DIY eGPU experiences

This is from my X200. My X201 is in the office.

Everest
Device Manager

 

Thanks for all the hard work you've done so far Nando4. I have a few questions, as I just purchased a brand new laptop (Thinkpad X201s) and would love to contribute to the knowledge base here.

1. Is the text file generated in Windows absolutely necessary? I only have Linux on my laptop right now. (devcon.txt if I remember correctly) The boot disk seemed to work and detected 256MB of free 32-bit PCIe space.

2. Is there an easy way to tell what my laptop is capable of? Your BootDisk post suggests that there exists a way to tell, however the step-by-step to see what the system is capable of is left for the user to sort out. Such documentation for those of us eager, but hesitant, to push the order button from Taiwan, would help significantly!

3. I fat-fingered my Wifi mPCIe card slot into 2x mode using iport while poking around. Whoops. Any way to reset this? (I can't tell you if it has affected functionality, since I run Linux right now and the wifi board didn't work anyway in the first place! )

4. Are we stuck in 32-bit PCIe space? I run 64-bit operating systems.

5. Do we get more than 256MB VRAM off the external card once in the 64-bit OS?

6. It would help a lot if you explicitly stated what "x1E" is, and how to use/enable it. Considering I run a Core 2010 platform laptop, I'd imagine I'm capable of x1E, and it'd be really nice since my laptop has no spare mPCIe slots to spare. (nor do I feel like modifying it to make internal slots externally accessible)

7. You might want to consider putting all this information somewhere other than the forums. (a wiki somewhere would be nice!) I'm sure you're getting a lot of the same questions from people like me who simply don't have the time to read 70 pages worth of forum text to find their answers. I feel bad for not searching before asking, I hope you'll forgive me.

I intend to load up Windows 7 sometime this weekend or early next week once my new solid state disk arrives. At that point I will be more than happy to send you Everest/Device Manager/etc information.

Thanks!

 

Can anyone help me with my Dell XPS M1530. I dont know what cards are compatible. I have 3 mini pcie slots and a express card slot.

Thanks

 

Does it have to be an Intel Chipset,

I have HP Pavillion dv5 1002nr, which is AMD Chipset, i looked and i have PCI-E 2.0 open (Expresscard) was wondering if DIY ViDock would work?

 

- X200 has a free 256MB window at C0000000 so can host ATI cards without any PCI relocation needed.

-Turbo memory=slot3, Expresscard slot=port4. Can do x2 if combine those two ports HOWEVER you'd lose concurrent wifi functionality, since port1 also gets switched into x2 along with it so your wifi on port2 would get switched out.

- Lenovo do whitelisting. Port3 would be the whitelisted port that would be providing x2 functionality which may make things trickier or may not. Not clear what method they use. Likley same as the 2510P so is handled with the DIY ViDock Setup.

- Can't do x1E using expresscard slot (x2 width with single lane that gives true x1 1.0 performance on Intel chipsets) since it's an even numbered port.

Recommend: consider a x2 setup, then it would be worthwhile getting a HD58xx. I'd still go a 2GB HD58xx over a GTX480. At x1 1.0 it would be too pci-e bandwidth restricted to offer any decent gains over a HD5770. Both would seriously bog down during heavy texture processing doing vram<->system ram transfers.

I'd like to help a x200/x201 user do a x2 implementation so hoping a pioneer steps up to the plate. Would showcase a small and mighty setup but needs to make the turbo memory mPCIe slot externally accessible.

See here. We have a successful M1530+HD5770 implementation on the first post.

Please refer to the first post. That is summarizing the knowledge and answers most of your questions. If someone volunteers to convert the content to wiki, provide the ability for users to submit their experience into a easily searchable database, provide space to share files, then we can move the content. Previous wiki attempt fizzled.

- 'lspnp -v' can be massaged into devcon.txt format easily enough, though a x200 has a free 256MB window at c0000000 (I assume a x201 does too), so don't need PCI relocation that is dependent on devcon.txt

-32bit PCI space is required by ATI cards since their Win7 driver doesn't talk 64-bit. 64-bit relocation a solution when there is no room to host the 256MB window in 32-bit space. ATI could change with true 64-bit drivers.

- full video card VRAM (1GB/2GB) is accessed via the 256MB window.

 

Question, I am about to purchase an m17x laptop with xfire 5870s. My situation is I need a laptop for school but for gaming aswell. I figure the m17x fills that void pretty well except battery life has me a bit leery now.

Anyways at school all i need really is a web browser and word so nothing demanding and in need of a 5870 at all, but at home my ps3 is slowly kicking the bucket and I have now decided to start pc gaming.

My question now would be would something like this be a better solution, getting a cheaper laptop and buying the hard ware and building an external graphics card, with something like a 5870 desktop GPU?

 

I think that would be a foolish decision and no offense 'cause it's a good question. The ViDock seems to be a fantastic solution for people who already have a laptop and that want a graphical performance boost.

In your position I would say if you want to save a little money maybe consider an M15x.

 

> sunlooksgreen

attached is the pic of the Octane render working at 1.8 megasamples/sec
you need to have the Nvidia card running and using the Monitor that is attached to the Nvidia card so that Octane will see that card as "active"
the 9800gt is pretty low on the card list from what i have seen on the forums. I am not sure how much of a hit the x1 PCIe bus has on the performance but the 8800gt on my other PC at full 16x PCIe was about the same speed. It shows that it is only using 29 Meg of the 1gig memory. that does not seem to be out of the ordinary to not need the full memory. anyway, hope the info helps you out.

 

Hmm, what have we determined about the extra VRAM in a 2GB card? Does it improve scores to be worthwhile to grab a one-step lower 2GB card instead of a regular 1GB card?
IE. Radeon 5850 2GB vs Radeon 5870 1GB

 

> oddious

I'm currently using this soft at 0.24 megasamples/sec, so you can see this will help me out A LOT.

this is the only thing that bothers me, as I was planning a portable setup, and keep lugging an external display ain't no more portable. Can you see any workaround this?

 

It can be portable. See Internal LCD usage setup. You'll need to make a Dummy DVI plug with a 75ohm resistor to fool the NVidia card into believing a monitor is attached. If you actually want to use the NVidia to display output, as well, not just the processing, then need to install Ultramon software. I can run a T6600 Inspiron 1440 with a DIY ViDocked HD5750 without needing an external LCD. Games are processed by the HD5750 but displayed on the internal LCD. There is a decrease in FPS compared to using an external LCD but is still way faster than the IGP.

There's some AMD RS7xxM and NVidia MCPxxx chipset in addition to Intel chipset successful setups linked off the first post.

 

I am willing to do does tests / implemations. I will order a PM3N with a second cable so we can do a x2 implementation on the x200, a test on my x201. I would also have some old ibms lieing around X61 X60. Would that be ok? I can also do a test on a HP mini 1000 which I think would also be fun.

Might it be possible that the QM57 of the X201 is 2.0 express card?

 

I had hoped, but we've found it is still 2.5Gbps. Seems Intel are implementing only the power saving features of the pci-e 2.0 spec, not the most important feature being the 5Gbps link speed.

I figure we'll see expresscard 2.0 and USB 3.0 chipsets (not separate logic chips to do USB 3.0) at the same time. They are both rated at 5Gbps.

Well pleased your going to have a go at a x2 1.0 x200 and x201 implementation. That would be the ultimate in portability with high gaming cred.

 

> nando4

How is that possible? If it's using the external card only for calculations, how is that possible that the image is beeing outputed through its dvi? Woudn't that implie that the external card is also driving the display? (and so the laptop GPU not beeing used at all?)

I'm missing something here..

 

> sun

I will do some more testing and see what i can come up with over the weekend. as you can see with theses set ups we are pushing the thoughts of what can be done with a laptop. I will see what will make the Renderer "see" the card. I will also look into making and adapter for the Nvidia card so "trick" it into thinking something is attached. The program does not like running on the laptop screen with the Nvidia screen off. SO , i will work with some other configurations to see what works.

 

hi oddious,

thanks again for your support.

I looked into octane forums, and found something that might help you out.

.

If you connect trough external card, does that mean the nvidia is also driving the display, or just passing the info that comes from laptop GPU?

 

> sun
i will take a look tonight and play see what i can get to work. without having the external Nvidia card as the primary card the Program would not launch because it would not see a Nvidia card to use. It would say " No Cuda devises found"
I will grab a drink tonight and take some time and try some stuff out for ya.


>Nando

I will get all bench marks a specs in order and post them so they can be added to the Spread sheet specs.

 

So I was reading on previous threads of users who have the same chipset as me (RS780m) is it possible to just pm users on this forum? I think it would be easier to just do that then posting replies? Any ideas?

FYI- interested in talking to Malumake

 

Maybe you need like 5 posts or so to PM people. Sometimes it is like that on forums to avoid spam and what not. Not sure though.

But I orded a PE4L together with a PM3N since I found out that I had no Expresscard-slot on my x61 tablet. With a little luck I will receive it on Monday I heard that the PM3N have a build-in feature to avoid whitelisting etc. something about a jumper and a delay upon startup. Is that true and how does it work?

 

I'm so glad I found this thread and thankful to everyone who contributed to it. I've now got my 5850 1GB hooked up to my i7 640LM x201s w/ 4GB DDR3 via PE4h and it's running ME2 beautifully at 1680x1050. I played through the beginning and there were one or two slowdowns but they lasted less than a second and didn't really take me out of the game. Thanks again!

Now I can sell off everything else that's left in gaming part of my sig!

 

mPCIe whitelisting explained with reference to a HP 2510P

The PM3N jumper is a convience feature. It delays the pci reset by 6.7s, long enough so the bios doesn't get to see the card attached to the PM3N. Some bios will otherwise halt the boot process with a "Unsupported wifi card found" type message. The other way around that halting is to power off the DIY ViDock during boot to bypass it. The HP 2510P doesn't get the halt message as it looks specifically for non-whitelisted wifi cards only. It doesn't halt on graphics cards.

The other problem I had on the mPCIe-whitelisted 2510P is that HP clobbered the pci-e port state so it didn't see any devices when attached to the mPCIe slot. The solution was to save a port dump while in a working state (wifi attached), reboot without wifi, restore the port dump and then it works fine. The DIY ViDock Setup v1.x has the save/load port feature for that sort of mPCIe whitelisting purpose.

 

Hi Nando,
i'm Max from Italy. I've read about Your experience with HP EB 2530p and..i think i need some help!
Here are my questions..

- I need to install a Gobo 2000 from HP (wwan) but, as You know, it hangs. Got not the last one BIOS (..but the one before) and like as You did to update to latest version with the fix of the hardware check. Can You help me?

- Ive read about switching (or sorry for misunderstooding! ) the video card. It could be the last fix for this PC to be one of the best around. It's possible?

Sorry for the questions, but really dunno where to look!

Have a nice day,

Max

P.S: please PM me or please notify when You'll answer me, thanx.

 

Off topic, so a quick reply. See here which will lead you to wimsbios website, ADDCCV3, and the user "semi". The last time I tried, ADDCCV3 couldn't decompress the 2530P bios. Good news is that semi has just recently offered a US$25 HP bios-modding service here which may provide you a working solution.

Can you post benchmarks, everest port screenshot as per first post so it can be added to the first post? We don't have an account of a x201 implementation experience as yet.

 

My Radeon 5870 came in the mail today. Boy is it big! Now, I have to wait for:
PE4H and accessories
Power Source
Mini-HDMI Cable

 

Here's an Everest trial screenshot:



Unfortunately my internet connection is down and I'm stuck tethered to my cell phone's 3G connection till Sunday. I'll download and run the benchmarks then.

Has anyone found a usable larger mini-HDMI wire? 9 inches is doable but I'd prefer something like 3-5 ft.

 

Bugger. The x201s has a different wifi port (port5) to the x200's port4 shown here. Does the X201s have any other mPCIe slots eg:turbo memory/WWAN? If yes, can you put the wifi card into it and see if it registers on port3? Would need another mPCIe slot as port3 for the x201s to be able to do a x2 setup.

US$6-delivered 1.5m/5ft dealextreme mini HDMI cable.

If want 20-30% more performance, ask for a Lenovo+Intel fix for full x1 1.0 performance as explained here.

 

Popping open the Thinkpad and switching the WiFi card to the slot next to it resulted in the card going from Port 5 to Port 2. The reference manual indicated a third mini-PCIe slot for half cards but I didn't see it when examining the board. Possible the x201s doesn't have it while the x200/x201 does.

Perfect, thanks!

 

First of all, brilliant thread. Came across it when I noticed a signature saying that someone had an HD 5770 working with their laptop and did some curious googling.

Right, I've got a Dell Inspiron 1520. There's one mini-PCIe slot taken up by the wifi card, but I've apparently got two spare (WWAN and WPAN - 3g and bluetooth). Would either of these slots do for the PM3N adaptor (along with the Expresscard one for 2x goodness)? I don't want to have to remove my wifi to get decent performance.

Also, would I have any problems as far as my discrete GFX is concerned (8600M GT 256mb)? Or anything else, for that matter? I've got 2gb RAM, a T7250 2ghz, and am running Win 7 x86. I'm very close to pulling the trigger on the PE4H and an HD 5750 1GB, along with a cheap PSU and possibly a MATX case to house it all in. I love the idea of this setup, and the possibility of extending the life of my laptop, and basically the whole DIY aspect of it. It's like I must do it, in the name of science. Even if it doesn't give me a significant performance boost then, well, I'd still have the 5750 for a new build, and I know plenty of people with laptops containing decent processors and RAM, but rocking a horribly bad integrated graphics solution that'd love to buy the setup and stick a card of their own in it.

 

hi, nando4..
so buzzy... on line in this place.

i 've got a problem on the upper issue, today.
With dvi-dummy & your batch file .. setting , mirroring is not possible after rebooting.
attached image is error massage from win7

what is at fault?

 

I experienced the same problem.

I had setup mirroring then disabled a monitor that was not in use. Ultramon then compained that the mirroring setup is invalid and to do it again like in your screenshot.. yet when I go into the mirroring setup it won't start mirroring.

Reinstalling Ultramon did not fix the problem.

I resorted to deleting Ultramon's mirroring registry settings (search for Ultramon in regedit) to be able to re-do the mirroring setup with the monitor I wanted disabled. That then provided a correct mirroring setup with no further error messages.

The developer confirmed the bug and will have it fixed in the next release of Ultramon.

for x2 link speed you need two ports (mPCIe+mPCIe or mPCIe+expresscard) that are port1+port2, port3+port4, port5+port6. Other combinations like port1+port4 will not work. If setup x2 using port3+port4, you lose functionality of devices on port2 since port1+port2 gets switched to x2 along with it.

Can check what your mPCIe/expresscard port is by inserting a device into it and seeing what port it appears on in Everest->Systemboard->Chipset->Southbridge.

 

>sun

On the Octane Rendering front. I got it to work with the dummy Dvi/Vga set up but it is a big pain.!! you have to have Utramon doing the mirroring and that along was not fun. NOW, if the laptop has a built in Nvidia card then it might be easy because you will be able to pick the card that the program sees. being that i have ATI that is not the case.

Idea i had though. the program wants to have the program running on the screen that is active on the Nvidia card. I have to move the program to the screen that is being driven by the nvidia card.

Maybe a VGA to s-video adapter then a USB capture card would work.

DealExtreme: $2.81 VGA to S-video and 3RCA F Cable

DealExtreme: $9.60 EasyCap USB Video Capture Adapter

just and idea. it would be about 15 bucks to give it a try.

 

thanks for reply, nando4.

yet.. i've to ask your help.

would you explain deleting items more in detail ?



would you mean deleting all in red box..?
........

what should I delete in regedit..?

 

Yes. I deleted the whole HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Realtime Soft\Ultramon\3.x.x\Mirroring section. I was then able to successfully create a new mirroring configuration. Suggest you use regedit's 'export' feature to save that section to a file so can restore it if you absolutely need to.

 

I have a dv2000 laptop with 1.5gb of ram and 2.0 ghz cpu. would it even be worth upgrading? Would it be able to play crysis in at least low settings? oh yeah, thanks for the information. Could you also make a video of how you installed it. Thanks.

 

You should probably upgrade your memory first.

 

if you find a driver for 8600m that'll let you select 5750 as primary in win7, let me know.

 

Unfortunately, it can only accept 2gb

 

Intel-based DV2000 can accept 3GB of RAM. It also has either pads or a mPCIe socket near the CMOS battery, visible if you remove the HDD bay. Those pads/socket is port3, which can be combined with the wifi mPCIe port4 to make a x2 link. With a decent amount of RAM and video card, a HD5xxx using a x2 link would be Crysis capable.

 

The thing is that I have an amd based cpu and i have the hp pavilion dv2000z...i think its one of the original laptops of its kind.

 

thanks for your help, nando4.

Now, ultramon_mirroring is corrected by your method, and so good working after system is rebooted.

But gaming performance is too low than that of dragged windowed mode from Xternal Monitor. it's been between 10-25 FPS in my system.

Too high cpu usage of the mirroring.
In the mirroring mode, more than 40% of cpu usage is used for basic display in lappy 'cause of ultramon's mirroring.

So.. cpu resource is NOT enough to drive the game.

ha..ha..ha..

therefore .. for gaming.. i recommand not to use the ultramon's mirroring, but only for some convenience uses.

and.. in the case of lappy screen only, for the purpose of gamming with assistance from X-graphic card...

nando4' tips ( - mirroring) + dragging the target window to the other monitor using taskbar right-click menu ( created by ultramon installation)


additional necessary step to nando4' tips

1) setting smart taskbar.
refer to : http://gsool.tistory.com/entry/ultramon-smart-task-bar-configuration-설정

2) make an additional batch file for the X-monitor configured primary, for the using X-graphics.( for example, naming this file "default.bat" with hot-key "ctrl+alt+D")

working process
1) in the native mode, execute My Desktop of Explorer & move to other monitor("invisible").

2) switch to default mode(X-graphics & X-monitor take a role of principal display adaptor), and choose the game in the window of My Desktop folder.
(if My Desktop folder is not visible in lappy, then use the taskbar icon with right-click menu "Move to other monitor")

3)Enjoy it !!!

refer to:
?, ?? ???. :: X-graphics to Lappy screen ( PE4H or PE4L ) , Benchmarking pics & flash

 

Hello !
I've got a Dell XPS M1210 (2006) laptop,



with a Core 2 Duo T7200 (2,00 GHz) CPU,
2 Go DDR2-667,
and the famous Intel GMA950. (ICH7M)

Now I was wondering if I could do a DIY Vidock on this laptop...
No ExpressCard port here, but two mPCIe ports instead :



Then what graphic card would be the best for approx. $130 ?

 

First of all Hello everyone, and thanks for great thread like this. I am new here and my Sony Vaio VPC-F115FM with 6GB DDR2 memory, i7 cpu, and Geforce 330M doesnt want to work with ViDock.

1. I made screens of Device manager and Everex
Imageshack - everestscreenwithati.jpg
Imageshack - devicemanagescreen.jpg

2. It finds the Ati Radeon 5770 but I cannot install drivers, and it says Resources are not ready or something like that.

I did not risk doing Bootdisk since I dont know my configuration and what script I have to create , maybe someone can help me out and point me in the right direction ? Thank you all in advance.

 

I think U can do it in x1 mode, basically.

U need posting more information about your system.

A Shot in Everest (system monitoring program, FreeWare), At tab [mainboard] >> [chipset] >> [southbridge] .

And More Shots in DeviceManager view about resources.

Among the recommanding graphcs cards around that price are HD5750, HD5770, HD4850 ... etc , and useful graphics in a little lower price than them are HD5670...etc.

 

i would recommand to refer to front page of this thread.

there are basic concepts of scriptings, setting, & furthermore .. etc

if you could not dare to risk doing Bootdisk, then use magma full function_2.6 at first.
And additional refering about usage .

and.. U need to post more clear images for your system data .m..m.. if U want more advices from in-this-place peers.

 

Here are the benches:



I don't know all that much about benching so I could be totally off about this but aren't the DX9 scores lower than they should be?

 

_oddious

Didn't understand how your capture card setup would work. I'm not that good in computer tech. I think best idea now is to try by myself, and cross my fingers so that my laptop nvidia will make anything easier.

Whatever happens, thanks again for all the things you tried. And to everyone else here. This is a great post.

Will keep you informed how everything goes.

 

You are running x1 1.0 (not x1E). The DX10 dmcv4 scene4 shows the vram<->system ram transfers bogging you down to ~34FPS. The 3dmark06 cpu score is low dragging down the overall 3dmark06 score. SM3.0 otherwise is OK. Worth running it again ensuring no background processes. Also can you run the variable dx9 RE5 benchmark so can compare against the other systems on the first post?

You require the DIY ViDock Setup v1.x USB bootdisk to relocate the NVidia resources at Exxxxxxx to Fxxxxxxx, freeing up a 32-bit 256MB window to host your ATI card .

 

Got it, thanks! Here's the variable:

 

No problem. I think if you have an Nvidia card in the laptop the program may show the external card as available and it will be easy to use it. the new beta drivers form Nvidia also let you pick the gpu for Cuda processing.

please keep us posted when you get the set up going.

 

Thanks for trying to help, I tried to Install this Driver Magma Full Function it didnt work, What do you mean I need to post more clear images? They are Full HD resolution i believe and if you click them they open on full screen , or maybe you its about something else? Thanks