Its about friggin’ time … Asus announced (at CES in January 07) that they will be producing an external PCI Express card ‘module’ called the XG Station so laptop users (like me) can realize much greater graphics performance in their gameplay.

It is projected to be shipping in 2nd Quarter 07 and has an ASUS EN7900GS/2DHT/256M card with the nVidia GeForce 7900GS GPU on board, but can accommodate any PCI Express card. It integrates with the laptop via an ExpressCard slot (the updated PCMCIA slot now found on most laptops), which has a 2.5Gbps data rate (both ways). Although this does not max out the capabilities of the PCI Express x16 interface on the 7900GS, which is 4Gbps both ways, it is a helluva lot better than my integrated GPU.

I will be getting one of these when it ships, because, even with my high spec laptop am still only getting 10-15 fps (!) in SL. This is what I have been waiting for for a very long time.

(photo and drawing are ‘borrowed’ from the Asus Press Release)