External USB or PCI slot video cards?

[Ken C.]

My laptop is at the limit when it comes to its video RAM (64MB) and there is no ption as of yet for a 128MB card upgrade. What are the possibilities that an external video card could be made either in USB or to slide into the PCI card slot? Shouldn't be to hard to manufacture and configure seeing as most external sound cards are USB or PCI. What do you all think? It might be a great thing for those of us who are restricted in the video card size on their laptops.

 

[bhyde]

Is this perhaps what you are looking for? Not sure if it has enuff ummf in it for ya though...On second thought, I know it is probably worse than what you have....I don't think the USB bus is fast enuff for what you want to do ..Will be nice when PCI express are at the point when you can change them out in laptops. I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 that has an NVIDIA Go 6800 256mb card in it....I am 99% sure the card isn't integrated onto the motherboard as most are.....But, I can be wrong...




Check out this link....

 

[Ryan8]

An external USB video card is never going to happen. USB just doesn't have the bandwidth. In fact PCI doesn't have the bandwidth for the current generation of video cards.

Large amounts of data have to travel to and from the video card at a very fast rate. You'd have a major bottleneck there.

USB 2.0 is 480 megabits / sec (60 megabytes / sec)

AGP 8x is 2.1 gigabytes / sec.

 

[Temper]

Ken, I just dont understand why you are tying both hands by insisting on a Laptop for gaming. Gaming makes a lot of heat. Laptops dont deal with it well.

Get a desktop and a water cooling system. This will run you less than half the cost of a decent Laptop and out perform it at least 2:1. You can then keep the laptop for mobile needs and sync it if necessary with either a cable or IR. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

 

[Ken C.]

Portability. I very well can't lug a full blown desktop gaming system to the firehouse now can I? There are laptops out there that are designed for gaming and run very well without the heat issue. I'm just looking for an alternative until I can get the scratch up for a new custom built VooDoo Envy.

 

[rebeltf]

I doubt what you want would ever happen Ken.
Most folks who game on a PC do so on a PC. My laptop would be a PITA to play games on comfortably.
You do have an option though , depending on what game your interested in playing you can try tuning down the video options until the game runs smoother.
What game are you trying to play ? I'm still using an old Geforce MX 440 and I played Doom3 all the way thru , HL2 ran fine , both of those games are pretty graphically demanding , mind you I had to toy with the in-game video options a bit , but after that it was fine.
Also make sure to update your cards drivers if you havent allready.

 

[Ken C.]

Every game that I have played so far has worked fine. Call Of Duty and COD: UO run fine. I have no problem with running and playing games on a laptop considering the processor and card I have now. It's actually better than my wife's desktop. I have no problem with heat. I was just curious as to whether of not it could be done.

 

[Temper]

Portability. I very well can't lug a full blown desktop gaming system to the firehouse now can I?

Leave it there then, simple.

 

[Ken C.]

Leave it there then, simple.

You would think so but it's not. We are allowed to have laptops but not a desktop. Besides I wouldn't leave it at the firehouse because some people can't keep there hands off of what's not theirs.

 

[gajinoz]

Portability. I very well can't lug a full blown desktop gaming system to the firehouse now can I? There are laptops out there that are designed for gaming and run very well without the heat issue. I'm just looking for an alternative until I can get the scratch up for a new custom built VooDoo Envy.

C'mon Ken, how much grunt do you need to play solitaire?