News Netstor's external PCIe caddy for notebooks

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/05/11/netstor-external-pcie-caddy-for-notebooks/1

 

What is the bandwith like across the ExpressCard slot? is it comparable to a full fat 16*pci-e 2.0?

 

It's comparable to an x1 slot, if I remember right.

 

Don't see any potential for this tbh, at least for people hoping to game.

First you're limited by bandwidth, PCI-E 1x. Then you're limited to 80 watts of power, then by size of the case. All of this for more money than a supported graphics card would cost! It makes no sense.

However it could be used for specialised cards, proffessional sound cards or TV etc...

 

They aren't the first ones to try it. As a solution for gaming on a laptop with integrated graphics - it's a lot of money for very little benefit, the expresscard slot is a serious bottleneck to any potential performance.
That being said there are other applications where it could prove quite useful.

 

It'll be interesting to see this product reaching the consumer market, as I remember that this was one of the supposed benefits of PCIe that was described when the technology came out: A PCIe docking station that can increase the connectivity and performance of a notebook.
However, this approach comes a bit too late IMAO, as the bandwidth need is a lot greater nowadays than it was when PCIe was launched and therefore the ExpressCard connection is quite limited.

 

Only crap, 400$??? and it can't support high range cards like 5870??
Lets say i want to buy a laptop for 800$, it will have a medium range graphic card in it, so why spend more 400$ for one of these things, plus the price of the card itself, lets say 350$ for a medium high card.
400+350+800=1550$.
With 1550$ i can afford a good laptop with a good graphics capability, a good usage for this is in Netbooks because of its lack of graphics power.
And if this one costs 400$ imagine how many $ they will charge for the 3 slots with more watts on it.

 

3 more PCI-e slots hmmm.....
More space for folding GPUs!!

 

Doomed to fail, just like the Asus XG which never made the light of day.

 

Waste of money, would rather spend the money on a better laptop

 

x1 Bandwidth might sound limited, but it's more than enough to get roughly 80% of the performance of most cards.

Sheesh, you people sure need to read more (it has been covered) instead of spreading false-truths.

 

This is very much the same concept - it's interesting to read some of the limitations that were inherant in the device at the time - and probably still would be.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vidock-expresscard-graphics,1933-2.html

It's important to stress however, that this item is not just aimed at allowing you to use external graphics cards like the link above, as its benefits to run graphically intensive games would be very limited indeed.
You'd be better off just buying a laptop with a decent graphics card to begin with.

 

As a proposition to gamers, useless - ignoring the obvious limitations, for £267 you're not far off being able to buy a desktop PC (minus the GPU) for gaming, and keep the laptop for other tasks. Or take the cost of the caddy and the GPU and add £400 to your laptop buying power to get something with a competent discrete GPU.

For specialist needs like the TV feed processing cited, much more interesting!

 

Do you have a source for this as I have read numerous different articles on pci-e bandwidth limitation but none of them have really looked in depth at the difference speeds across a broad spectrum of cards (the last one I read was GTX295 being bottlenecked massively once the slot dropped to 4x or below.

Not exactly what I was after but backs up what I have seen before:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/7.html

I assume the drop will still be quite severe on even something like a hd5670 just not as bad as your are seeing on the HD5870.

 

Desktop based gaming at home and unplugged a more fuel efficient and portable lappy. Nice idea at least.

 

So, $400 for a external case with a mechanical x16 but electrical x1 slot? Ho hum. Add in the videocard, and you lose the perception of value. It's cheaper to sell your existing card, and just buy a new laptop.

 

It's a great idea but with huge bootlenecks.
If they get the price at around $100-150 and find a way to bypass the ExpressCard bandwidth limitation I would totally buy it.
Is there any planned review of ExpressCard that allows x16 PCI-E?

 

being someone who is very interested in pro audio equipment this looks like a pretty good product, as it will allow a studiograde interface with a lot of inputs be connected to a laptop (usb and firewire can only handle around 16in/4out) i wonder if this could allow you to run pro tools hd by using it to connect a required hdcore card?

what are the dimensions for cards that will fit into this?

 

I did look that up

Looks like the next standard (expresscard 2.0) uses USB 3.0 and as far as i can work out, PCIe 2.0 (nowhere mentions lanes, so i'd assume PCIe v2.0 1x which is roughly equal in speed to PCIe v1.0 2x)

 

So wait are you hooking up a monitor to the box or still using the laptop screen, I might have over read that part if it was answered or not?