External video card???

[mcmillan]

There are external audio cards, why not external video cards?
It has always been a problem with ibooks, powerbooks, imacs and emacs (and all laptops): when the video card doesn't hold a heavy 3D game there's nothing that you can do. I have been searching in the internet and there is a way to upgrade the video card on a laptop:

It only works with 15" and 17" powerbooks (and some other laptops). You plug a Magma PCI Expansion Systems to the CardBus slot, that gives a PCI slot, so then you have to buy a PCI Video Card and you're done. But that cost a lot!!!. Only the Magma expansion costs at least $945, but that's the half-length one. The full-length costs $995.

So... there's a way to upgrade the video card for $945 plus the PCI video card cost. Even if you don't have a CardBus slot you can try finding an external.

That is what i found, a little bit difficult.

Any not impossible suggestion(or cheaper)?

 

[Horrortaxi]

Playstation 2, $149. That's much cheaper.

If cutting edge games are a concern, why are you worrying about a Mac? Build yourself a nice gaming PC for $500-$600 and then you'll actually be able to play all the games.

 

[Sun Baked]

So you think an expansion adapter connected to the PCI bus (32 bits/33 MHz shared with AirPort Extreme, PC Card/CardBus, Boot ROM, USB 2.0 controller) through a PCI1510A TI PC card adapter chip is going to be faster than a native 4x AGP (32 bits/133 MHz) video chip?

 

[mcmillan]

I'm not saying that it's the best way, I was asking if someone has figured out how to do it, because obviously what I posted won't work.

And it wouldn't be conected to an AGP 4x card, it would be conected to an PCI card. Anyway... it's imposible. Does anyone has an idea??

 

[iChan]

There are external audio cards, why not external video cards?
It has always been a problem with ibooks, powerbooks, imacs and emacs (and all laptops): when the video card doesn't hold a heavy 3D game there's nothing that you can do. I have been searching in the internet and there is a way to upgrade the video card on a laptop:

It only works with 15" and 17" powerbooks (and some other laptops). You plug a Magma PCI Expansion Systems to the CardBus slot, that gives a PCI slot, so then you have to buy a PCI Video Card and you're done. But that cost a lot!!!. Only the Magma expansion costs at least $945, but that's the half-length one. The full-length costs $995.

So... there's a way to upgrade the video card for $945 plus the PCI video card cost. Even if you don't have a CardBus slot you can try finding an external.

That is what i found, a little bit difficult.

Any not impossible suggestion(or cheaper)?

the problem is bandwidth.. don't have any numbers to back up my point... but it obviously takes more bacdwidth for say... a bitmap/texture in a game, than say, a few bits of data representing sound...

 

[jtown]

Any not impossible suggestion(or cheaper)?

No, because it's impossible.

There is no I/O port on any laptop that can move data faster than (or even close to the speed of) the AGP bus that the existing video system is hooked up to. No matter what you hook up or where you hook it up, it will never be as fast as the existing video on the AGP bus.

 

[Dreadnought]

There is a cheaper one, from a German company. I have given the link in the past when people wanted to know how to hook up a 3rd screen on there powerbooks. I believe the company was called village tronic, yes, found it:
http://www.villagetronic.com/

6 screens on 1 powerbook!!!

 

[smileynev]

Sweet, now I can dump that crappy Radeon 9600 in my powerbook and upgrade it to a Radeon 7000 PCI!!!!!!

 

[zakee00]

lmao good point. pci cards SUCK, ur powerbooks card is much better. give it up man, build a gaming pc