ASUS XG Station

[Deckard]

This sounds great.

Notebook gamers rejoice! ASUS today announced a first-of-its-kind device that allows PCI-Express graphic cards from a desktop computer to be used with a notebook.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128401/article.html

Price is expected to be around $600. OK, it's not cheap, but I still think that it's a great investment. Only Nvidia's 8800-Series won't fit, so what?

Oh, it connects into the ExpressCard slot.

[thibouille27]

Compatible with an X60 ?

[Deckard]

Sorry, I haven't checked to see if the X60 has an ExpressCard slot or not. If it does, then you can use it.

[jeffm]

Wow - that's more than twice the cost of an advanced dock. I think I'd rather have the dock, but if you need a graphics card that the dock doesn't support, this might be a good option.

[Troels]

I was very keen on buying the XG station when it comes out until someone told me:

1. Firstly it's pricy of course
2. You'll NEED an external LCD.
3. The bandwidth of PCI-E 1x which is the speed ExpressCard slot runs at is really cruddy.

So when you need to sit at home, why not use a desktop PC instead that scales with the upgrades?
But innovation is still a great thing...

[Deckard]

I think this will be a general question regarding the PCI system bus structure of the current Thinkpads.

Looking at the specs of Asus' XG Station, it looks like the bottleneck is system bus of the laptop. (PCI Express x1 lane)

Do Thinkpads have only PCI Express x1 by default?

Is x1 the only available lane speed among the manufacturers?

[Troels]

Currently, nothing better than PCI-E 1x is available This might change in the future, but i wouldn't wonder if the interface will be re-designed again...
PCI-E 16x has a good deal more pins unfortunately.