Dual Video Cards... awesome.

So I've been heavily researching about the whole "ViDock" thing that's floating around. Apparently, you can easily adapt a desktop, external, video card along with your MBP or whatever laptop you wish as long as it has a Expresscard 34 or 54 slot.

So this is what I have running now. I'm using a ViDock 4 (http://www.villageinstruments.com/tiki-index.php?page=ViDock) not the Plus model, just regular, along with a nVidia GT240, 512MB GDDR5 128-Bit, desktop video card.

This is all running off of my First Generation MacBook Pro, 17". Specs are:

2.16GHz Intel Core Duo T2600
2GB DDR2-667MHz Ram
500GB Seagate Hybrid XT 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
256MB ATi Mobility Radeon X1600
17" Matte 1680x1050 Display

Here's a few pictures that I took, very quickly with my iPhone. Not the best pics in the world, but shows some of the setup.

I am running this off of Windows 7 and not OSX. The card I'm using isn't compatible with OSX (GT240), so I can't run it in OSX even if I wanted to.

Here's also a youtube video of me playing Star Trek Online. External screen is driven by the GT240 while the internal screen runs off the X1600 concurrently.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eKu7rvaW4I

Currently, video is still processing... should be ready in a few minutes.

AdamRock said:

oh nice but its probably a power hog? or is there an external power cord for that?

Click to expand...

Yeah, it runs off an external power supply. The power supply as big as those XBox power supplies.

However, this technique only works on certain MacBook Pros... The First, Second and Fourth generation. Unibodies won't work.