ASUS unveils external notebook GPU

Author: Wil Harris
Published: 9th January 2007

The ASUS XG Station - external notebook graphics.

Is your laptop struggling along with integrated graphics? A new external add-on from ASUS claims to allow you to connect an external monitor to your laptop via an external graphics card which connects to the laptop via the ExpressCard slot.

The XG Station has a 7900 GS graphics card built in, and has a HDCP compatible HDMI port. It also has a USB 2.0 hub and an external soundcard with Dolby Headphone Technology whacked in too - essentially a mini gaming hub to plug straight into your notebook.

Even more crazy, a massive knob on the front of the XG station allows you to ramp up the clock speed on your 7900 GPU just by cranking it up - and an LCD display tells you the current GPU clock speed and temperature.

The XG card is going to launch in April or May, but we don't have a confirmed price on it yet.

Whilst ASUS claims this will be 9x faster than integrated graphics, do you think this will actually work? Can you see it actually improving your gaming experience if you have an integrated notebook? Let us know your thoughts over in the forums.