External gfx card options?

[Syphanx]

Hi,
I've been looking at external graphic card options for my laptop, I've read that although usb and firewire dont put out the same speed i.e. 2000mbps (of which a pcie slot does). So far I've found,

Magma ExpressBox1: External PCI Express

This is exactly what I want... but if you have a look at the price tag ($745USD), it becomes quite costly, the you've gotta add the other $500 for the actual card itself.
Has anyone seen something like this but a cheaper option?

Thanks.

 

[Jorsoft]

As far as I know these are the only guys who make anything like this. You might be able to find an older version, like one that uses regular PCI or AGP, on ebay or something.

 

[Syphanx]

Hmm fair enough then... that's a bit of a bummer. As I wanted to turn my laptop into a semi gaming pc as well. As im selling my system below in the next few days.
Do you think there is going to be something else like this magma thing come out?

 

[objecterror]

Depends on what your wanting to run on your laptop. Alienware starts out some of their laptops with SLi configs, which i think is really pointless unless you have a 17'' screen. but if your looking to take the signal out to a big screen t.v. From what i've read on the net, external graphics cards are rumored to basically run like external hard drives, toms hardware has a discussion on this
The Graphics State of the Union | Tom's Hardware