There seems to be confusion about a few things thou, heres what I reckon: ATI have done the smart thing here......they have realised that all the current standard cable connections (USB, Firewire etc) and card slots (Express etc) simply dont have the bandwidth to handle a decent full size PCI video card, so they have invented their own (to quote "proprietary 4.0Gbps PCIe 2.0 connector"). Yes, thats a probem for current model notebooks because they dont come with one, and I can imagine getting their new type of connection as a standard component on notebooks is proberly the thing which is holding them up. But I am guessing that AMD themselves or someone else will make a hybrid connector that will allow you to hook it up in a standard slot/connection. This WILL limit the bandwidth available and once you reach a certin point, it wont matter how fast the GPU in the XGP is, it'll only work as good as the bandwidth allows. Now this isnt as bad as it seems, because you will still get an improvement over the standard on board graphics (specially if you have a middle to low range notebook), just how much is yet to be seen. ASUS have a system thats available now and use's a standard notebook slot to connect it. It works, it improves things greatly, but its limited to the bandwidth on the cables connecting it to the notebook.
"I'm a college student looking for a new laptop, but almost all of my media I receive digitally. I'm looking for a laptop, not a netbook, without an optical drive, and budget sensitive. The optical drive will just be a waste of space, when I can have thinner laptop. What's out there?"
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So whats the latest? Looks like a winner to me :)
There seems to be confusion about a few things thou, heres what I reckon:
ATI have done the smart thing here......they have realised that all the current standard cable connections (USB, Firewire etc) and card slots (Express etc) simply dont have the bandwidth to handle a decent full size PCI video card, so they have invented their own (to quote "proprietary 4.0Gbps PCIe 2.0 connector").
Yes, thats a probem for current model notebooks because they dont come with one, and I can imagine getting their new type of connection as a standard component on notebooks is proberly the thing which is holding them up. But I am guessing that AMD themselves or someone else will make a hybrid connector that will allow you to hook it up in a standard slot/connection.
This WILL limit the bandwidth available and once you reach a certin point, it wont matter how fast the GPU in the XGP is, it'll only work as good as the bandwidth allows.
Now this isnt as bad as it seems, because you will still get an improvement over the standard on board graphics (specially if you have a middle to low range notebook), just how much is yet to be seen.
ASUS have a system thats available now and use's a standard notebook slot to connect it. It works, it improves things greatly, but its limited to the bandwidth on the cables connecting it to the notebook.
Cheers Gump!