CES 2007: First Ever External Video Card (And Other Asus Goodies)

This bizarre contraption takes quite a bit of explaining, and it's hardly something that every consumer is going to rush to buy. Listen: It's an external video card. Bear with me. I'll explain.

Say your notebook doesn't have 3D graphics (as is the case with many a crippled business machine). But you want to play Oblivion nonetheless. So you just hook up the an external video card (called XG Station, at least for now) via your laptop's ExpressCard slot, and run a cable to an external monitor.

Close the lid and boom, the monstrous XG Station takes over and does all the graphics processing instead of the lame chip inside the laptop. Because ExpressCard has very high available bandwidth, this is now a real possibility.

I saw the XG Station in the flesh, attached to a low-end notebook alongside that same notebook with the XG. Talk about night and day. The XG-equipped machine was running heavy-duty 3D benchmarks without much stuttering. The non-XG machine looked like it was about to catch fire. Whoosh!

As for the dial, it lets you adjust the fan speed, among other things, depending on how hardcore your gaming plans may be. The readout shows temperature, volume, and other stats. No pricing or release date, but it's targeted for a Q2 release.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Asus's hidden little cave of a booth, I got to check out new laptops, including the W5Fe (the one with the tumorous SideShow display, which lets you play music, look at pictures, and even read email headers while the notebook is not only closed but completely shut down) and a whole host of designer notebooks clad in leather of various colors. The high-end Asus Lamborghinis were also on display, along with a sub-two-pound notebook that uses LED backlighting. Nice!

I saw much more but don't have space to blog it all here. Once again, Asus proves itself to be the coolest company with the quietest voice. Watch my blog for more coverage of Asus in 2007!