Run Four Monitors On A Laptop With AMD's External Graphics

Taipei (Taiwan) - External graphics for laptops stole the show at AMD’s Puma launch press conference today at the Computex tradeshow in Taipei. Many people attach an external monitor to their laptops, but the AMD XGP or eXternal graphics platform controls up to four displays (three external and the laptop screen) through a PCI Express interface. Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) showed off their implementation by running Microsoft Flight Simulator on three screens and rendering video on the laptop screen.

The FSC AMILO GraphicsBooster contains an ATI Mobility Radeon 3870 with 512 MB of video RAM. It connects to the laptop via a PCI Express 2.0 cable and the box has DVI and DisplayPort outputs in the back. Windows Vista sees the three external monitors and AMD employees spent a few minutes configuring the resolutions within the Display Properties after two reckless Taiwanese reporters knocked the cables loose.