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ATI XGP  (Source: ATI)
ATI XGP allows Puma platform notebooks to game like desktops

ATI made another big announcement at Computex today of a new external video card platform for notebook computers called the ATI XGP (External Graphics Platform). The ATI XGP is an external PCI Express 2.0 graphics device.

ATI says that the device is externally powered and externally cooled so it won’t place demands on the notebook. Bandwidth in both directions is reported to be 4 Gbytes/s; ATI says that other external graphics solutions were limited in bandwidth.

The XGP platform is optimized to work with the new AMD Turion X2 Ultra notebook platforms that DailyTech reported on earlier today. Initially according to ATI, the XGP will use Radeon HD 3800 series graphics cards and the first units will utilize the Radeon HD 3870.

When using the XGP with a notebook featuring integrated ATI graphics, CrossFireX is available to enhance performance further. The ATI XGP also provides additional USB 2.0 connectivity for attaching other USB devices like Blu-ray players and more.

Matt Skynner, vice president of Marketing for AMD’s Graphics Product Group said, “With ATI XGP Technology, notebooks can switch between everyday computing and hard-core gaming with a simple plug-in that’s also portable enough to bring powerful 3D performance on-the-go.

This technology allows users to choose notebooks with slim, lightweight and elegant designs, yet enjoy the full performance of a traditional desktop gaming rig wherever it’s convenient.”

A specially designed PCIe 2.0 self-attaching cable connects the XGP to the notebook. The cable is designed by Japan Aviation Electronics Industry, Limited. The graphics muscle from the HD 3870 should allow users to buy a lower performance notebook including ultra portable units and then attach the ATI XGP for gaming. The XGP also allows the attachment of multiple displays as well. AMD declined to comment on pricing and availability for the ATI XGP.

NVIDIA hasn’t officially backed a similar platform using its technology. However, ASUS did show off an external graphics solution using a NVIDIA video card at CES is 2007 called the XG Station.

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Is this via express card?
By FITCamaro on 6/4/2008 2:37:57 PM , Rating: 2
There is another external graphics solution out there that plugs into an express card slot and basically is connected to a PCI-E 1x slot. Which seriously hampers performance. What is the normal bandwidth for a PCI-E 16x slot? 4GB/s doesn't seem like that much.




RE: Is this via express card?
By Zandros on 6/4/2008 2:41:38 PM , Rating: 2
It is equivalent to a 8x PCIe 2.0 link or a 16x PCIe link.


RE: Is this via express card?
By FITCamaro on 6/4/2008 3:56:12 PM , Rating: 2
Sweet. That definitely won't bottleneck ATIs fastest single GPU cards.


RE: Is this via express card?
By winterspan on 6/4/2008 11:39:22 PM , Rating: 1
Yes, but unfortunately they are using mobile GPUs in the unit


RE: Is this via express card?
By soydios on 6/5/2008 4:32:31 AM , Rating: 2
-1 reading comprehension. read the article again.


RE: Is this via express card?
By FingerMeElmo87 on 6/4/2008 5:06:59 PM , Rating: 2
actually, its says 4GBs in both directions which is the speed of pic-e 16x.


RE: Is this via express card?
By FITCamaro on 6/4/2008 5:36:01 PM , Rating: 2
Yes I know what it said. But I didn't know what that equated to. I'm glad its fast enough not to bottleneck the card. Makes it all the more attractive. Plenty of laptops out there have sufficiently fast processors, memory, chipsets, and hard drives for gaming but lack the 3D ability.

With this, and you can basically have a portable, energy efficient laptop during the day, come home, plug it in to this, and be playing most of the latest games without an issue at high details. You won't need two complete systems. Sure you will for the highest resolutions and settings. But for the casual gamer, this would more than suffice.

And you wouldn't have to pay $2000+ for a high end gaming laptop. You could merely pay $1000 for a quality laptop with a good processor, lots of RAM, and a 7200 rpm hard drive. And then whatever this thing costs. And it can (hopefully) be upgraded.


RE: Is this via express card?
By fxyefx on 6/4/2008 6:22:46 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, I definitely see this eating into the market for those big and heavy 17"+ laptops. With one of these graphics "stations", you could just hook up a monitor and mouse/keyboard (the extra usb ports are a nice plus!) and pretty much any laptop with a relatively fast dual-core chip will do great. I wonder how this will effect AMD/ATI's Fusion plans, though. What's the point of integrating graphics into the chip die when you could just get a power-efficient general purpose CPU and tack one of these graphics boxes onto it?


RE: Is this via express card?
By Jedi2155 on 6/5/2008 6:04:02 AM , Rating: 2
Because a single CPU/GPU die is cheaper to produce than two separate components.


Only thing...
By DeepBlue1975 on 6/4/2008 2:48:18 PM , Rating: 2
You'll be needing a lasso port on your laptop to use one of those.

I hope Nvidia also jumps this bandwagon and together with every vid card and motherboard manufacturer they can agree on a standard port which they could all use.

If it works well, in a not too distant future I could be pretty interested in ditching my internal GPU for an external, self powered and self cooled one.

Less heat inside the case, less of a mess with the wiring, and the most important to me: less demands from the PSU.
I like my 3yr old, 520w OCZ P.Stream PSU. But with an overclocked Q6600 b3, an 8800gt 512 card, 3 high speed 120mm fans, 2 92mm fans, 1 220mm fan, an HDD, an optical drive, USB devices galore I don't know how much more I can possibly ask from it.




RE: Only thing...
By tungtung on 6/4/2008 4:00:36 PM , Rating: 2
I agree completely with your comment on the standardization, and yes it would be awesome if this can become a standard on both mobile and desktop system. However, quite honestly with the recent tech development I don't think a standard will be out anytime soon. Especially looking at ATI and nVidia, who are never seem to be in any agreement in anything (I guess except with the AGP and PCI-Express standard), I mean just look at how they disagree about DirectX features, which is more or less a "standard" set by a third party (Microsoft).

But then again who knows.


RE: Only thing...
By DeepBlue1975 on 6/4/2008 4:32:29 PM , Rating: 2
Granted, ATI and Nvidia won't come to any kind of standrization by themselves.
But there's always hopes of some group as was JEDEC for setting DRAM standards appearing and saying "guys, we design a connection type, declare it as standard, and then all of you start making use of it" (PCIe and AGP were cooked pretty much the same way, though Intel and I don't remember who else were the ones to come up with the new standard).

But yes, you're right. This is just a promising beggining, for a standard to come it'll have to really take off in the market.


RE: Only thing...
By Etsp on 6/4/2008 5:45:59 PM , Rating: 3
Man I love standards, everyone should have their own!


RE: Only thing...
By DeepBlue1975 on 6/4/2008 7:39:54 PM , Rating: 2
[Standard forum reply here]

Sorry, couldn't resist the temptation of making the silly joke :D


RE: Only thing...
By xxeonn on 6/4/2008 10:15:44 PM , Rating: 2
ATI I think, is using some sort of DVI cable to send frame buffer information from one card to another. This same technology can be used in this package by sending video data processed by the CPU to the graphics box via the VGA/DVI cable.


RE: Only thing...
By 306maxi on 6/5/2008 3:53:57 AM , Rating: 2
Would latency not be an issue with having an external GPU? Of course you'd be willing to make sacrifices with a laptop but in a desktop I'd rather have as much performance as possible? 520w is plenty for 1 8800gt as long as your 12v rails are up to it. I wouldn't be worried if I was you.


RE: Only thing...
By Jedi2155 on 6/5/2008 6:08:33 AM , Rating: 2
I have been thinking about the same issue for a while, but I guess the amount of rendering and crosstalk between the CPU/GPU would be kept to a minimum so as to not incur any latency penalties for having such physical distances between the devices.


ASUS
By maverick85wd on 6/4/2008 2:43:17 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
However, ASUS did show off an external graphics solution using a NVIDIA video card at CES...


Asus seems to be sticking their fingers in everything these days. After their success with the Eee I'm not surprised. Which is a good thing, I'm sure everyone agrees that the more gadgets we have to drool over the better :)




RE: ASUS
By ajfink on 6/4/2008 2:48:10 PM , Rating: 2
Asus displayed a prototype of this sort of technology a while ago, when the X1950~ was the king of the hill. It's not like they're are just now stepping in.


RE: ASUS
By maverick85wd on 6/4/2008 3:12:34 PM , Rating: 2
I was just saying they seem to be expanding a lot... first time I bought a motherboard from them it seemed like that was about all they made.


RE: ASUS
By mmntech on 6/4/2008 5:01:17 PM , Rating: 2
It was well over a year ago though I think that was just a proof of concept at that time. I think it's an interesting idea but I'm not too thrilled about it just yet. It will give laptop owners an easy speed boost, that's for sure. It's not very portable though and thus defeats the purpose of having a gaming laptop. I suppose it makes sense if you're not using your laptop for mobile gaming and you just keep it on a desk all day. If that's the case, why not just get a desktop with a nice big screen.

I suppose this works using hybrid Crossfire.