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Gaming Notebooks: The Full Story

Author	Stuart Andrews
Published	22nd Mar 2007

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Possibly the most exciting notebook accessory in the offing is Asus’ XG-Station. This neat-looking L-Shaped module plugs into any notebook with an Express Card slot, and incorporates a standard PCI-Express graphics card slot. This enables you to swap your notebook’s useless integrated graphics for the high-end solution of your choice. Asus informed us that while the XG-Station is currently set to ship with an Asus card based on the nVidia 6900GS, it would theoretically be possible to change this for any PCI-Express graphics card – even a two-slot variant.

The bandwidth over the Express Card link is not as high as on a regular x16 PCI-Express slot, but you’re probably still looking at a massive improvement over your notebook’s graphics chip. 5.1 Dolby Virtual Headphone technology and a flashy LCD interface – with dynamic overclocking – are only the icing on the cake. The advantage of the XG-Station is that it has the potential to turn a relatively unassuming Core 2 Duo notebook into a gaming powerhouse - provided you have enough CPU power and RAM – and you could even upgrade to DirectX 10 graphics in the future. If you want mobility for the road and desktop power in the home, this may be the best way to go.