News Bits: Notebook External Graphics Card, Acer Takes #1 Spot, OLPC Partners With Amazon.com

Fujitsu external graphics card plays Crysis

Fujitsu Siemens' proprietary external graphics card solution, the AMILO GraphicBooster that we talked about last May, has finally surfaced and it can actually play Crysis. A video shows that the GraphicBooster, hooked up to an AMILO Sa 3650 notebook via a PCI Express 2.0 interface, has 470% of the performance of the notebook's integrated ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 graphics chip.

Via (Engadget.com)
Special thanks to forum super moderator Johnny T for submitting this bit

Acer is number one global notebook vendor in Q3

Acer ranked as the number one global consumer notebook vendor in the third quarter of this year. The company's 5.04 million notebook shipments edged out HP's 4.85 million. HP still leads the overall global market with 8.12 million units, with Acer close on its heels with 7.89 million and Dell further behind with 5.24 million.

Full Story (DigiTimes.com)

Notebook makers keeping low inventories

According to a DigiTimes report, notebook makers are keeping low component inventories, sometimes with only three to four weeks's worth of parts. Maintaining a low inventory puts heavy pricing pressure on component suppliers. Typically, inventories are months' worth of parts.

Full Story (DigiTimes.com)

OLPC partners with Amazon.com for Give One Get One program

Amazon.com and the One Laptop Per Child foundation have partnered for the Give One, Get One program. When a customer buys two notebooks for $399, one is sent to a child in a developing nation.

In related news, the Give One Get One program has reached Europe, where the laptops cost £254.

Product Page
Via (Laptoping.com)
Full Story (HEXUS.net)
NotebookReview.com review for the OLPC XO

USB 3.0 specification finalized

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced that the USB 3.0 specification has been finalized. The end version will be called SuperSpeed USB. Consumer products based on the new specification will become available in 2010, while the first controllers will start to appear this year.

USB 3.0 will be backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1. The 3.0 specification is not only more power efficient, but also is ten times as fast.

Full Story (HEXUS.net)

 

External graphics? COOL!

- Will it play Crysis? check
- Will it blend? check

That's gotta be the best gadget ever released this year. I just hope that ThinkPad version comes out... somehow.. so that my lappy can see some light.

 

I think ina year or two we don't even need desktop for gaming-imagine:a notebook with size of MacBook air with quad sli

 

You guys do know that the GraphicBooster is still NOT ON THE MARKET yet. When will they start selling these things

 

That doesn't explain why I already have one.

The unnecessarily large handgun and lock pick set does, though. (No one important was harmed in the stealing of this item)

 

Where u bought it? (Or got donated from)

 

The engineers house. At midnight. With a crowbar. It was an amazing sale, one of those "if its not nailed down, buy it free!".

 

Upgradeable graphics for notebooks is dabomb! Except while travelling this thing would be a PITA. Yet another brick to carry around. Still it's cool and is an easy option to turn almost any notebook into a game machine. I wonder what they'll sell for?

 

External graphics are a fantastic idea for notebooks. To be able to give a 12" notebook the gaming power of a 17" gaming notebook? You get the best of both worlds, the ability to tote around a small notebook and come home and hook it up to your monitor/TV and external graphics box.

Plus, since the GPU is external, your notebook will be much cooler during intense gaming which I really like. You will be able to overclock the GPU further than it it was internal without risk to the notebook itself, you can more easily upgrade the GPU and purchase another external GPU to attain Crossfire/SLI without getting a huge expensive 17" or larger notebook.

I really hope to see this technology catch on in the future.

This GraphicBooster is Fujitsu's version of the ATI XGP, which uses a proprietary port and for now is exclusive to AMD Puma notebooks. That's why I'm waiting for the Expresscard 2.0 standard to come out for a solution to come for Intel notebooks. Though I think this technology really won't come out until next year and I'd like to buy a new notebook by the end of this year.

 

So does it need to be plugged into a monitor to work? I guess that's alright if you are at home a lot. I like to be able to game in my bed if I want to on my lap... although it gets a little toasty

Pretty nice though, I must admit. Depending on how much they charge, it could take off. The thing at the end of that video said it was a 3870?? Pretty impressive for an external solution.

 

You can check this thread for more information about this.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4173977#post4173977

I think I saw a post in there that currently, you need to output to an external monitor and can't view on the notebook's LCD.

 

Bah! See that bites. Needing to use an external screen? This thing has it's pros and cons I guess. It's an interesting device and I see the appeal and practicality. Basically allows you to consolidate a desktop/game machine and a notebook into one non-gamer notebook + external graphics and monitor. Definitely a better cost and space solution to owning two dedicated machines.

 

This is a phenomenal idea...

Manufacturers need to implement a video-in port on their LCDs to really make this work. Ideally a standard could be made so interchangeable manufacturer 'boxes' could run on any laptop, etc...

Imagine an ultralight 12" machine with a special video-in port, allowing the external video card box to display on either the laptops own LCD, or an external monitor (via DVI, etc)...

This really could set the trend for the future... Ability to keep all notebooks where they're supposed to be... Thin, light, integrated graphics that require little power. Then, when you have the need for it, an external little box that runs games and 3d applications without batting an eye. Not to mention that you could upgrade this external box whenever you want.

Genius stuff...

 

The Fujitsu external graphics sounds cool, but it is largely proprietary with Fujitsu products. Until we see companies like AMD and Intel release a standardized external video card port (or something similar), I would not get my hopes up.

 

Its just Fujitsu's own version of the ATI XGP, I'm sure more companies will be creating their own versions as well. Its limited to AMD Puma notebooks but I'd like to see a standard for Intel notebooks as well, which I believe will be Expresscard 2.0 which will be 2 to 10x faster than the current standard. The Asus XG Station tried to use the current Expresscard port but I believe its bandwidth was too low.

More info on the tech below.

http://ati.amd.com/technology/xgp/index.html

 

the interesting thing is this "XGP" that you have to carry around is actually very light and can fit in pretty much any laptop bag now THAT is cool

 

It's kind of misleading how the product name includes "3650" even though the graphics chip in the device is a 3870... I'm wondering if you can just take the 3870 out and pop in a 4850 with minimal driver hassle... now that would be awesome.

 

i'm pretty sure amd will make it so that it will work on the laptop's LCD. After all, it would be a pain carrying around a monitor wherever u go.

this is gona be sick! i wonder how nvidia will respond. imagine a mobility 4870 with a 14" 4lb notebook playing crysis whenever u want.

 

is it just me or is a 470% performance increase from an hd3200 (integrated?) not particularly....helpful...

 

Note that 3200 IGP is one of the strongest IGP to date. And yea, if it were a 4870 that they had in the XGP box, the performance would be increase by 1000%. Not particularly helpful? (Well lugging an extra LCD around would be not particularly helpful, but the XGP is a very exceptional good concept, not great, yet) LOL

 

I was wrong, with the ATI XGP, you will be able to drive the display on the laptop's screen.

This is an official PDF from AMD that explains the ATI XGP technology.

http://ati.amd.com/technology/xgp/xgp_technology_brief.pdf

On page 14,, you'll see it will support Cross Display technology. Here's an excerpt.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CROSS DISPLAY

Considering the cases where the user wants to carry the ATI XGP unit with them or has a large very high quality display already included in their laptop, ATI will be supporting ATI Cross Display technology on ATI XGP systems. This allows the ATI XGP unit to directly drive the laptop display (plus one external display connected to the laptop if desired), enabling the high performance graphics output right on the laptop without the need of an external monitor connected to the ATI XGP unit itself. This helps to enable a truly portable, high performance capability.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

For anyone that wants the price: €1199 (Laptop + Box bundle)
http://shop.fujitsu-siemens.de/fuji...8/cl1/amilo_notebook_sa_3650__graphic_booster



Courtesy xedi and rahul

 

Only bad part is it requires an external monitor, which kind of ruins the portability aspect.

Whatever happeend to the XG Station anyway?

 

Dude, I just posted above that you don't need an external monitor.
The XG Station was announced way back in January 2007 but I don't think its ever been released to retail. There was a forum member here who said he got a prototype model to try out.

 

The XG Station's usefulness is questionable at best, considering it interfaces with the notebook through the ExpressCard slot. Therefore, it only has PCI-e 1x bandwidth, and modern graphics cards, even mid-range ones like the 9600GT, need a lot more bandwidth than that.

I sincerely hope FS does well with this external graphics card so they will be encouraged to put it in more notebooks.