Does anybody know if external graphics have made any leaps forward recently or is it still a dead market?
I have a laptop with a 9600gt in it which is ok but for Arma 2 and the like I am after a box that just plugs into my express-card slot and inside I can put whatever graphics card I want (which will be a Nvidia 295gtx ). This seems totally do-able yet no-one seems to do it.
Are there any products out there like this (or on the horizon?)
The main limitation to this technology is the PC ExpressCard slot. It's bandwidth is limited to PCI-Ex1. Read through this article and see what happens when bandwidth is cut from x16 to x1.
Even if you could use a gtx295, it would severely bottlenecked by your slow processor speed. In fact Im sure it would bottleneck something like a single GTx 260.
If you read the article you would see it would be hugely bottlenecked. Tom's tests showed that a X2 7850 @2.8 was bottlenecking a single 4770, which is less powerful than a 4850. Now I understand a 2.8 C2D is faster than a X2 @ 2.8, but you can clearly see it would bottlneck any fast single card, let a lone a dual card like a GTX295.