Topic Asus XG Station : World's First External Laptop Graphics Card

-HAL-

http://no.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=5392

This one looks really promising!
ASUS is talking about a 9x increase in speed compared to the Intel 945GM graphics that's standard in many Notebooks, but it should also outperform
most/all(?) gaming notebooks with "hotter" graphics cards as well.

The extra features looks really nice as well:

XG Station is designed with ease of use in mind. A large LED screen is adopted to provide clear display of critical system status statistics including the following

• System master volume
• GPU clock speed
• Current GPU temperature
• Dolby® Headphone feature status
• Current actual Frames Per Second (FPS) information
• GPU fan speed Indicator

The price isn't set yet, but rumors says that it will cost around $300-$350 here in Europe, so it's much much cheaper to upgrade just this one than to buy a new gaming notebook every year anyway..

mmarsh

Damn you -HAL- you beat me to it.

I saw this on CNET's CES expo, this looks really cool (assuming it works as advertised) it will make notebook gaming a viable solution. I simply cannot believe nobody though of this until now. This is my favorite of the show so far.

My only question is what graphic chipset are they using Nvidia? ATI? or something new?

Still its a sweet deal. Your gaming notebook costs $2000. A average laptop $800. You add $350 thats $1150 your still ahead. Plus you can reuse it should you decide to get a new computer.

-HAL-

I believe it comes with an ASUS EN7900GS, so it's Nvidia :
http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l...&modelme nu=1


So if I buy one of these and use it on my notebook it will probably run in circles around my stationary PC that uses a Sapphire Radeon X800XL now..

mmarsh

Thats not too bad, its not the fastest but its recent enough. My only criticism it that it its BIG and it look awkward for a plane or train. It also must use quite a bit of juice, I glad it has its own PSU, I'd hate to run that thing from the battery.