can any laptop really take advantage of the Asus XG?

What I mean is: is there any laptop that actually has a 16X express card port? My laptop is pretty new and I think it has only a 1X. I know the XG station has support for 16X and it will probably reach its maximum only with that transference rate. However, is that possible nowadays with the Express card ports available?

 

The XG connects to the laptop via Express Card, not the PCIe connector. That's why the bandwidth will be limited to the Express Card's maximum bandwidth (forgot the exact number, but definitely less than PCIe bandwidth).
The actual graphics card connects to the XG Station by a PCIe connector (so it will fit), then the XG Station to the laptop via Express Card.

 

To make the XG Station work you need:

A Laptop with an Express Card slot
The XG Station Itself
An external monitor on to which you can display the output of the XG station.

 

I think you are confused with ExpressCard and PCI Express. PCI Express is available in 1x, 4x, 8x, 16x. ExpressCard comes in 54/34 variants. I do not know much about the theoretical data thoroughput rates in between PCI Express 16x vs ExpressCard 34/54, but I would figure they should be similar?

EDIT: Theoretically PCI Express is 4GB/sec, whereas ExpressCard has 2.5GB/sec. However, because many people do not label Gigabit (GB) and Gigabit(Gb) correctly it is hard to tell exactly the difference between the two.

 

Right, but that's exactly what I mean:
Express card slots, at least the one in my laptop is "subtitled" Pci Express 1x. It means that it works at that bandwidth, which as Acaurora said correspond to 2.5 Gb/s, which is around 313 MB/sec. Now, the XG station will work with Videocards that band 16x PCI express, or 5 GB/sec.
So again the question:
Is there a laptop out there that actually has an Express card slot with a bandwidth of 16X, that can take full advantage of the PCI express and then of the XG station?
Because otherwise it doesn't make any sense to use a 5 GB/s card connected at 300 MB/sec with the laptop.
Otherwise, I guess Asus is betting for a next generation of laptops that will have an Express card slot with wider bandwidth.

 

Well, compared to an Intel GMA900, a 7900GS even at limited bandwidth will smoke it.

Though if there is a problem of limited bandwidth, I'm wondering why ASUS didn't go with a lower video card because so much bandwidth is wasted.

 

My question about the XG...and why I can't get excited about it...is what's the point, honestly? For the amount of money spent on the XG and the external monitor, you might as well start looking at building a gaming desktop, since the XG isn't exactly portable.

I mean I guess this is a nice proof of concept, but I'm not going to be impressed until I see an actual ExpressCard GPU, which is theoretically possible.

 

Can we come back to the original question please?

 

To get express card on my NC8430, I need to buy a advanced HP dock - and plug express card accessories into the dock to use with my laptop. I wonder whether the XG would work then?

 

The XG should be plug and play on my S96J, which has an ExpressCard slot. All ExpressCard slots are PCIe x1 regardless of form factor. The consensus is that this memory bandwidth limitation will not significantly hamper performance on the Asus XG. We'll see in April.

 

I agree. We will just have to wait and see. The technology industry would have you believe that x16 and x1 pci-x are completely different animals, and that x16 is an amazing difference (Marketing Ploy). I believe it to be somewhat like AGP 4x was to 8x, there really wasn't that significant of a difference. From benchmarks that are available online, it appears as though 16x vs 1x will lose around 15% - 5% in gaming benchmarks (real world application, not synthetic crap like 3dmark). I believe Asus would not be putting the marketing and development into a product like this w/o it making significant improvements. Again, these comments and above are theory until the product can be tested. I, for one, am very interested and would love to use this for PC gaming on a HDTV. =)

-Josh

 

Yeah, I think the main purpose of this would be that it would make it more feasible to actually use a laptop with a limited GPU as your "desktop" machine, while still letting you take it with you (for non-gaming tasks, etc.).

I recall one of these articles about the XG Station said Asus was already working on some revision of it that would allow the XG Station to actually use your laptop's monitor, so it could allow for a somewhat more portable "gaming" solution.