External Graphics Upgrade for Notebooks
Operating System Factors and Workarounds
Unfortunately, there are problems associated with using the ExpressCard interface to drive an external graphics card, and these problems are not transparent to the user. First, let’s consider the operating system.
The WDDM graphics architecture used in Windows Vista will only allow one graphics driver to be running at a time. This forces the user to match the version of the ViDock they purchase to their existing integrated video chipset: that is to say, if your laptop has an integrated Radeon video chipset, you need to purchase the Radeon version of the ViDock. If your laptop has an integrated Geforce video chipset, you need the Geforce version of the ViDock. If your laptop has an integrated Intel video chipset, you’re plain out of luck; no version of the ViDock will work specifically for these chipsets.
Village Tronic mentioned that while it is theoretically possible to force a Radeon or GeForce version of the ViDock to work on an Intel chipset by installing the XPDM driver model, this would disable features like the Windows Aero interface, DirectX 10 graphic fidelity, and hot-plugging. More importantly, Village Tronic won’t guarantee it will work at this time, as XPDM driver support isn’t what they’d like it to be.
On the plus side, Vista does allow for hot plugging, and system bus resource allocation will not be a problem in this OS. All monitors driven by both the ViDock and the internal graphics adapter will also allow the Aero interface to be enabled.
As an alternative, we’ll consider Windows XP: unlike Vista, XP supports multiple graphics drivers, so the type of integrated video chipset used doesn’t matter. While this situation is ideal, it turns out that some laptop manufacturers don’t follow PCMCIA configuration/booting procedures as strictly as they could in their BIOS, and as a result some laptops simply won’t recognize the ViDock. While Village Tronic claims to be working with manufacturers to update their BIOSes, it’s probably a good idea to check their compatibility list before committing to purchase a ViDock for a Windows XP machine. For example, the Windows XP laptop in our lab was unable to work with the ViDock (see Installation and Issues, below).
Macintosh operating systems OS X Tiger and Leopard are also supported with the specific ViDock Gfx Mac Edition, which can handle all of the advanced 3D capabilities of OS X. The only drawback is that hot plugging is not yet supported.
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a 6pack in thats a nice work around for 3d graphics on laptops. but at the 429 price tag plus the price of a 8600gt or a 3870.. thats getting pricy.Reply
its a valid option, but one that a normal user should think twice about.
nice write up -
crazyhandpuppet "If your integrated video chipset doesn’t support DHCP, or doesn’t accelerate decoding, it’s not going to play Blu-ray movies."Reply
Amazing how far DHCP has come over the last few years... Looks like it's already replacing HDCP :) -
cleeve Call of Duty 4 is so much easier on hardware, I prefer to concentrate on stuff that will really challenge it like Crysis and SupCom so we have a worst-case scenario.Reply -
piratepast40 There are several interesting points here. The fact that card compatability is dependant on chipset type is interesting but not really shocking. It's (sort of) similar to the hybrid SLI and Crossfire capability of the 780 series chipsets and the way the chipsets support specific GPU series. It sounds as though another header or bus type is needed to fully support the concept. The expresscard/USB bus was the holdup a year ago and it appears to still be the main bottleneck. I'm curious to see if AMD's PUMA platform or Intel's version (forgot the name) will show us something in this area. Am also wondering if one of the laptop OEM's might offer the external card setup for specific models of their computers. Will be interesting to see what others are doing. Haven't heard anything at all from ASUS since early last year.Reply -
spuddyt would it be possible to run crossfire/sli with two of these things? (largely out of curiosity, twould be insane to actuall sensibly do it...) That way wouldn't you have 2 seperate pcie 1x bandwidths to play with/Reply -
anonymous x aww, i wish the express card slot had enough bandwidth to suport a geforce 9800 cardReply