Have you seen this yet? Now you can not only UPGRADE your video card, you can use DESKTOP video cards with your Laptop!

I noticed this while shopping on PowerNotebooks.com.

http://www.powernotebooks.com/product.php?itemId=2893

This is a killer idea and something that I have wanted to have for my notebook since the PCI D-Dock days. You can plug this external dock into your ExpressCard slot and it gives you an upgradable solution to use a desktop video card with your laptop. For professionals, or anyone that thinks that my 17" notebook is "too big" and that the trade off for gaming is not worth the size - this is your solution. You can game at home (or the office) on a large, external monitor and take your thin and light notebook with you when your gaming is done.

This looks really slick - and I can't wait to pick one up.

Donald -- are these shipping now and can I get one to "test"????

 

It's not the first one, there was the Asus XG which didn't make it into full production IIRC, and there were 2 or so other similar devices that didn't get on market either. And I can't forget to mention the Fujitsu Amilo's external graphics system, created by ATi to enable full outboard PCI x16 bandwidth via cabling, but it's the one notebook so far to use it sadly, but it requires a notebook be specifically equiped with the proper port to be used.

 

the idea has been around for a while now with such products like ASUS XG Station and the Fujitsu external videocard.

.... now its finally getting more stable and universal.

Hopefully it work out well for those that want to game on their notebook's with low performance graphics.

 

day of netbooks is coming

 

Nah netbooks still need a processor that can run a chess simulation yet... Netbooks in the future may be able to run things, but currently even that Asus netbook isn't maxing out the 9300 gs they have in em... Mind you knowing what I do now, In the future my next laptop might just be cheap with a decent processor/ram/screen res and I'll get one of those with a gtx 295 (assuming that Nvidia can get this done) or what ever is a good alternative later in life. Hmm but the thing is that laptops are mean't to be portable, This is just another item to carry around with it, Plus does it need its own power supply?

Though I wonder If I could use that in conjunction with my 9600m gt in an sli like mode (assuming I get an nvidia version if it ever gets released)

 

Im a fan of XGP technology, i really hope it goes well!

 

... im skeptical, before the weak point was the interface on the XG station, the 8600gt I think it came with was about the limit, placing a faster card in there yielded the same results due to some kind of bottleneck.

There pre-carded version is nothing special 30fps in DMC4 @ 1920x1200 is not very impressive, and for the no card box who knows if it can handle the heat/power of a stronger card or if it will have the same kind of limitations as the XG station.

 

Im failing to see the applications. If you can use your desktops video card for gaming on your laptop, why not just use you desktop for gaming?

 

when netbooks push 1080P, let me know

 

The limitation has something to do with bandwidth of the express card, but this one seems to output directly to the monitor, so perhaps it wouldn't bounded by the same restriction.

4670 is still a decent upgrade for my 2 years old 8600m DDR2 (!) Card.

 

The new device that goes in the mini pci-e slot lets it do that now

 

So then the question for you would be is the cost of this unit + being limited to needing a monitor and a place for this be cheaper than just getting a newer better notebook?

 

Well, I think it is well worth the cost, if the claims on the website can be trusted. Now, for me personally, I can't speak for everyone:
To be honest, I don't know why I purchased a laptop. I have taken my laptop to a total of 3 Lan Games. The rest of the time it just sit on my desk. (2 years now, it just sat on my desk). Therefore, I can definitely see viable application for this product.

I have a spare monitor lying around I can use, which removes that part of the cost. I am sure most people who cares about gaming have had a desktop at one point, or a monitor at least that they can use with the new "gaming" laptop. Now, A decent mid range laptop will set you back at least $600, anything that's better geared will cost at least $1000+. I check the site, and with 4670 included it comes to $379.00. I would rather spend $400 include shipping, instead of $600+ for a completely new notebook, if they yield the same performance. This is not taken into consideration that this product probably has more room for upgrade than a traditional laptop.

An example here, new laptop that has mobility 4670 on sale for $699.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=385260

Edit: also about the being bounded by the need for monitor. Laptop are mostly purchased for portability especially when compared against a desktop. Now most desktop owners I saw, have to carry around their monitor, box, keyboard, mouse, etc. I don't see why this product would be anymore of a restriction than a gaming desktop in terms of portability. In the case of gaming laptops, it is a sacrifice you will have to make, but powerful gaming laptops are usually highly expensive which makes one wonder if it is really worth the cost just for portability.

Now I have found some pictures of the actual product for anyone else who is interested in the thingiemagig. It is huge, I will admit.

Front:
http://www.villagetronic.com/vidock2/gfx/ViDock2_front_r1600_1.jpg

Back:

http://www.villagetronic.com/vidock2/gfx/ViDock2_back_r1600_1.jpg

 

This would be the perfect solution for those who want to up the ante with their graphics card, I guess?

 

Now it would be even more attractive if it adds to the power of whatever card you already have in the laptop! A kind of SLI/crossfire!!

 

for people who dont want to buy desktops

they can game at home and have mobility on-the-go

and this way the graphics card would be easier to upgrade

 

Let me know when this supports Sli Nvidia cards at full speed. It's an awesome idea and for those who want to upgrade without buying a new laptop this would be terrific if it works.

 

You are missing the point of this. Yes it will have its own power brick. Think of it more like a docking station. You plug in your monitor at home, LAN, speakers, external HDD, keyboard, mouse and printer (whatnot) to a laptop and slide the expresscard into your laptop. You get to game on a decent monitor.

As far as nVidia - by the compatibility it looks like nVidia cards are supported on Windows 7 - but not certain.

 

It's not just gaming on a decent monitor, as most notebook screens I've had and seen are pretty nice. It's the fact that you can increase the eye candy or play games you normally couldn't.

This would be good. You can have a GMA GPU for power saving purposes on the run and a full fledged desktop card for home use. This would also reduce the cost of the notebook as well considerably.

 

Very cool.

 

If it does Xfire, then I'll be happy especially after finding out about not being able to upgrade my AW M17 gpu

 

Two quick comments from what I have read here:

1. Huge? Well, not really. It is just big enough to hold the video card, motherboard and fans. It is about 7.5" x 5.25" x 2" ... much smaller than a bread box

2. To those who say it has been tried before let me say that it has never been successful before for several reasons. One is that others tried prior to ExpressCard 2.0. But more than that...

The Product marketing managers from MSI & ASUS were both in the ViDock Computex booth a couple of weeks ago and both said the performance of their own design is not nearly as good as the ViDock2.

ViDock2 made huge efforts in designing and manufacturing their own cable.
It has many special characteristics, such as tight tolerances for impedance match, low loss for high frequencies, special mechanical construction so that daily mechanical use will not create intra pair length imbalance. Most importantly they removed 4 connectors from the cable which are in any other design. This helped it to keep a clean eye diagram (no retires necessary with loss in speed) and they did not need to add PCIe switches (repeaters) to clean up the signal, which would cause latency thereby reducing speed for graphics cards.

Also, it has not been brought up yet, but some will tell you that the single lane that ExpressCard gives you will not perform as well as when plugged into 16 lanes directly as supported by the ATi card. However we can demonstrate that Aero works just fine in 1 lane with all features. In addition, when testing with 3DMark06 it only looses 6.5 % on the same graphics card when using ViDock2 as opposed when plugged into 16 lane directly. So what they say is somewhat true, but only losing 6.5% still puts the desktop card's performance well above the same model laptop card.

The other thing that some of you are missing is the upgradeability. Once you buy ViDock2 either as a blank, or with the ATi 4670 preinstalled, all you to do generation after generation is buy the new DESKTOP video card. There is no need to buy a new laptop. Also, what about that great "company" laptop your employer gives you with integrated graphics, or your two year old laptop? With ViDock2 you can now turn it into a gaming machine!

 

Donald - is 6.5% just for the 4670 or what about a GTX295 or a 4870X2 or a 4890?


Also - one more stupid ?.....

Most video cards are a little bigger than 7.5". Is the ViDock3 going to be like 14" long?

 

cant really hold the fastest video cards. It would be worth it, if I could place a gtx295 in there but a 4670 not sure its worth it. Cant play newest games on high resolution. Still cant beat a desktop (which can also just upgrade video card).

 

I'm telling you now.

The 1st netbook can push 1080P blueray disk rip contents already with some optimization. That's why i'm using my acer aspire one as a HTPC.

 

wow this sounds awesome!

it sucks though, I got the new mac book pro and for some reason they decided to replace the express card slot with an SD Card slot D: They should make a firewire version >.< nah that would make it way to slow. Apple! why!

 

It's called ION and ASRock just put out what could loosely be called the first dual-core netbook that uses the Nvidia Chipset+Ion platform.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/14225/1/


Although it's a 12" chassis and uses the nettop Atom so I wouldn't say it legitimately classifies as a netbook.

 

I wanted the Asus external graphics station when it was announced, but it seems to have disappeared. These things took far too long to hit the market. I would have loved to have one when I bought my 12" laptop. At the time, I needed a light computer for travel, but I got a decent CPU and memory. Being able to go from the Intel 915 graphics to any desktop card at home would have been great. But it's taken so long that it's not worth putting any more money into my old laptop now, and as I don't travel as much, I'll end up with something with much better internal graphics next time.

 

At this time nVIDIA has not developed a card that will work with ExpressCard...they are still working on it ATi really beat them to the punch on this one!

The ViDock2 has a 120Watt AC Adapter so will only support cards that will fit in the 7.5" enclosure, and only require less than 120W TDP.

CORRECTION: The ViDock2 has a 72Watt AC Adapter

 

Not to mention, notebook manufacturers wouldn't be too happy with an external GPU being used on their older notebooks !

What excuse could they use to make you want to buy a *NEW* notebook from them !

I'm sure they'll have a say in how far this goes !

 

^--^
That's funny...you are correct that the gaming notebook manufacturers may not be too happy with this solution, but the only way they can do anything about it is to BUY OUT the ViDock2 company since they are an independent company that has been in business for years

 

You make an excellent point though. While it may be too late to meet your needs, there are tens of thousands out there right now that are in the same position you used to be...the have a small lightweight laptop for travel that they either bought or got from their company, but would love to be able to game with a desktop video card when at home...but don't see a need to buy another computer just for that. This way they can buy the ViDock2-Blank and then just spend $100 or so every time a new card comes out and they are always up to date.

 

Gaming notebooks is a complete bundle, but with this thing you need the external monitor, so LAN party lovers wouldn't even get close to that.
and just as everybody says, the Amilo Fujitsu just pooped to my head when I first read the title lol

 

these kind of external solutions using pcmia or expresscard have been around from MANY years. it's NOT a serious solution...
usually these solutions are very expensive and very low performance.

maximum expresscard bus: 2.5 Gbit/s

pci-express:
v2.0: 500 MB/s per lane
(SLI/CROSSFIRE) 16+16= 16gb/s

v3.0: 1 GB/s per lane
(SLI/CROSSFIRE) 16+16= 32gb/s

Expresscard limits the bandwidth from an inserted ×16 video card (4 GB/s in each direction), to just ×1 (250 MB/s in each direction).


There are already external graphic solutions for desktops, Nvidia Quadro Plex using a pci-e 8x or 16x card and slot for interconnect the cable.

In computex 2008 AMD announced the ATI XGP technology based on proprietary cabling solution which is compatible with PCIe signal transmissions.
It really uses an external PCI Express 2.0 connector.
"The device connects to specially designed notebook using the uniquely crafted external PCI Express© 2.0 connector designed and developed with JAE Electronics, Inc"
This is the only real solution. and it really works.
more info:
http://ati.amd.com/technology/xgp/howdoesitwork.html
http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/ati-xgp/Pages/ati-xgp.aspx
cable specs and more:
http://ati.amd.com/technology/xgp/xgp_technology_brief.pdf

 

One thing about that though -- I had 3x SLI in my desktop at home on an EVGA board that could only do 16x, 16x 8x on the PCI-E connectors - and it worked well. I remember Hardocp doing a test and finding that even though the theoretical bandwidth was there (actual / mathematical is NEVER the realized bandwidth) that the cards were using less than would have been needed with all 3 being 8x.

 

im a noob at pcs, and i was like " " when i read this, mainly when people said it's an old tecnology.

as many said here, the connectivity would make the performance to go down, but i see it still sounds worth it, since it will still give a huge boost to a notebook.

so, you really need a distinct keyboard and monitor to use this thing? =/
isnt there a way to use the monitor from the own notebook and its own keyboard? <_<

if there is, all my problems would be solved >_<

last thing that i dont get, it still uses the notebooks RAM and Processors, right? then, do the notebooks graphic cards still being used when this Vidock2 is pluged in?

 

This is a proposed solution to gaming using a laptop, not gaming on the go really >.>

 

i see how it not "on the go", but i meant it so i wouldnt need to buy a monitor.

i really needed it, because i wanted a gaming pc, but since im a student, that moved to college, i go to my hometown every vacation...

i dont need a mobile pc (for everyday life), since i just use pc when im home, i wanned something that i can carry with me when going back to my hometown by bus...

i was thinking that this could be solved if there was any kind of a notebook that has an input to use its monitor as something else =(

 

how do we know if our express card slot is 2.0?

 

I was hoping this would support the laptops monitor rather than requiring a separate, but, IF it performs as advertised, its an intriguing solution.

 

This is not old technology, however the other attempts at it were and they really never went anywhere because of that. See my post #22 on page 3.

We will also have several gaming benchmarks available next week to also prove that there is very little performance loss due to the ExpressCard. Bandwidth calculations are one thing...actual gaming benchmark scores, not synthetic ones, are the real proof in the pudding

 

Haha, thx for the answer.
Guess i have to wait until next week then.

but i still wish there was a way to make a laptop accept the ViDocks DVI input, and use the notebooks keyboard for it

 

You can use the laptop's keyboard with ViDock 2, or you can use an external keyboard...your choice.

ATi says on AMD chipset based laptops we can also use it to drive the laptop's LCD...and we are working with their technical group to make that happen as well, but until they can prove it to us we will have to wait on that one.

 

In my point of view, since ATI and AMD are all together, id be led to believe that they wouldnt comment about Intel.

So, its good to know we can actually use the notebooks own keyboard for the job.
I know its early to keep asking about it, but if it worked like ATI said, all m problems with pcs would be solved (yey for technology).

Just one more thing, i dont understand about processors archtecture nor details, i always read reviews that said Intel based ones were better than the AMD ones (lately). Is there any chance to use it to drive the laptops LCD if the laptop is Intel based?

Well, good luck with your work, hope it all works fine in the end.
k

 

Finally this idea seems to be going forward. Mobile cards are either a total joke or totally overpriced.

 

Check this out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE5NmURV5P8

 

nice find, +1 rep to you buddy.
feels like this is going to be pretty much a "console" that you connect to your computer, but looks 10x better.

 

How much does a blank version cost? I want one .

 

I have Express Card 34, would that work with this product or would I need an adapter, or is there no way it would work?

 

HOLY CRAP DO WANT! Is this finally a reality?

How big is the unit? Are there any video cards this thing can't fit? Is it big enough to run SLI?