 

I just found it when I was looking for a gaming mouse. Thought it was pretty funny because of the price. I don't know anything about it though.

 

OH lord that is ridiculous. Asus was going to do an external video solution, but if I remember correctly they were offering at LEAST Geforce 7600 inside.

But really, with 1500 I'd just get a laptop with an 8600 built in.

External video cards wont be really viable until a newer mobile interface is created. SATA wont work, it's a storage interface. I don't know about FireWire functionality, but it wouldn't be fast enough, same with USB 2.0.

Expresscards can not handle real PCI-E traffic, they are only 1x (1 lane) compared to the standard 16x (16 lanes) in most desktop VGA slots. Even 8x (8 lanes) would work pretty darn well, but 1x no no no no.

I'd bet AMD will put together a mobile chipset with a special connector on the back that will interface at PCI-E 16 or 8 lane bandwidth. Then there'd be a sudden market for external video solutions that are not handicapped by that crappy express card bandwidth.

 

Even the XG station to which you refer requires an external monitor (which makes no sense to me because that takes the portability out of it). I like how the XG station looks but it will still probably be expensive. Also I thought high-bandwith expresscard slots were x16?

 

nope. all express card slots that are on laptops as i know it is x1.

 

Express card slots are 1x PCI-E. That is why there has to be an external monitor. If the external card was pumping frames back into the laptop screen, the tiny bit of available bandwidth on the express card bus would bring things to a crawl. As it is, they are using the 1x one way only, which effectively doubles their available bandwidth. It's a clever work around.

 

"the RADEON X300 graphics card offers the performance to achieve the best visual experience possible at an affordable price"

Funny how it says that

 

I'm not sure if this thread is still alive but... what about this device- http://sewelldirect.com/ExpressCard-to-PCI-Express-Adapter-Full-Length.asp . It says it can be used with a video card for gaming. The laptop card is an ExpressCard/34mm. What do you think?

 

I realize it's still using a PCI Express x1 lane interface but does anyone think there might be something to it? Also, I'm not sure but I assume that you need an external monitor for this as well... using the video card's ports.

 

Interesting. Here is the mfgr website http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/expressbox1/

It does not say anything about external monitor hookup on a laptop, and I'm not really sure how it works in conjunction with the laptop's gpu.....

Anyway, is 250MB/sec throughput adequate when compared against an internal PCI-E gpu? I'm assuming the external card will be bottlenecked by the Expresscard interface...........

 

R4000- Thanks for the link, the mfgr site has a lot more info about it. I think the killer with this, even if the data transfer was fine, is the wattage. "Magma ExpressBox 1 is designed for "single-width" graphics cards that require no more than 55 watts of power." There goes all the good ones!!!

 

What is the typical wattage of an 8500GT, for example?

The device sounds interesting for a test pig, but $749 is waay out of my range.....

 

The expresscard bandwith is plenty for older mid range desktop solutions, such as a 7600GT. It's essentially the same bandwith as in the thinkpad advanced dock, which has been successfully used to house an external video card, with decent results.

Edit: As for wattage, don't know about newer cards, but most mid range cards should be under the 55w requirement:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000662.html

 

On the Thinkpad dock, are the external card graphics piped thru to the notebook's LCD or a connected monitor?

 

You'd have to connect a monitor to the external graphics card to use it, I'm pretty sure.