External Graphics: The Way Forward For Gaming Laptops?

Current Products On The Market

So having said all the above what are the current solutions to the external graphics market. Well there are a few, but the problem we see is that all of them are quite distant from being ‘mainstream’, meaning they require quite obscure hardware configurations and the software can often be quite pedantic.

ViDock

A ViDock with an MSI graphics card inside.

The most ‘mainstream’ product we could find is one made by Village Instruments, going by the name ViDock or ViExpress Box depending on the model, this product consists of a steel box which has a PCI-E 2.0 16X lane inside it, this lane is powered externally and features connection to the laptop or PC via an expresscard slot, as we mentioned earlier this functions as a PCI-E 2.0 1X slot, providing 5Gb/s of bandwidth. These are available in models supporting up to 225W of power draw. Although we would recommend sticking with ‘lower end’ cards anyway since the PCI-E 2.0 1X bandwidth ‘cap’ means high end cards will be severely throttled. Something like a HD 6670 would be ideal for this kind of external docking.

This product is compatible and optimised for Windows 7 so we would recommend using it with Windows 7 since these kinds of products have ‘tricky’ software installations to say the least. Although it will also work with Vista, XP and Mac OS. One thing we found slightly annoying about this product was the fact once you have connected your external graphics card, such as a HD 6670, you cannot run those graphics on the laptop screen, they must be run off an external monitor. This can be useful if you enjoy 1080p gaming but if you only own a laptop then this could be quite frustrating.

This Solution: Will cost you around $220 excluding a graphics card but gives relatively simple installation.

The ViDock acts as a hub, you can only output these graphics to a new monitor, not to your laptop.

Other Solutions

As far as other solutions go we couldn’t really find any big brands like Village Instruments offering products which are simple are require only simple installation. We came across lots of hardware solutions similar to ViDock but not as simple (although a lot cheaper). For example, for $91 you could pick up this kit which offers a PCI-E 16X 2.0 lane, express card adapter and the required circuity for powering the product on, although it does not come with a direct power supply. You can also see a similar kit here, which does the same thing for the same price.

This Solution: Will cost you around $130 (including cost of a power supply if you already have a spare it will only cost $91) but requires a quite good understanding of computer hardware to get up and running.

All the required hardware to set up a 'ViDock Equivalent' just need to get yourself some power.