Is there such a thing as an external graphics card?

[nealkochhar]

I have a PowerBook 12" (The model before the model they just released in March/June) and just purchased a 20" Cinema Display from Apple. Both work perfectly. I play WoW (World of Warcraft) and want to know if there's an 'external graphics card' which will 'boost up' the graphics performance and thus, increase the fps in my gameplay. I'm guessing something like this would mainly be hardware (I don't really know) so any ideas? (Essentially I want to run at max resolution with about 20+ fps).

Thanks in advance,

-Neal.

 

[SpaceMagic]

Nope, sorry. A good graphics card has a bandwidth of 4.7GB/s... USB,FireWire,SCSI, none come close.

 

[cube]

AGP 8X bandwidth is 2.1 GB/s.

There is 60 Gbps InfiniBand already (DDR), and they are working on QDR (120 Gbps, available Q1 2006).

 

[HiRez]

I used to have a PCMCIA card graphics accelerator for a Wallstreet PowerBook, but I haven't seen anything like it since then. I really wish they could build PowerBooks with replaceable GPU daughtercards, but maybe it's just not possible. It would really extend the life of a computer for a lot of people...although of course perhaps that's not in Apple's best interest, if they want to keep selling new hardware.

 

[whooleytoo]

Nope, sorry. A good graphics card has a bandwidth of 4.7GB/s... USB,FireWire,SCSI, none come close.

I'd guess the latency would be an even greater problem than the bandwidth.

 

[dubbz]

I really wish they could build PowerBooks with replaceable GPU daughtercards, but maybe it's just not possible. It would really extend the life of a computer for a lot of people...although of course perhaps that's not in Apple's best interest, if they want to keep selling new hardware.

NVIDIA have a standard called MXM that allow you to upgrade the graphic card/module in your laptop. PCI Express-only, and I haven't seen alot of laptops that support it... but hopefully it will be more common in the future.

ATI also have something similar.