Laptop Graphics cards

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Dr. Galaga

New Member
i was thinking about how you can't upgrade graphics cards with laptops but then it dawned on me, what if you could mod a desktop graphics card to be able to be plugged into the USB.

all you would have to do is delete, or turn off, the old graphics card on the motherboard and load in the new drivers.

i'm not THAT good at modding so if anyone could find out a way, that would totally revolutionize the laptop.
 
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that would be really sweet! i have heard of an external gpu in the works (possibly by asus?), but i cant remember much about it.
 
You know something using the PC-Card/Express card slot is actually feasible but completely pointless. Besides ruining the whole point of a laptop being portable(IE the extra card/box you have to drag around and possibly a power supply for it) you'd also need another monitor.

Now perhaps if there's some way the onboard video card could "stream" the additional video card's output, but I don't see that happening. New interfaces would have to be made, and I doubt many people would care to pay the additional amount for such an upgrade, or to future-proof a laptop.
 
In theory it sounds like a cool idea, but i reality it would be stupid.

First off, a USB 2.0 port only has a bandwidth of 480Mbps, whereas a PCI-E x16 slot has a bandwidth of 8GBps (64Gbps), so bandwidth is a huge problem.
 
jimkonow said:
hmm...what about Firewire?
whats the max speed for that?
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There are different versions. FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 are the most common. FireWire 800 has a bandwidth of 786Mbps, and unlike USB it has a more constant speed, closer to that of the theoretical limit.
 
There are external graphics cards that can be attached to laptops, but from what i have seen, most are simple cards to use for multiple displays, and while there are good external ones, you still need to attach them to external monitors. I have never heard of one that could feed back into the laptop for the main display.
 
interesting......

what about before when i said you may be able to turn off the original graphics card, the you may be able to have the external graphics card link strait to the laptops monitor.
 
Dr. Galaga said:
what about before when i said you may be able to turn off the original graphics card, the you may be able to have the external graphics card link strait to the laptops monitor.
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And how would you have it link to the laptop monitor?
 
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