Asus launches External Graphics Card for Laptop
January 7th, 2007 at 20:48 under Articles, News.Finally! I have had this idea in my head for years, why don’t laptops have external video cards? Apparently someone else at Asus had the same idea and managed to get this idea to market. Today Asus unveiled their new XG Station external laptop video card featuring a 7900GS. While this surely isn’t meant to compete against a 7900GTX or 8800GTX, this is a step in the right direction as the 7900GS will trounce the standard GMA900 and GMA950 that most laptops ship with these days. For those people that no longer have desktops this little piece of hardware offers them the ability to have a great gaming platform that is also mobile and lightweight.
The XG Station plugs right into the ExpressCard slot that a good number of laptops feature and provides full-on 3D acceleration in a simple self-powered unit. Asus is targeting this setup for users that already use an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse at their desk, simply put this unit between your monitor and laptop and you instantly gain a huge increase in 3D performance. The XG Station does require an external monitor as it won’t drive the native LCDs within laptops but this shouldn’t be an issue as most computer users own atleast 1 LCD monitor. I love this idea and while it is no direct replacement for a dedicated desktop it does give laptop users the option to play some modern games at decent frame rates. Now the question of the day is will the XG Station cost an arm and a leg?
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January 8th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
The way I see it, this is one of those “duh, why didn’t anyone else think of this, it’s so useful” kind of things. If they were to, say, do this with an 8800GTX, then I would be buying a MacBook and one of those. Maybe even a MacBook Pro.
January 8th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
I agree, wish I could market all the ideas I have floating around in my head, I’d be a trillionaire or something. I don’t know if we’ll see such highpowered cards right now as I believe the ExpressCard slot is limited to a PCIe 1x connection which would completely choke an 8800GTX but give it time and I’m sure you’ll be able to get a 9800GTX/x2900XTX in a couple months that’ll plug right into your laptop.
February 7th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Hey, iv been looking for a good graphics update for my laptop for a while, can anyone recomend somewhere that i can browse through some graphics cards designed for laptops.
Thanks in advance.
April 3rd, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Am I the only one disapointed that you need to have another monitor for this?? All I hear is accolades for this while it is little more than a marketing scheme. It is definately useful for people with only a laptop but it doesn’t help me play battlefield during philosophy class. I think in the future laptop screens will have multiple inputs, including HDMI etc., so that this kind of technology will actually be useful.
November 9th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Hi, i agree with Mike. They shouldn’t design it in such a way that an external monitor must be used. This will hinder mobility and defeat the purpose of the laptop. Laptops are suppose to be mobile, not stuck together with a monitor when gaming.
January 10th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Thirded on mike, I wouldn’t mind throwing this in my laptop bag when I want to game a bit, I do not, however want to throw an lcd monitor in there what’s the technical reasoning for this? would it be that hard to make it work?
January 11th, 2008 at 4:38 am
Well current laptop video ports only output a signal so the difficulty would lie in physically getting the signal onto the laptop without using software and a USB/Firewire connection. A purposefully built laptop to support such a device work work just fine though and we might just see exactly this in the near future.
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Where the hell is it? I need to buy one and those f balls at Asus, with thier slowass webserver, haven’t posted it yet.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Sadly since the product announcement I haven’t heard much about this product. I know there’s a demand for it and I’m sure Asus does as well, but so far nothing.
January 29th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
My plan is to assemble a hacking/modding team that will figure out how to use this device on a native built-in LCD laptop screen when it comes out.
Please email goredsox326@gmail.com or add me, airsoft326, on youtube if you want to help me crack this thing.
February 8th, 2008 at 8:51 am
whr can i buy the Asustek External Graphics Card please help thank u
February 8th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Unfortunately it sounds like this was simply a prototype idea and we won’t be seeing results of this concept for a while. When it does hit the market it’ll make a big bang as there are lots of consumers that want such a device.
May 4th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
we need an external LCD for my laptop to use this XG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
means I can’t play games in the library……………..
is it too heavy to carry in my laptop bag???????
It will be better for me if I can use my laptop LCD rather than the external one.
June 8th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
[…] little over 1.5 years ago I wrote about Asus launching an external graphics card for laptop consumers. Remotely locating the hot and power hungry GPU to a desktop located […]