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nVidia Announces MXM for Notebooks
Giant_Panda writes "NVIDIA just announced a new mobile graphics interface for PCI Express based
notebooks (PR here).
NVIDIA is calling the interface MXM (Mobile PCI eXpress Module),
and they seem to have the support of the Taiwanese notebook ODMs on this one. HotHardware has a few pictures and details on the technology - it looks like MXM is a royalty-free standard too, so other mobile GPU
manufactures like ATi may even make MXM modules. (More MXM Info -
HardOCP,
Tweaktown)"
Will this let me swap out the video card in my (future) laptop? That would definitly increase laptop life...
those desktop graphic card giants should learn something about this little fella.I dont see extra hard drive power plugs or a 480W power source.
"The quality of life is inversely proportional to the number of keys on your keyring."
One small step for OEMs, one giant leap for consumer choice.
-Adam
This would be nice on an ITX machine. Not many of them have upgradeably graphics (None of the quiet ones AFAIK). Lack of graphics upgradability has been putting me off buying one.
Mini-PCI is an open standard, just like PCI. You even buy the specifications from the same place, the PCI SIG. What nVidia is doing is pre-empting what the PCI SIG will eventually come out with, perhaps in the hopes that the PCI SIG will adopt their standard as the official PCI graphics standard for laptops.
If a couple of big players like Dell and Toshiba adopt it for their notebooks, this will most likely become the standard.
Someone else on this thread added that CardBus does exactly what you are asking for. I would also like to add that audio capabilities should be absorbed into the video card anyway so that you can send it a single datastream and get both video and audio out, so you don't need to add audio capabilities to the bus.