External Graphics Card dock for Laptops (ViDock)

[mepm]

most new laptops don't have express card slots anymore, so it becomes useless.
would bottleneck aswell.

[psyave]

I got a 660, just due to budget manly... My lappy is 2 years old, but runs bf3 pretty decently. I had to flick down the res for higher fps though.

[NewbiTLorD]

Yeah, the 660 in the mobility range is a bit dissapointing, but the GTX 670 is quite amazing even in the Mobility Range, definitely a good one to get, but I spose depending if you don't want to go the External Graphics card way, can always go the Custom Aus made Metabox Laptops, great value for money and have really good reviews.

[MetalAttack]

i got the MSI gt60 and its got a GeForce GTX 670M and it runs bf3 on high gfx really well actually.. 60 fps average.

[NewbiTLorD]

The Add-in boxes including the Express-chip that comes with them are between $150-300 depending on which one you go for and its just a Chassis that you can throw any video card into from what I've read. They are usable with a large variety of Laptops and sounds quite good to me, only you gotta buy the Video Card separately, does sound a bit expensive but in the end you can use it over and over. Some people are using it on 11" Netbooks with express slots, can't really complain there.

Seen a few people buy the cheaper 75 watt version and put a HD 7770 into it, a single slot card that runs BF3 at medium graphics easy and it roughly costs them $300 all up. The Desktop HD 7770 is almost as fast as the Mobile HD 7850m-7950m cards and is faster then the mobile GTX 660M and laptops that hold these cards are roughly around the $1500 mark.

[Milenko]

I've seen laptops with internal cards perform better than in that video.
I bought a Dell gaming laptop (easily runs Crysis2 at high detail) for under 2 grand.

Or are these add-on boxes aimed at the 1k market? In which case wouldn't the additional hardware make it just as expensive?

[NewbiTLorD]

Hey guys,

I've been looking around online for new Tech and Hardware and knowing that this is still somewhat old news, it is still going around from the looks of it and it is looking much more impressive now then it did 5 years ago.

There are some DIY External PCIE 2.0 kits around but look rather messy but ViDock appears to work just like an External Hard-drive chassis with multiple different sizes to fit different cards with different power outputs and they have a current max output of 225 watts with a soon to come 400w version.

The only downside of this setup is that it appears to require a separate Monitor as it doesn't utilise with the display on the Laptop its self.

ViDock Gfx: High Performance Dual Display Notebook Expansion

I've read up on people doing Benchmarks with GTX 560-570 and 660 ti/670 Video cards externally to their Laptops and getting quite remarkable performance and it is quite interesting for anyone that prefers the portability of a Laptop but dislikes the performance of Mobile Graphics Cards due to the Laptops that utilise higher-end GPU's are generally too darn expensive.

This thing appears to be quick-swap/hot-swappable and can be used with a large variety of Notebooks/Netbooks.

For example, on a Macbook with a GTX 560: