Asus XG external graphics card station

[demonsfall]

Hey has anyone heard about this the Asus external gpu station, to start with comes with a 7900GS but versions after that will take any card including 8800GTS/X. Only problem with the first version is that you have to plug it into a LCD monitor and cannot use the laptops screen, but that will change with newer versions. check it out what you guys think about it. http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=5369

[dinos22]

it's been mentioned many times before

the BIG problem there is that the graphics cards will run at 1x PCI Express which is just not enough for those cards to run properly

lower end maybe but high end cards will take a performance hit until they figure it out properly

[HeXa]

why only 1x ? a limitation specific to this unlaunched product that is vague about it's actual specs?

the external PCI-E interface supports up to 16x

EDIT: oh.. I see... uses a ExpressCard interface rather than an actual socket... oh well... always hope for the future that someone gets this right With rumour of ATI and nVidia considering external graphics cards, perhaps next generation.

[dinos22]

Originally Posted by HeXa

why only 1x ? a limitation specific to this unlaunched product that is vague about it's actual specs?

the external PCI-E interface supports up to 16x

EDIT: oh.. I see... uses a ExpressCard interface rather than an actual socket... oh well... always hope for the future that someone gets this right With rumour of ATI and nVidia considering external graphics cards, perhaps next generation.

i think you ended up figuring it out yourself there

[demonsfall]

Yes at first it will only run at 1x but by the end of the year it will be running at full speed and you will also be able to use ur notebook screen instead of a seperate screen.

[dinos22]

i am pretty sure that Express card slots on laptops only run on 1x so i don't know whether it is only Asus that needs to change their hardware to make they run at full speed

[SezaGeoff]

Originally Posted by dinos22

i am pretty sure that Express card slots on laptops only run on 1x so i don't know whether it is only Asus that needs to change their hardware to make they run at full speed

Very true - ExpressCard standard

Full speed USB 2, but only PCI-E x1

[SLATYE]

Originally Posted by demonsfall

Yes at first it will only run at 1x but by the end of the year it will be running at full speed and you will also be able to use ur notebook screen instead of a seperate screen.

Good luck with that. Asus don't seem to say anything about future plans, so I'd have to suggest that this is "wishful thinking".

Problems:

(1) No matter how much bandwidth you've got, the external solution will still have a much higher latency than an internal one - and you can't do anything about that (it's limited by the speed of light).

(2) Getting more bandwidth isn't just a matter of making the external box better. ExpressCard slots in laptops cannot provide more than PCIe 1x bandwidth. Even if the box can handle 10,000,000,000TB/s bandwidth, the laptop will still only be providing 250MB/s at most (and upgrading the laptop is impossible).

(3) Laptop chipsets don't have support for PCIe 16x in general. They have support for a few PCIe 1x lanes (for things like the network card and ExpressCard slots). You can't just add PCIe 16x support to a laptop where the chipset doesn't support it. The laptops which do have PCIe 16x support have it because they've already got a dedicated video card - and that makes the external video card useless.

(4) Displaying information on a laptop screen is very hard. You'd need an external input to the screen, as well as all the extra hardware to convert VGA/DVI into something the LCD understands (since they don't need fancy formats inside the laptop). An alternative is a capture card, but that takes even more bandwidth - and a capture card which can handle 1280x800 will eat CPU time. Even then, what's the point of displaying on the laptop's screen? The box needs a lot more power than any laptop battery can handle, so it'll have to be plugged in.

(5) All of the things above are possible. All of them cost a significant amount of money to implement. This pretty much ensures their failure. Why would Dell pay extra to put PCIe 16x support in their laptops, just so that a tiny proportion of users will be able to use an Asus external box? In reality, even if it costs them a grand total of $1 for each laptop, they'd prefer to save that dollar (since with the quantities they build, it'll soon turn into millions of dollars of profits). If people want a decent video card, Dell would much prefer that they go for the Inspiron 9400 instead.


Asus say that the XG Station with a 7900GS is "up to ten times faster" than integrated graphics (actually, they specifically say nine times quicker than the test laptop's GMA950). Let's assume that they're telling the absolute truth - no exaggeration at all.

A Geforce 6200TC is around four times quicker than GMA950 with a 400Mhz core clock; but laptop GMA950 uses a 200Mhz core clock. Since that'll be the bottleneck in 3D performance, a Geforce 6200TC is likely to perform 6 - 8x as fast as laptop GMA950 - or nearly as fast as the XG Station. A 7900GS which performs like a Geforce 6200TC is not impressive; it'd suggest that buying a laptop with a built-in 7300GS is a far better option than buying a laptop with integrated graphics and adding a 7900GS.

Quite apart from that, the retail price is $600US. That'll translate to around $850AU (everything ends up more expensive here). Add an LCD and it'll be $1100 or so - and for that price you could buy a whole new laptop!

Gigabyte 965P-S3 $154
C2D E4300 $235
1GB DDR2-667 $78
Asus TA881 $55
CM Extreme 430w PSU $55
Geforce 7900GS $229

Total is $806.

For the price of the XG Station with a 7900GS, you can get a decent gaming system - which will perform far better than the laptop would have done with the XG Station and also has far better expansion options. It's not particularly portable, but neither is the XG Station.


Essentially, the XG Station is a gimmick. It's not really a good gaming solution (given the performance that Asus quote). If Asus could fix all the flaws, it'd be great - but all of the flaws really require every laptop manufacturer to spend extra on new models. None of them are going to do that just because a tiny proportion of users want to spend the price of a new laptop to do some gaming.

[demonsfall]

It wasnt wishfull thinking i read it at whatever forum i read it on i belive extremeoverclocking and they supplied a link to the news from some recent IT show. It wont be using the express slot.

[SLATYE]

Well, I'd be happy if it was the case, but I really don't think it'll happen simply because of cost reasons. At the very least, there would need to be a PCIe 16x connection to run the video card and a video input connected directly to the LCD (which appropriate hardware to take a VGA/DVI signal and make it display on the LCD). That's fine in a high-end laptop - but in a high-end laptop there'd already be a perfectly good dedicated video card.

The problem is that laptops which need this (the ones with integrated graphics) are designed to be as cheap as possible - so they won't have connections for a PCIe 16x external card, or even a chipset which can handle that. They also won't have the input to the laptop monitor. The manufacturers won't even consider adding the extra hardware because in reality only a tiny proportion of users would ever bother with it.

Quite apart from that, it still wouldn't be completely portable because there needs to be external power input (try powering a 240w R600 from the laptop battery. You might get as far as the Windows desktop before it goes flat again).

Finally, there's driver issues. Windows is not likely to appreciate it if the video card keeps changing from Intel GMA950 to an ATI or Nvidia card, especially if that happens while it's running.

[dinos22]

Originally Posted by demonsfall

It wasnt wishfull thinking i read it at whatever forum i read it on i belive extremeoverclocking and they supplied a link to the news from some recent IT show. It wont be using the express slot.

PLEASE SUPPLY LINK otherwise i don't know what to think

what could they possibly use otherwise

you would have to buy special build laptops with proprietary interface which won't work man

[demonsfall]

Well im guessing that it will be only Asus laptops, there also going to have a external power cable, there marketing it as a notebook in the day and when you get home its a gaming machine or something like that ill try find the link i found it randomly though ill check it out.

[skinz]

I agree with what has already said about this being a difficult technology to implement on a wide basis, however, I could see some of the major laptop manufacturers like Dell and Asus, having their own versions of these things in order to cope with the demands of high powered video cards like the 8800. At the moment, it doesn't seem there will be an 8800go in a laptop, they will go to 8900s. If you ask me, laptops being 6 months behind in terms of directx 10 isn't all that acceptable.

The problem is the heat output and the power requirements. If Dell could slap a desktop card in one of the external cases hooked up to pcie 16x then they could satisfy laptop gamers, and also be able to claim their laptops were directx 10 capable. Heck they could even put faster cpu's in a 17" laptop with all the extra space, cooling and power left from the video card. Or we could get 15.4" laptops that were high end gaming capable. I for one don't game on the move, I mainly use my laptop for work and gaming at home, or lanning. When I am mobile I just need it for work...

Thoughts? It isn't likely, but it seems like a good idea...

[SLATYE]

Originally Posted by skinz

Thoughts? It isn't likely, but it seems like a good idea...

It'd mean cutting the costs a lot. For the price Asus is aiming to sell them for, you may as well just buy a whole desktop PC to run games on and keep the laptop as a dedicated laptop. Dell would probably prefer that you did that - it means that they don't spend money un-necessarily putting a PCIe 16x slot on millions of laptops. The problem is that they can't really cut costs much, because they're never going to be a super-popular product (which means they can't get mass production cost savings).

There's still the problem of actually getting chipset support. If Intel doesn't want an external PCIe 16x slot, no Centrino laptop will ever be able to use that (because Centrino requires an Intel chipset). It's not just a matter of extending the wires from an internal port (where the normal GPU is connected), because there are well-defined maximum trace lengths before timing becomes an issue.

[beeker]

Originally Posted by SLATYE

Finally, there's driver issues. Windows is not likely to appreciate it if the video card keeps changing from Intel GMA950 to an ATI or Nvidia card, especially if that happens while it's running.

I think it's targeted at a very, very small group of people like me.

People with a relatively powerful but very mobile notebook which does not necessarily have a good video card in it, but wouldn't mind going home and playing a few games at night. Would also prefer not to have a full fledge PC at home either. It means I can keep my monitor and have this card at home, and not have a PC under the desk. All I need to do is plug my notebook in when I get home. I don't want to take the graphics card with me everywhere I go, just the notebook.

As for changing from Intel to Nvidia, I'm already doing it on my notebook, and it all works very well.

It's a good innovation but definitely not for everyone, and definitely not for the avid gamer.