Asus XG-Station Benchmarks at the CeBIT

At the CeBIT Asus presented its new external docking station for a PCI-E video card (equipped with a 7900GS desktop video card) and also first benchmarks in connection with a W5 subnotebook, which gets well playable.

ASUS XG-Station for an external video card for a notebook

The exhibited W5 subnotebook with integrated video card usually reaches 539 3DMark 05 points according to Asus . Together with attached XG-Station and a 7900GS desktop video card connected to it, the otherwise not playable subnotebook reaches 4493 points. This is somewhat above the GeForce Go 7700 video card for notebooks according to our comparison of video cards. So, this notebook can together with these enhancements also be used to execute current games.

A well-known disadvantage of the XG-Station: It can only be used with an external display (the notebook's integrated display is reserved for the notebook video card). However, on the other hand, this also offers an easy way of attaching two additional displays.

Furthermore, the XG-Station provides Dolby Headphone support (unfortunately no speakers can be attached), 2 PCI-E slots, a 4" LED display with FPS, GPU Core Speed, and further informations, and an adjusting knob for slightly over-clocking the inserted video card (core clock rate only).

The XG station is attached to an Express Card slot (technically speaking a PCI-E x1 and USB).

According to Asus the launch had to be delayed by about 2 month. The price is still unknown. At first the XG-Station will be only available in a bundle with an ASUS 7900 GS video card, later on it should also be possible to buy one without video card.