Heres a link to a newish device called a ViDock 2 on youtube. Basically its the idea of using all those juicy old video cards (or new ones of course if youre loaded) to power your Laptop instead of using a desktop PC. the youtube title says: (video)"Shows a Lenovo T400 playing Crysis using onboard graphics and then the newly released ViDock 2 which utilizes a standard desktop ATI 4670 graphics card" Now obviously we all would love to plug a standard graphics card into the back of our laptops and suddenly be able to play all the graphically intensive games but theres obvious problems to overcome, and they dont appear to have overcome many of them yet. Power has to come from somewhere and this appears to use its own supply, not to draw it from the laptop itself which means you need a plug!. It obviously would kill a li-ion battery pretty quick so i cant see them getting around it can you?. The video shows the laptop running crysis and running quite fast but its outputing to a Monitor and not on the laptops LCD and of course we would want to use the laptops LCD, we dont want to have to use separate screens like the video for the obvious reasons (i.e we dont want to have to buy one! or move one around hehe) It seems (according to the comments that ATi are working on displaying to the LCD of the laptop, at least i think thats what they meant. (Its hard to follow the endless questions and replies in there) the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCK5dLWiO2Q cool bit of kit if a little expensive. Im hoping , (like most people im guessing) that i can eventually use my current GF9800GTX or older GF7800GT from my desktops (with a device like this) to run games and video etc on my laptop and then i can forget the old ATi X1600 it uses. If the ViDock can be bought for a reasonable price it would allow me to use my laptop for a lot longer and so it would save me money, plus im not leaving perfectly good graphics cards to gather dust like i do now. what do you think? yay or nay? Hazed100 Even
Apparently, they are only x1 PCI-E because of the limitations of the ExpressCard slot. Frankly.. that's an auto-fail IMO. >_< You can't run a decent card on anything less than an x8 slot... seriously, try a 6800 upwards on an x4 PCI-E..
I'm pretty sure they run at ~x4 in PCI-e mode, with 2.5Gbit/s bandwidth. That should be enough for the likes of a 4670, which would be a massive upgrade from anything a laptop has (especially Intel integrated graphics). It's still horrendously expensive though, and its lack of portability means it's pointless using it with a laptop anyway - why wouldn't you just get a desktop?
Personally, I think laptop gaming is a futile exercise anyway.. Unless you accept that you'll only play games that are around 5+ years old on a brand-new laptop (that doesn't cost half a years wages!) As for x4 PCI-E, it's a no-go for high-end GFX for sure.. I have a 6800GT that was previously in a P4 board and it was chunky.. to say the least.
Why all the negativity? Imagine having your nice little Thinkpad x301 ultraportable (assuming is has an expresscard slot) getting home and plugging onto your lovely big screen and (more) powerful graphics card! It sounds good to me but this idea has been around at least since expresscard was first announced and nothing has yet come of it. edit: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2007/01/09/ASUS_unveils_external_notebook_GPU/1
I played the NFS Shift demo on mine when I was on holiday. Very smooth. Flatout Carnage plays really well on it, too at native res (1440x900). It's not the latest laptop, either. It runs a 8600M GT with a 2ghz C2D.
i see this being very useful for work, would love to throw a Quadro in one, would make my desk very tidy! Thats what i want! but requires the use of a PCI-E slot still, kinda like an external GTX295 sandwhich! lol!
Youre dead right Cupboard, people do tend to judge hardware on their own individual needs often writing off a product that is almost essential to someone else. If this device becomes more economical it will be a sensation for all those people who dont buy a new laptop every couple of years. Like me, I bought a laptop in 2006 (ASUS A6Ja, dual core T2300 1.6GHz + ATi X1600 256MB) It still fullfills the roles i intended it for apart from the gamiing side of things I can still play games on it, and you'd probably be surprised how well it can handle some games (of course detail is down) but it cant tackle the bigger more intensive games, not that Id want to play them on a tiny 15.4" screen! It certainly performs perfectly well in other areas such as linking to my Living room HTPC and streaming movies etc, going on the internet and downloading stuff even. I use my HTPC for gaming and i update Graphics cards every year or so and I still have them here being wasted gathering dust. If I could plug my last card into my laptop AND still use the laptop screen (in my bedroom) it would be worth it to me to buy this device, but as it stands its too expensive and outputs to a monitor which I wouldnt have. I still think its a superb step in the right direction for someone though (someone loaded!! ) anyhow im glad you saw it, seems most have already but its always good to inform a few Im hoping this device spurs others to produce better versions.
