ATI: Expect external video cards in the future

Our talk with ATI today

from WinCustomize Forums

ATI (now owned by AMD) talked to us for a bit today and we learned a lot of very insightful things that I don't think you'll hear about in press releases.

The first thing has to do with the power use in Windows Vista.  The gotcha of the Aero UI is power user. In our benchmarks on Dell and Lenova laptops, having Aero running cost us between 20 and 45 minutes in battery life. That's huge. We'll be talking about that more soon.  AMD says they are working on their drivers to address that as much as possible. They have a feature called "PowerPlay" that they are implementing to try to reduce power consumption.

The second thing that ATI confirmed to a direct question I asked on the subject is whether gamers can expect to eventually buy video cards that are external to the PC. I mean literally, a second box that you plug in to the wall that handles the graphics for your computer.  This is something that would be available specificlaly for the high end user who wants the absolute best performance.

...More WinCustomize CES coverage...

 

6,646 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Yep...Switching back to nvidia myself....just spent nearly 400 bucks on a ATI Radeon X1950 and went to thier site and cant even download the most current drivers to be sure I have them.........sucks.Site says sorry you clicked
a link thats not on our site....it seems all ATI's updates were kept on an external server and AMD says you can't do that from "Their Site"...the word "Leech" pops up in the http header when ya click a link for a driver update....Good way to keep customers happy....Just lost one...
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
What are you on about?

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/radeonx-xp.html

There is a great big menu on the home page that says 'Drivers and Software'. The above link is what it gave me when I select WinXP - Radeon - Radeon X1950 series. Both links work.
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Running the X1950 XTX here with the Catalyst 6.12 (same as link in comment #2). The card runs great.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
What kind of post will these external GFX card be plugged into? They'd have to provide a lot of data speed.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
What kind of post will these external GFX card be plugged into? They'd have to provide a lot of data speed.


My thought as well. I don't think USB2 could keep up.

Raven2043: Try the Omega Drivers on your ATI. They work quite well and add a bit of functionality ATI leaves out.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
#4 by thomassen

What kind of post will these external GFX card be plugged into? They'd have to provide a lot of data speed.


From what I read at other places they were to have external power units so I'd imagine the card would still be inside the case...?
Even if it wasn't how would the BIOS know there's no PCI-E card plugged in if it was external and end up not POST'ing unless there will be new specially designed motherboards in the works...

I guess we'll just need to wait and see.