14 DAY TRIAL // ASUS has just announced that they will mass produce an external graphics card for laptop use. The card is called "XG Station" and is indeed an external unit that allows laptop users to play high-quality 3D games by connecting the card to an ExpressCard slot. Because the XG Station is an external solution, it can be unplugged when you don't need the 3D power.
The XG Station connects to the notebook's ExpressCard slot and uses a fully functional PCI Express x16 link for graphics cards. Because the XG Station connects through a PCIE x16 link, the enclosure can be populated with any size-compatible graphics card. You can mount any Ati or Nvidia card (excepting perhaps the 8800 series which has a non standard layout). The standard XG comes preinstalled with a 7900GS card.
Unfortunately, the XG Station is powered externally by a separate power brick that plugs directly into the adaptor. That means the solution won't be portable because you need juice to power the 3D monster. But I guess that users who possess integrated graphics onto their laptops won't mind.
An LCD display and a control knob lie on the surface of the XG Station. The display is customizable and you can read information such as frame rate, fan speed and GPU temperature among other parameters. The control knob can change various settings of the XG Station including the core and memory clocks without having to use software tools to control the operation.
ASUS says it will release the XG Station in the 2nd quarter of 2007. Pricing of the XG Station is unknown. The XG Station adaptor only interfaces with ExpressCard built-in interfaces but should work ok if you choose to plug it in a PCIe ExpressCard adapter for the PC. So I guess that it's not a laptop-only solution after all.