ASUS Unveils External Graphics Card — Daily Tech

ASUS has unveiled plans for an external graphics card, the XG Station, that will actually work with any PCI Express x16 graphics card.

The XG Station connects to any notebook’s ExpressCard slot and provides a PCI Express x16 slot for graphics cards. Since ASUS has opted to equip the XG Station with a standard PCI Express x16 slot, the station can be equipped with any PCI Express based graphics card: AMD, NVIDIA or even Matrox. ASUS launched the default XG Station with an NVIDIA 7900GS powered graphics card.

The XG Station is powered externally. A separate power brick plugs directly into the adaptor.

An integrated LCD display and control also grace the XG Station. The display is customizable and can display information such as frame rate, fan speed, GPU temperature and more while the control knob can change various settings of the XG Station such as the core and memory clocks.

Expect ASUS to release the XG Station in Q2′07 this year. Pricing of the XG Station is unknown at the moment.

Absolutely tres cool. Among other things, it will mean that gamers can get one card for their desktops and laptops; the garbage cards that the overwhelming number of laptops come with are no good for impressive gaming, and this is a great idea. We’ll see how well the new innovation works when it hits the market.