Thinkpads Forum

I have been checking into an Advanced Dock for better graphics performance my T400 (when it get here), but I have a couple of questions.

1.) Is an external monitor needed? I am checking into one of these as well, but it is not "at the top" of my growing list of upgrades.

2.) What is the best card that will work with no physical modifications to the dock? I am currently looking at an ATI Radeon HD 4650 that I have seen others have used successfully. Is there another better card that you can recommend?

3.) Finally, will I need a different power adapter other than the 90w adapter supplied with my T400?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Just realized the Advanced Dock has an internal PSU, no power adapter needed.

1. The external monitor is not a requisite.
2. I think it's only a 1x lane, so performance won't be great. It's also a half height or something.
3. Not sure; the Advanced Mini Dock just gets plugged in like the ThinkPad.

Thanks. Any ideas as far as what card to use? If I can't squeeze a good enough one in I hink it's pointless, but I thought it would be worth a shot.

Also, an external monitor is not needed? I was thinking that it was, but it must be some sort of pass-through?

theres a half height radeon 5xxx out there.
also an Nvidia gts 450 exists in half-height.


either of them will saturate a 1x bus and might be rendered slower than advertised.

blackomegax wrote:theres a half height radeon 5xxx out there.
also an Nvidia gts 450 exists in half-height.

Internal PSU in Adv. dock can't supply more than ~53W to PCIe slot.
So, no GTS450 for sure.
Only cards without additional power connector.

ATI5670, ATI 6570, Nvidia GT430
And you need a card with 1Gb memory or more to partially compensate 1x bandwidth.
I think ATI HD6570 with 2Gb GDDR3 will be the best for today.

Thanks, the 6570 are pretty easy to find. Something like this with 2GB of memory seems pretty good, and not a bad price.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sapphire-2048Mb-A ... 407wt_1139

That is by far the best card in those power reqs.

hunterman223 wrote:Also, an external monitor is not needed? I was thinking that it was, but it must be some sort of pass-through?

I would imagine you would have to use an external monitor for the external video card. Where and how would you output video from it otherwise?

Whoops; misread your question. I think the external monitor is required as the connector comes out of the card.

an nvidia 500 series will, in theory, pipe the framebuffer back, if you can hack optimus support. (certain vid-docks do optimus over 1x pci-e, so its possible)

Yes, that's what I was thinking. I jus wondered I there was something similar to optimus to output to the LCD, but maybe not. I was looking into a DIY vidock as it is possible that way, but it's a rather messy solution, and I would like the dock functions anyways.

How do I know if optimus will be possible before I commit? I would hate to have it not work after getting all the stuff to do it.


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which would be better, 6570 2gb gddr3 or 6570 512mb gddr5?
is the ram size important or the bandwidth?