USB 3.0...possible external video cards?

Does anybody here think that with new superfast USB connections, one day several years from now we'll see external video cards? The idea would be pretty sick because you wouldn't need to worry about your PSU (could be powered externally) and it would be super duper easy to just plug and play instead of taking your case apart...plus cooling would be really easy too.

Just wanted to see if anybody else thinks this may be a possibility in the future. Discuss!

they already have something like that for pci express people that need low profile cards..

like an external pcie enclosure or something like that

i saw it a few weeks ago.. if i see it again ill post a link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XG_Station

I think it's very likely that all parts of a PC will be external. High speed cabling connecting these external parts will give way to wireless, just like Sony's new wireless HDMI standard. Can you imagine having a rack beside your desk and on this rack are your video card box, hard drive box, and all of the external components of your PC. And say you want to switch parts, maybe use a different graphics card - just click some buttons on your desktop and bam.

Each component will have its own power supply and cooling, and will look like a box with connections and LEDs on it.

Does anybody here think that with new superfast USB connections, one day several years from now we'll see external video cards? The idea would be pretty sick because you wouldn't need to worry about your PSU (could be powered externally) and it would be super duper easy to just plug and play instead of taking your case apart...plus cooling would be really easy too.

Just wanted to see if anybody else thinks this may be a possibility in the future. Discuss!

demi0227_basic

No, and ill tell you why. Even as fast at usb 3.0 is, its no where near fast enough. USB 3.0 moves data at 4.8 Gigabits/s or about 600 Megabytes/s. A PCI-E x16 bus (the standard right now for video cards) movies data at 8 Gigabytes/s, which is roughly 13 times more data then USB 3.0. And the new PCI-E 2.0 is going to be twice as fast.

So unfortunately no, USB 3.0 wont be able to support video cards. Its a good idea though, and there is something out there called External PCI-E, which does add the option for external video cards. But it has yet to take off.

There are external video cards....for laptops. They make use of the slot on the side (Cardbus I think). What I read is that they're limited by the bandwidth of the slot so it's not a perfect solution.

As for desktops, I can't see any reason to do it. The bandwidth will still be an issue as well as the overall bulkiness of it.