News Netstor's external PCIe caddy for notebooks

This would work - assuming the graphics card really will knock down to a single lane slot - in any situation where you're banging the GPU hard in terms of arithmetic, but not actually communicating with it that much. This would be the case in certain very specific graphics scenarios where you're doing a huge amount of texture passes and layering and fragment programs, but much more so when you're doing GPGPU work where you're asking a relatively simple question and receiving a relatively simple answer but doing a lot of number crunching inbetween.

Someone should benchmark it doing the little-green-men search or something, and see if this assumption holds true.

 

400 bucks? HAH! You can get a simple adapter for like 40 or 80 bucks:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...7667-lets-figure-out-how-make-diy-vidock.html

What I'd use one for: one of those nice Asus Xonar PCIe sound cards.

 

and why didnt they just use USB 3 or eSATA as the connector?

 

Umm... you ever try connecting a video card to a SATA connector? That makes about as much sense as plugging your toaster into a garden hose.

 

With all the similar devices I've seen they require an external monitor.

 

Get a desktop...

 

The issue is that we're limited to a very weak PSU, and single slot.

Most cards that can fit inside the requirements won't be that stressed like the 5870 for bandwidth.

This : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-scaling-analysis,1572-8.html would probably be more accurate. Of course this is not really applicable - it's ancient and upgrades in drivers (and cards) should be increasing performance.

 

Well considering that DIY enthusiasts have been able to construct a version of this for less than $50 as talked about here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...7667-lets-figure-out-how-make-diy-vidock.html

...and that the Village Tronic ViDock
http://www.villagetronic.com/vidock2/index.html

as an empty box goes for 249 EUR
http://www.macland.de/26+M5f6b78126a6.html?&tx_ttproducts_pi1[backPID]=16&tx_ttproducts_pi1[product]=707782&tx_ttproducts_pi1[sword]=vidock

The Nestor is clearly overpriced and way under-spec.

If the Village ViDock can be made by a manufacturer I have never heard of and appear for all intents and purposes make a potentially decent product, at least on paper, then how come nobody else has / can? Surely big manufacturers like Intel, Asus, MSI and others could achieve this with relative ease given their larger R&D budgets and teams of engineers?

 

not a chace in hell for $400, gamers arn't waiting in agony for a solution like thsi to come along, they have no hope of success for that price on their low end product. for that much money you could get a laptop with a decent card istalled. my mom just got a new dell studio that has a 1gb 5650 (i think, maybe even higher end) for less the $2k. if they can co-op with a laptop manufacturer to create a higher-bandwidth external conector and loweed the price a ways, this could be a real winner, but no one will sped that much money for severely limited peformace, only to realize theat they still have to deal with gaming on a laptops iterface, which is far from comfertable.

 

this is really funny because ASUS mad something VERY VERY similar called the XG station back in 2007.

it was said to revolutionise laptop gaming but after Asus's initial announcement & presentation at cebit2007 the XG station dissapeard off the face of the earth & for a MAJORITY of us who were waiting for the XG stations release - it never happend. however. according to wiki XG station did make it to release but it was only released in Australia.in 2008 but it was pulled out mid 2009 & discontinued....

So Netstor arent the first people to try something like this.

-----
Refernces:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XG_Station

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ces-asus-xg-station,4679.html

http://blog.laptopmag.com/asus-xg-station-rises-from-the-dead

(the rest you can google for if your still interested)

There is not much info reguarding the XG station. only just news announcements & 'previews' of the product

but its suprising that Asus put so much PR spin on it, got the world talking about it, then banished it to a corner of the hemisphere where people still use horses as the main form of transport (of course im being sarcastic here) its amazing that the product lasted a year before being pulled.

IMO if Asus had released it to the world & not just Australia - we might have been seeing XG station V3 or V4 right now & not these cowboys claiming how they are the first to come up with the idea.

 

*mad = had