is 3D performance improved by pci video card in dock II

[jdog]

Hi. I just got a t43 with the x300 graphics card. I already have a high end desktop system with a high end graphics card, so please don't suggest that for gaming

I know people use the dock II with a pci video card for multi monitor support. Has anyone tried a 256mb ATI 9250 PCI card in the dock II and used it for 3d gaming? If so, does it give any substantial improvement over the x300, or does the dock/pci interface sap performance enough to not make it worth using over the straight up x300.

Thanks!

[jdog]

basically what I'm asking is this: will a PCI video card in the PCI slot of the Dock II give the same performance as it would in the PCI slot of a desktop machine.

If that is the case, then I can go off of the reviews of the video card I want to buy.

[Inky]

I don't know the answer to your question, but keep in mind that the Dock II doesn't accept FULL size PCI cards. It accepts a "half-size" PCI card. I don't know if that means half-height or half-length, but in any case you may want to confirm that it will fit before you buy the card.

-Inky

[leo221]

I don't know the answer to your question, but keep in mind that the Dock II doesn't accept FULL size PCI cards. It accepts a "half-size" PCI card. I don't know if that means half-height or half-length, but in any case you may want to confirm that it will fit before you buy the card.

-Inky

low profile PCI.

I doubt any pci card will be faster than x300

[K. Eng]

The 9250 is an RV250 core (DX8 class hardware) and the X300 is an RV350 derived core (DX9 class hardware). The X300 will typically be faster in Direct X games. There may be a few situations where the extra RAM in the 9250 would help, but overall I think it would be slower.

[HamTard]

now if Lenovo releases a new Dock in the future, that has a PCI-E x16 slot, that would allow people to add mobile video cards to enhance T series performance. that would be nice.

[jdog]

thanks for the replies. So there's no one out there that has actually tried this?

[Inky]

As I thought about it some more, I began to wonder what's the point? The point of gaming on a laptop is so you can take it with you, isn't it? But who carries a dockII around with them? Typically the dock stays put at a desk, where you might presumably have a desktop monitor also.

So, if you're going to stick a high powered graphics card in the Dock, and output the signal to a nice big external monitor, at that stage you might as well do the gaming on a desktop (tower) system with a high powered graphics card. No? What am I overlooking here?

-Inky

[pphilipko]

As I thought about it some more, I began to wonder what's the point? The point of gaming on a laptop is so you can take it with you, isn't it? But who carries a dockII around with them? Typically the dock stays put at a desk, where you might presumably have a desktop monitor also.

So, if you're going to stick a high powered graphics card in the Dock, and output the signal to a nice big external monitor, at that stage you might as well do the gaming on a desktop (tower) system with a high powered graphics card. No? What am I overlooking here?

-Inky

I guess some people just want to have laptops, not two separate rigs.

[RonS]

I have a T42p with an ATI 9250 in a Dock II.

All applications run slower on the 9250. For example, if I run Google Earth on the internal 9600, it's smooth and fast. Move the window on to the 9250's screen, and it's slow-herky-jerky. My guess is the 9250's PCI bus interface is much slower than the internal AGP4.

If I had a 9600 card to put in the dock, I would know for sure, but I don't. I specifically picked a non-9600 card because I was afriad of mixing the mobile version of the internal 9600 with a non-mobile version, causing potential driver confusion. Since XP's PNP identifies the two adapters as being different, I can be assured that the correct driver is being used.

[gcchatel]

I don't know much about the half size pci architecture and have been trying to figure out which version of the pci architecture it runs on. The bottom line is that it won't be faster than current pci cards (not pci express cards) and those don't compare with the speed of the AGP 4x that is in your thinkpad.

If anyone can include a link to the half size or low profile pci benchmarks, I would be interested.

On another note, Jdog, the card your listed will not fit the slot, that is a regular pci card and will not fit the half sized slot. I would be surprized if there are 256MB cards for the half size pci architecture, I'm guessing this would be overkill since the bandwidth should be quite low. You also can't compare it to the x300 which runs on the new pci express x16 architecture which blows away any type of previous pci architecture.

[bhtooefr]

Half size PCI is the exact same version of PCI as full size PCI - same slot connector, even. The only difference is that the cards can only be half the height of regular PCI.