You know how they have external hard drives. Do they have external video cards? That would be so cool.
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External video card
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mrgreen4242
macrumors 601
Any sort of external video device is going to be a specific funciton device, like a video encoder/decoder. Even if they did make an external general purpose video device it would be slower than anything that any Mac has shipped with in, say, 5 years at least.
There isn't any external expansion connectivity that can support the kind of bandwidth that video devices use. AGP 8x is 2gb/sec and PCI-E is 4gb/sec, if I recall. Compare that to FW at less than 1gb/sec (800mb to be exact) and you will see the problem. Also, firewire ports don't have the prioritized access to the system bus that AGP or PCIE have, further slowing it down in comparison.
Rob
There isn't any external expansion connectivity that can support the kind of bandwidth that video devices use. AGP 8x is 2gb/sec and PCI-E is 4gb/sec, if I recall. Compare that to FW at less than 1gb/sec (800mb to be exact) and you will see the problem. Also, firewire ports don't have the prioritized access to the system bus that AGP or PCIE have, further slowing it down in comparison.
Rob
CanadaRAM
macrumors G5
http://www.trittontechnologies.com/products/TRIUV100.htm
Tritton SEE-2 USB 2.0 video adaptor -- This is PC only right now, although they are working on Mac drivers.
The bandwidth needed for display is dependant on the resolution, the color depth and the refresh rate. At 800 x 600 with 24 bit color or 1024 x 768 16-bit color, USB 2.0 can keep up.
Programs like games that utilize graphic processing units for acceleration, programmable shaders and on-card memory won't be able to exploit that through USB. So games and streaming video are probably out of contention. But 2-D applications should be fine.
We'll have to wait and see whether they come up with the Mac drivers.
Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com
Tritton SEE-2 USB 2.0 video adaptor -- This is PC only right now, although they are working on Mac drivers.
The bandwidth needed for display is dependant on the resolution, the color depth and the refresh rate. At 800 x 600 with 24 bit color or 1024 x 768 16-bit color, USB 2.0 can keep up.
Programs like games that utilize graphic processing units for acceleration, programmable shaders and on-card memory won't be able to exploit that through USB. So games and streaming video are probably out of contention. But 2-D applications should be fine.
We'll have to wait and see whether they come up with the Mac drivers.
Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com
mrgreen4242
macrumors 601
CanadaRAM said:
Hm, pretty spiffy, but I don't see the point? I mean, it's not going to be an upgrade to anything that any computer with USB2.0 either has onboard or could have internally for as low as $30.
Some initial thoughts are that you'd want it for a second, or third, display, but if a system has USB2.0 it almost assuredly has an AGP port. For under $50 you can get a a video card that is more powerful and has 2 outputs already. If you need a 3rd screen, you can get a PCI card for next to nothing and have your 3rd monitor on that. Some PCI cards have 2 monitor support as well, giving you up to 4 displays.
So that leaves laptop markets, but all Mac laptops, and most PC ones have an external monitor hookup, so you can do 2 displays right out the box. I suppose if you had to have three monitors on your laptop that this would be your only choice, but that seems liek a pretty limited market. 😕
I'm not trying to attack you, you didn't make this product and were just showing the OP that it was possible and available, but I am just wondering if anyone can think of somethign to do with this?
Rob