External Video Cards?

The USB architecture might be able to handle a theoretical 480Mb/s, but the USB to host bus will run at 133Mhz, Thats it. PCI-E x16 blows that out of the water any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Now, if your laptop has crappy graphics, I hate to dissapoint, but your screwed.

There are plans for external video cards, however they will be based on an entireley new connection based on PCI Express.

As for using a PC-Card as a video card, it would be worthless. the PCMCIA slot and bus are deprecated and slow. There is a new super-duper-ultra-propreitary-buzzworded type of PC-Card going on, but I know little about it other than there is nothing that really supports it yet, and it will probably suck just as much as the PCMCIA does.

If you guys want a laptop that is going to replace the top teir of gaming rigs, you might as well be cryogenically frozen and thawed in 10 years. Because we ain't there yet. Just because they call them "desktop replacement" laptops doesn't mean they will replace the bleeding-edge decent user workstation. They will probably be good to replace your normal $600 flea-market dell desktop.

super-duper-ultra-propreitary-buzzworded type of PC-Card

dell's m90 which is a workstation (and highly competent one at that) replacement
dell's m1710 gaming dtr
alienwares 19" gaming dtr

phear my url text :ninja:

now, i didnt make any argument that the price for one of these laptops would be able to achieve enough cost-effeciency to compete with a desktop. the 4 ig ram upgrades on the two dells cost as much as one fully equipped desktop.

I am sure those laptops will perform well, but then you have to look at price, heat and size.

4Gb is overrated. I have 4gb in all my work desktops, but I've had 64bit vista on them and they still only reading 3.25 - 3.50GB. Server 2003 R2 64bit reads a full 4GB. Regular 2003 Server I can get to read 3.81Gb on my Poweredge 2850's.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... &CatId=165
closest thing to an external video card you will find.

Necroposts!

Anwhoo, I believe the original thread was based on gaming for laptops. No way an $80 USB 2.0 VGA adapter could do any real damage on a good game.

I recently saw a few Dell gaming laptops and they look good for your run of the mill games. But a desktop would be the choice for a hardcore gamer. Those gaming laptps would be good for your normal college kid who plays some gaes instead of doing their calculus homework.

well, if its being posted in, asus is going to release a new peripheral which is essentially an expresscard shell for a pci-e video card and is touted as an actual "external video card"

http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=5369

i found this link online hope this helps http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/28/ati- ... ideo-card/

If you have an express port on your laptop and run win 7 or an Ati video card you can expand to 3 more monitors.

Solution is a Vidock 2 check out the specs @ villagetronic