Buy Laptop Graphics Cards

Since laptops are hard to upgrade, it's common for users - especially those who play PC games - to wonder whether they need a new laptop if they want a better graphics card.

The short answer is yes, although it's complicated since there are a couple of (albeit limited) ways to get upgraded or external graphics cards for laptops without needing a new laptop. These methods are not too mainstream though, although (as we'll discuss later) they might give you something to consider.

Another option before trying some of the following suggestions is to contact your laptop vendor and see whether they have the facility to pick-up your laptop and upgrade it for you by just upgrading or adding a graphics cards. This isn't too common, although a small minority of companies offer this service.

If this is not possible, here are two methods which have been announced in the past few years with the aim of providing external graphics capability, along with our thoughts on them.

XG Station by Asus

In 2007, Asus announced that they had produced a device which connected to your laptop via the ExpressCard slot and could then be connected to a graphics card in an external manner. This announcement created a lot of buzz. After a year in production, Asus trailled this product by launching it in Australia with a Nvidia GeForce 8600GT bundled with it.

The price of the XG Station and graphics card was $375 AUD (Australian dollars - the equivalent of around $350 USD). The early results looked promising, although in 2009 it was announced that XG Station was to be withdrawn from sale. It might still be possible to purchase this product in Australia, although it's now outdated, unsupported and relatively expensive hence we wouldn't suggest you look to purchase it. An unfortunate failed attempt by Asus.

ViDock Gfx by Village Tronic

The ViDock Gfx connects via ExpressCard too. Like the XG Station, it works by connecting to your laptop and then allowing you to connect certain graphics cards to it. Unfortunately the ViDock Gfx is somewhat limited in that it doesn't support any of the latest graphics cards, it is relatively expensive and its bandwidth rate (the amount of graphical data that can be generated and transferred to the laptop at any one time) is fairly limited; meaning that it can't offer any major graphical power boost.

Hence it might be an attractive solution to owners of older laptops (which have no existing graphics cards) who want a bit of extra graphics power from their laptop, although the price - and the fact that this product is fairly limited - does mean that it's also not a solution that we would recommend to the majority of users. In today's World of laptops with graphics cards from $500, it'd be cheaper (when looking at a cost-to-performance ratio) to buy a new laptop.


As you can see, there are a couple of methods to try although they are (very) limited. Hence - especially if you are wanting to play the latest computer games - we'd suggest that you consider purchasing a new laptop. It is unfortunate that no competitive product is available which offers external graphics card capability (since we're sure it'd become very successful), although it does look like all attempts to achieve it have sadly been failed attempts.


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