• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

External Graphics Card

Serraph

Serraph

Serraph

Associate
Joined
6 Jan 2009
Posts
216
Location
Norwich - UK
So basically, my housemate wants to be able to play games better on his laptop. I mean, the games we play are not overly taxing, stuff like halo 1 and the original Dawn of War games. He can just about play them, however hwe has to use the lowest settings, and even then it still sometimes lags.

So he asked me if there was any kind of external graphics card he could buy to plug into his laptop. Now I honestly had no idea, so I just did some googling.

Two things that I came across were Asus XG Station, and AMD XGP (external graphics platform). Now both of these seem promising, and the Asus one may have been out as early as 2007, however I cannot for the life of me find anywhere that sells these, or any kind of external graphics card for that matter.

Im not sure if im just not looking hard enough, or just not looking in the right places, buit if anyone could help me out and point me in the right direction then that would be great.
Also, if anyone from Overclockers have heard of anything like this, and maybe if you are in a position to order any in, then that would be great also!

Thanks in advance!
 
There were several about a while back, one was a 79xx external card. Though not seen or heard about one for a while.
 
Ah shame. Surely there is a market for such a device? And in this day and age it cant be to difficult to produce a mainstream option. I mean, there have actually been a few around in the past.

That is dissapointing. Ah well, thanks for the replies guys!

I find it kind of spooky though, the two replies I got were from people in places I live. :P
I used to live near Tunbridge Wells, and actually went to school there, and I am currently living in Norwich, as I go to uni here (UEA).

... what are the chances ... O.o

:P
 
Cloud computing is they way forward for this kind of market, all the processing done server side, then delivered to your laptop via high speed broadband :D
 
Good luck trying to find internal cards too, if you do come across any they will likely be £300 and a couple of genertions behind.
 
What laptop is it? A small percentage can be upgraded - for example I upgraded my Dell XPS Gen 2 from a 6800 Ultra to a 7800 GTX. But this is rare.
 
the fact is laptops arent for gaming, even the £1500 gaming laptops will struggle they cant cool themselves etc and get hot. A laptop is just for business use really. Tell your friend to put a cheap gaming rig desktop pc together.You can do this for under £300 pounds.
 
Last edited:
I remember hearing about the Asus one a few years ago as well; to the best of my knowledge it was only ever released in Asia though.
 
Yeah, he did ask if it could be upgraded at all, and I told him it was unlikely. Thing is, the games we play are really not to demanding, just some old crappy ones we enjoy playing together over the network.

Thing is he doesnt really have the money for a new laptop, or cheap desktop for that matter, us being students and everything, so we were just wondering if there was a cheaper solution to it.

... guess not ...
 
usb2 gfx cards would be total win imo lol. Wow you could even watercool them too! and maybe overclock them slightly
 
Well I believe that Asus XG Station said the large nob on the front is for real time overclocking, so if you're lagging and need a bit more juice then simply turn the nob and clock the gpu higher!

I think it would be a good thing, but looks like there really aren't any out there. Guess we'll have to make do!

Thanks for the replies though guys!
 
Serraph said:
Thing is he doesnt really have the money for a new laptop, or cheap desktop for that matter, us being students and everything, so we were just wondering if there was a cheaper solution to it.

... guess not ...
Click to expand...
Even if the asus station was released...I guess your mate wouldn't of had $600 to buy one ;)
ASUS said it expects to start shipping the XG Station around May for around $600 (possibly including a 3-year warranty) and most likely bundled with an ASUS EN7900GS board (our number 3 ranked graphics card at press time).
Click to expand...
 
As the OP said there is a market for this so why don't they exists?

Would they be significantly limited by the speed of the port (USB/Firewire)?

In the OP's case I'd look at building a new base machine for ~£250 using second hand parts, you could use the display from the laptop to save money.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom