Anyone w/ a Thinkpad Advanced Dock? Need Advice! :)

I got mine a couple days ago and I'm looking to put a video card in it. I use a Thinkpad T400

I'm looking at the newer ATI 4000's series video cards.

The one that has caught my eye is: http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/products/products_overview.php?gpid=260&grp=3

It says it only consumes 25w under full load, and it is a "low profile" card.

Anyone had any luck with a video card w/ the advanced dock? I'm curious what kind of problems have come up

 

I don't think what you are trying to do is possible. The advanced dock does NOT have a PCI-Express slot for adding a video card (it would be nice if it did). With very few exceptions you are stuck with the card that is built into the laptop (Intel GMA4500 and ATI 3470 in this case). The dock has video out, but it uses the laptops internal card.

If you want high performance graphics you should just build yourself a cheap desktop workstation to use in addition to your Thinkpad. Best price performance combo right now is an inexpensive AMD Athlon X2 (almost any will work) and a good graphics card (ATI 4650 or 4670).

If your only concern is driving more than two displays you should look at a device like the Triple Head 2Go. Although I have doubts about the quality because it tries to drive 3 displays from a single VGA port.

 

I think you may be mixing up the Advanced Mini-Dock with the Advanced Dock.

The Thinkpad Advanced Dock page at Lenovo specifically lists a half-size PCI express card slot. Description reads: " One half-size PCI Express card slot - Supports half-size PCI Express cards, including graphics adapters that enable multi-monitoring"

The Thinkpad Advanced Mini-Dock does not have a slot.