Currently, the market for mobile computers (laptops and netbooks) is developing at a frantic pace. On the level of sales, he presses the market of stationary colleagues. In terms of performance, mobile computers are equal to the desktop solutions of last year's prescription, they easily cope with the performance of professional applications with 3D graphics, with playback of video files in HD quality, and they can run many modern resource-intensive computer games.
But what should consumers do that have already bought a laptop with an integrated video chip that is much inferior in performance and speed? The external video card for the laptop will allow not to be limited to using only 2D-applications (office packages). But while the market for such external devices is developed rather poorly, the assortment is not so diverse.
The first steps to develop external video adapters connected to laptops / netbooks were made by AMD / ATI, the leader in the production of video chips for discrete graphics cards. In 2008, a new video card connection technology was introduced to the public, called XGP (External Graphics Platform), the meaning of which was that an external video card for the laptop was connected via a special connector to the PCI-E 2.0 bus. For full-fledged operation of the video card, 8 bus lines were used. The new connector gave owners of low-power laptops the opportunity to increase their performance and functionality. However, laptop manufacturers have met the new XGP connector cool, they did not seek to equip them with their models. The only laptop equipped with a connector for connecting an external video card was released by Fujitsu Siemens. AMD has not abandoned the further development of technology. XGP was presented together with new models of video cards at the high-tech exhibition CES 2010.
In the Russian market, you can purchase a more affordable device to improve the performance of your laptop's video system. ASUS has developed an external station XG-Station. The external video card for the laptop in this case will use the ExpressCard expansion connector for the connection, the data transfer speed of which is 250 MB / s. Thus, the external video card for the laptop will work according to the PCIe X1 specification. This, of course, is not the maximum possible, but still this option is much ahead of the integrated performance solutions, sometimes this increase reaches 10-fold. Using the ASUS XG-Station docking station allows an inexpensive laptop or netbook to be turned into a rather powerful mobile computer, to which an external video card is connected. Its price is 5,000 rubles.
The market for plug-in external video cards is still poorly developed, manufacturers are still looking for the right direction for this segment. The main (even only) competitor of AMD company - Nvidia corporation - has not even made its first step in response to the presented XGP technology. The external video card for the USB laptop has become a reality with the introduction of USB 3.0 ports on the market, now the speed of video data exchange between the laptop and external video card has grown to 640 MB / s, which will significantly affect the performance in resource-intensive applications and modern video games. Let's hope that two giants - Nvidia and AMD - will join forces with new forces and present new solutions in different price ranges. This area of high technology is quite interesting, and the market niche is still free.