Thinkpads Forum

I have done a search and read quite a but on it but I was wondering if someone could give me a direct answer to my question. If I put a High Powered gaming video card in the advanced dock will it perform them same as if it were in a desktop? (asuming it fits in the dock.)

I was thinking about going with the 7800GTX or the 7600GS (to save some $$$) But want to know if they will make a big enough difference to justify the money. I have read some benchmarks but I really have no Idea what that means in real-world performance. Basically will one of these cards in an advanced dock allow my T60p to run FPS games such as doom3/half life-2/fear with good frame rates on high settings? TIA for any help!

HockeyZ39 wrote:If I put a High Powered gaming video card in the advanced dock will it perform them same as if it were in a desktop?

The direct answer is "No."

High-powered cards will not perform at full speed because they will be running on a PCI-Express x1 bus. The GPU will of course be running at full speed, but memory transfers (textures, draw commands, etc) will be transfer slower. How much slower? I benchmarked the 7600GS and 7800GTX cards in another thread (http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=22358). Check that out to get some performance numbers.

I read that thread, I missed the part about it only being x1..... That is very dissapointing. Is there really a real world difference between the performance of the V5200 and the 7600gs through x1 PCI? I read the bench marks and they don't look that much better.