External graphics card for laptop?

[Maxtro]

Anybody have experience using an external graphics card/device for their laptop?

It may be a better solution that buying a new machine just to play games. My laptop is several years old now and never really was anybody at playing games.

[vesseblah]

It's possible to plug in almost any graphics card into laptop with ExpressCard slot using ViDock, but there's very little point in it for older laptops. The dock itself costs about the same as graphics card, so you'll easily spend more money than a new laptop would cost.

[Maxtro]

Yeah, I've just recently heard of the ViDock. I'm wondering if buying it and a GFX card will be cheaper than buying a brand new system.

My current laptop does everything I want it to perfectly fine, except for playing modern games. It really doesn't make any sense to buy a new PC just to play one game better.

[Wries]

ViDock and a graphics card would cost a little more than 1/3 ($300ish with cheapo desktop Radeon 5650 and ViDock 3) of the price of a decent laptop (decent modestly being an i3/i5 with mobility radeon 5650 or Geforce GT 330M/425M, price of probably $700 and up), so in a sick way it MIGHT make sense going ViDock.

But an external graphics card requires an external monitor. You won't be very portable.

[vesseblah]

Except there's very little point in buying cheapest external dock with cheapest card if you're going to invest in anything it in the first place. Buying new laptop would come with warranty and most likely better hardware than current laptop at very competitive price.

[Maxtro]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

My current laptop is perfectly fine. Dual Core 2 GHz, 2 gigs ram, HDMI out. I also have two external moinitors plugged into it. One 19" and the other 42" Unless it breaks, I see no reason to replace it for a very long time. It simply meets all of my needs except for gaming and I'm more of a console gamer anyways. Now if WoW had a PS3 version I'd be set

So far buying the VidocK and a GFX card sounds like a better deal than getting a brand new machine but both are still too expensive to consider for now.

Now if only Onlive or Gaikai were available for Wow I might be OK with that.

[llDemonll]

The video card will be held back by your processors, laptops are either hit or miss when you get them; theres not much upgrade potential