Posted on Wednesday, May 21 2008 @ 2:23 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
More than a year ago Asus showed off the
XG Station external graphics card but that product never made it to the market. However, X-bit Labs
reports Asus is planning to release a XG Station with the GeForce 8600 GT this quarter and that ATI and Fujitsu Siemens are working on similar devices.
Graphics product group of AMD has already showcased external graphics solutions to its partners back in early 2007, however, the former ATI Technologies has not released its code-named Lasso products commercially. Another media report claims that ATI Lasso will be showcased again a month time in Taipei, Taiwan, at Computex 2008 trade-show as a graphics booster for notebooks based on the new AMD Turion Ultra processors and code-named Puma platform. ATI Lasso will reportedly use a “proprietary connector” to attach external graphics adapter to notebooks, therefore, will not be compatible with existing machines or competing mobile platforms like Intel Centrino.
Fujitsu Siemens Computers is focused on building mainstream notebooks and the company’s lineup does not feature a lot of laptops for gamers. Nonetheless, it does not mean that the firm does not want to address the market of video game fans who use mobile computers. A press article claims that Fujitsu Siemens preps Amilo GraphicsBooster, an external graphics solution powered by ATI Radeon technology. Not a lot of concrete information is known about external graphics adapter from FSC, but what is known is that it would enable “up to” 8000 points in 3DMark06 benchmark.
External graphics adapter is an interesting concept that not only provides opportunity to improve rendering speed of video games or connect notebooks to a number of displays, but also allow to enable higher performance of very small form-factor desktops that are usually fanless and come with low-power power supply unit that cannot support powerful graphics processing units.
