News - AMD Lasso external notebook graphics booster spotted in the wild

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Graphics card in a box makes an appearance at AMD press event, still not available to buy though.

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Read more.

I think this is a great idea. Use a really low powered IGP for normal use, and plug this badboy in when it's play time. You could even do this for PCs (assuming it switches itself off when not in use) for nice idle power savings.

That was the conclusion I came to when looking at the product once again today.

Definately a market for this kind of device. I would love to use one with my macbook pro as the 128mb m8600GT is pretty poor. When im proccessing a lot of quartz files on it it tends to lag a bit and struggle so if they made one (and made it mac compatable) i would be straight in there.

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

Definately a market for this kind of device. I would love to use one with my macbook pro as the 128mb m8600GT is pretty poor. When im proccessing a lot of quartz files on it it tends to lag a bit and struggle so if they made one (and made it mac compatable) i would be straight in there.

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IIRC it's more or less external PCIe, so there shouldn't be any real reason for it to be Mac incompatible.

so it should plug into my expresscard slot?

That would make sense, but I can't say for sure.

I think it's proprietary in its current form - i.e. can only be used with AMD systems...

External pci-e is not a standard as such. Therefor it is proprietary interface indeed.
Good product never the less

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Originally Posted by CooperXS

External pci-e is not a standard as such. Therefor it is proprietary interface indeed.
Good product never the less

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Not true. Express card slots are pci-e 1x in a different shaped connector, so with a suitable enclosure you could connect any modern graphics card to your laptop via that slot. The bandwidth would not be as good as a 16x connector, but the hardware will automatically detect the narrower bandwidth and adapt automatically.

I think ASUS presented such an enclosure at a trade show about 2 years ago, though I have never seen product on sale.

They exist, but they are expensive.

Engadget from over a year ago:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/05/m...h-expresscard/

And the manufacturer: http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/index.html

can u add any ati card to it?

Is there a us version of this. I haven't seen it yet and i would like to purchase one, been waiting for something like this to come up finally.

Yeah I'd definitely buy it, provided it costs the same as an equivalent "gaming" laptop. Being able to have a small, light and energy efficient laptop for general use, while having a GPU at the ready when I get home sounds like a dream.

Have to agree with the general consensus this seems like an inspired idea.