DIY eGPU experiences

Yeah, the dell Vostro 3350 is a great alternative with expresscard 34 (maybe 2.0) for much less $$ than the Dell E6320 or Lenovo X220.

Here is the hands on: Vostro 3350 -- Engadget

I just hope that battery life and buil quality are better than the first generation Vostro 3300.

 

Guys, I decided to try DIY ViDock too. Have a Toshiba Satellite A300D-126 with AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core-TL-62 2.1 GHz and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470. 2+1GB RAM. I use winXP, but if necessary will replace it with win 7. Intend to buy ATI Radeon HD 5770. I have a expresscard slot and free Mini PCI Express slot. Want to achieve the best possible performance from this card. Wich set would you advise me to buy? PE4H ver2.4 - EC2C, PE4H ver2.4 - PM3N or something else? Can it be done at all? And will it be enough just a standard 300 - 350 W pc power supply? Thank you in advance for your help! /Forgive me my Google translated English./

 

First of all, you must give us your info from everest or aida... however before asking a question please return back to othere frequently asked questions... (i know i'm not wo rules these threads, but that's how i help. )

Then tell me your language i can describe it, as translated!


Me too still planning to buy one... but i'm sure what i'm doing...

 

What desktop GPU shall I get to get approximately 40% more performance than HD5870m to use in the ViDock ?

Thank you

 

For now, you can't. The expresscard 1.0 with a gtx460 optimus offer similar performance than a HD5870m.

But when we will see expresscard 2.0 and gtx560 optimus, it will be a huge upgrade!

 

So that pe4l board has a usb input in it....I use it to plug in a usb 4-port hub. And I put my wireless mouse and keyboard in there. So when I plug in my vidock the mouse and keyboard are already connected.....

I was thinking about buying a sony 8gb flash drive enhanced for readyboost on sale for $10 and plugging it in the usb hub as well....would this help make things run even faster?......

Would an actual SSD be better and does a SSD make readyboost useless?

 

So here are my results after finding the most stable overclock:

SL9300 @ 2.251 GHz + 25% PCI-E @ 1.0 V
gtx460 powered by 203W xbox adapter with x1.opt

Resident evil 5 - 70.9FPS @ 1280x720 External LCD
Resident evil 5 - 17.9FPS @ 1280x800 Internal LCD (this benchmark is really weird... I couldn't figure out why it was performing so badly)
3dmark06 @ Default settings - 1280x800 Internal LCD- 9443
3dmark06 @ Default settings - 1280x720 External LCD 10598

Overall i'm very happy with the internal results. I was surprised to get such a high internal 3dmark06 result for my clock speed considering nando4's @ 2.64GHz was 9607. I noticed the result immediately when I played starcraft with results at around 40-high 50FPS at medium detail with the internal LCD. However I am a little disappointed by my external results, they don't seem much better than my internal results, not as significant as a lot of other benchmarks i've seen here including nando4's. Are there any settings I could be missing that could have affected performance? To be honest though, external doesn't matter much to me, this was intended purely for internal play so I am pretty satisfied with the results.

Nando4, is it possible to overclock the pci-e bus beyond 25%? I would be interested in trying this to see if there would be further performance benefits.

 

Hey people, first post here

Anyhow, so I made the vidock according to instructions and it worked out great! However, when I play my desired game (DoW2) for more than an hour, my monitor goes off and tells me their is no signal. I do a cold reboot for it but nothing works. So my question is that is it the monitor's problem that it goes out or is it my vidock set up?

I'm using an Galaxy GTX 460 1024 powered by an Athena Tech Apollo power supply of 350 watts. The monitor I am using is an acer 22 inch. 1680 x 1050.

Any help will do. Thanks!

 

Is it overheating?

 

the power supply feels really warm. I do have a 500 watt in my closet. Would that be better?

 

Maybe, although I thought the Graphics card would be overheating... You might as well try it if you think that is the problem, if it is really hot.

 

Just an update. Re installed both my 4500 and 460 drivers and it seemed to fix the RE5 DX9 Var benchmark problem above. I got 43.9 FPS VAR for internal optimus. 29.3FPS Fixed for internal optimus.

 

Congratulations on the cpu and pci-e overclocking success. Below I have duplicated your setup but saw almost 10% better RE5 performance. I couldn't get my freeware 3dmark06 to run at your 1280x720 resolution.

[email protected] (322x7), 25% pci-e overclock, GTX460 1GB 336-cores 675/1800, NVidia audio=off

3dmark06 1280x1024 (ext): 10889
RE5-var.dx9 1280x720 (ext): 76.9
3dmark06 1280x800 (int): 9495

Do you have a GTX460 or a GTX460SE? A GTX460 has 336 cuda cores. A GTX460SE has 288 cores, 15% less which could explain lower performance when using an external LCD. A GTX460SE requires less power so may be a better option for predominantly internal LCD mode usage.

Add the following lines to your \setpll\ics9lprs397dklf.lut's [PCIE] section for further pci-e overclocking. Even more entries can be added by increasing the first column value by 2 and the third column value by 1 though I doubt you'll see stability past 30%.

Code:

127, 20, 3F
129, 20, 40
131, 20, 41
133, 20, 42

If you can generate a 1280x1024 3dmark06 on the external LCD and a 1280x800 RE5-var dx9 then I can update your results on the first page.

 

would any of these bios settings help with the mod

 

Okay, so I believe that it is most likely possible that the card is overheating. How do I solve this or what can I go from here? I have a 500watt ATX power supply running it, more than enough.

 

How does one activate "internal lcd only" mode with Optimus? It seems I have to make the extended display the primary to have it clone on my internal, but if I don't have an external I can't see anything if I make the external the primary. A catch-22!

Attaching the card and using extended display with internal as primary doesn't utilize the external card. All prerequisites (GTS450, Intel HD) satisfied.

 

I have read in some of your earlier posts: Need to wait till Q1 2011 for a pci-e 3.0 equipped Sandy Bridge notebook to get x1 2.0 performance. That platform means if you plug in a pci-e 3.0 video card then will get the equivalent of x1 4.0 performance.

So does that mean that the DV6 SB notebook will be able to achieve x1 4.0 performance when plugged into its pci-e slot with a 3.0 video card? On a side note, has these 3.0 video cards been released yet?

Another issue that bugs me is that there are USB 2.0 to expresscard converters which are too slow to be used for docking, but will USB 3.0 to expresscard converters be able to be used instead? Imagine 2 of these USB converters on the laptop that is connected to a PE4H-EC2C.

 

My earlier comment suggesting SB would have pci-e 3.0 was incorrect. SB has pci-e 2.0 ports only, providing x2 1.0 equivalent performance.

When you disconnect the external LCD then the Intel HD can be used to display the image rendered by the NVidia card. Which programs use the NVidia gpu are set in the Optimus part of the NVidia control panel as shown below:

 

I'm selling my PE4L kit here if anyone is looking to save some $$$

 

Okay, so I switched my power supply to a 500 watt and tried playing DoW2 again. I got a healthy 65 fps with the galaxy gtx 460. However, the card overheats really fast and my acer monitor shuts down and tells me no signal. I try this again several times, but the game keeps shutting down, earlier and earlier every time.

I am now asking is that is their a problem with my monitor, the game or the card?

Thank you very much for any help.

 

I think that sounds like the card stops sending a signal and stops functioning because it is overheated. I do not know why it would do this when others do not. Lets hope someone else replies to you now.

 

I know that this has probberly been asked before, but i just cant find the answer in over 300+ pages of this thread

but can the lenovo t410 nvs3100 512mb run the optimus tweak??


Edit:

As for the card overheating?, i had this problem(on a desktop) and it was not getting clean power form the PSU.
try a water cooling block XD!!
is the card itself getting hot or is it a bad connection that shows it's self when it heats up?

 

Yeah its the card thats getting hot. I can't tell whats it max temp is or anything, nor can I tell that the power supply is bad.

It also feels like the fan is not speeding up to counter these tempetures as well.

 

this is to especially thank Nando4 and others behind this amazing thread...


I wish to share my experiences so far.. of my DIY-GPU rig....
i use octane render ( Octane Render - The Interactive Physically Based Render Engine) an amazing 3d rendeing software, which is CUDA based, uses GPU for processing and does path-tracing renderings at speeds more than 10x as compared to CPU based renderers; on my Dell Precision M4500 (win 7, 64 bit, nvidia optimus, i5, Quadro FX 880m-1GB, 4 GB RAM)..
its been 2 weeks since i assembled my rig, and it works like a charm...

i have documented my experiences on this thread (you might need to create an account to view this.. )
Octane Render Forums - Login

cheers and thanks a ton!

 

Hey all

@ epthius - try sticking a big A** fan in front of the GPU and see if that helps, otherwise i think your card may be dodgy.

2 things:

1. i wonder if thunderbolt would work well for the external GPU??

Also I'm having problems now... basically every time i start up with the DIY Dock, everything works fine until approx 1 or 2 minutes then my external screens freeze then my whole computer freezes before going blue screen "nvlddmkm.sys" it says that that was the cause.

My system setup.
Lenovo t410 , 1x PCiE , Geforce 8800gt, two dell 19" monitors and using a 1.5ft Mini HDMI cable

Any help would be greatly appreciated..

 

Since I've moved now, and built up my DIY ViDock again, I can correct my RE5-benchmarks.

So, I've updated my post, and also included benchmarks showing the performance impact of the DualIDA tweak as well as a picture of my setup.

(Nando4, can you please update the performance table for my D830?)

 

Well, I don't have a big a** fan and I am out of desktop room. So now I learn that I am using a defunct card unlike everyone else? Well then, congradulations to me for wasting 200 bucks unless there is a solution

 

Hi Guys,

Since nobody seems able/willing/ Keen to help me how to make it working, I'm seeling my brand new ViDock 3.... it's on ebay..... just browse for it.

Hope someone is more lucky than me.

Regards,
D.
P.S. I'm sorry if i've posted my announcement here, but I've contributed as well with my experience (bad one obviously)

 

I am testing the trial version of Badaboom 2.0 before purchasing the full software. I was looking forward to using the built-in CUDA processing for transcoding videos to the Zune HD and BB Torch, but there doesn't seem to be much of a gain using the GTX 460 over CPU. Both transcode at about 60 fps on my system. Has anyone used Badaboom in the forum with better GPU benchmarks?

 

I'm just curious, have any of you tried Lucid Virtu? Does it work? It's desktop software that copies pci-ex videocard output to the IGP framebuffer. It basically does the exact same thing as what we're trying to do here (display on internal LCD), but it seems like it would involve less hacking?

it would be cool to have graphics power you could just plug into the laptop.

Lucidlogix virtu

 

Hey guys, just registered to ask a few questions,
I've read through as much of the 316 pages I can stand

1. Will this work with a Dell Inspiron 1545? It has an ExpressCard slot and an Intel 4500MHD, so I think it should.
2. What's a decent card for the PE4H under $100 but still good enough for gaming? Is this suitable? http://cgi.ebay.com.au/PowerColor-2..._Components&hash=item43a3e53527#ht_2681wt_905
3. Will this PSU suit the card you just recommended or the one I mentioned above? 500W ATX Power Supply P4 / AMD 24&20pin, 1 xSATA inc. (eBay item 270724050626 end time 23-Mar-11 18:55:01 AEDST) : Computers

Thanks for the help guys, and please keep this great thread alive!

 

1. Yes, the Inspiron 1545 can support a x1E link to a Radeon card. Better still, your Intel 4500MHD should allow you to run a x1.Opt link with a NVidia Fermi card for excellent performance.
2. I would say a AMD Radeon HD 5670 or a NVidia GTS450, The GTS450 is the better card here and will give you the best performance for your setup.
3. That looks like trouble. The specs seem OK but a very cheap PSU is often a bad PSU. I've had issues with more expensive PSUs frying my PE4H and GPU so I don't recommend going cheap on the PSU. Also, if you go for one of the above cards, you can get away with using a 120W/12V laptop power brick which is more convenient.

Nvidia setups are giving the best bang per buck on Vidocks at the moment. Nando has a pretty useful breakdown of relative performance and total cost of parts involved in building Fermi Vidocks here.

Have fun building your DIY Vidock!

 

Thanks so much for the answers! I have a spare 250W PSU laying around, so if you think it would run fine on a 125, I'll give this a go. The extra money will go towards the 450. It has some decent reviews and appears to do what I need it to. I'll order the parts tomorrow, and I'll let you all know of my experiences when it all arrives! Thanks again so much for the answers

 

As long as it's a decent PSU that can deliver 10 amps on the 12V rail (check specs on the PSU case) I don't see a problem. Good luck!

 

Just buy a 120mm case fan, you can get it from Frys (although their store sucks so if possible don't) or any of the online aftermarket cooling stores like Sidewinder or Jabtech. Might want to try switching the thermal paste too, arctic cooling mx-2,3,4 are all good. Tape it onto the card, and it'll work great.


So I'm planning to buy a Lenovo X220 when it comes out, and I've followed this DIY ViDock thing for a while. I noticed on the spec sheet it says it has 1 mpci-e, 1 half mpci-e, and 1 expresscard slot. Does this possibly mean it would be possible to use all 3? :O Or is it only possible to use x1, x2, x4, x8, x16, i.e. powers of 2 lanes? If they're all PCI-e 2.0 electrically that would be pretty awesome.

 

It's 16 amps.

 

It's possible your card is defective, in which case your best solution is to RMA it. You card is actively ventilated so unless you have constrained airflow around it, it should be sufficient to keep the temperature low even under load. My Gainward GTX 460 GC barely registers above 60C under load. Is your Galaxy GTX 460 running at stock clocks? Have you tried increasing the fan speed on the card?

That should be plenty, even with usual PSU output degradation.

 

Tweaktown have some GTX460 badaboom transcoding benchmark results to compare against.

Based on my investigation of the Series-6 chipset, Intel have locked the port width to only be settable in the flash descriptor. Means then pre-boot software like Setup 1.x can no longer enable a x2 link so neither x2 2.0 or x2 1.0 is feasible on Series-6 chipsets.

A better bet would be waiting for a Thunderbolt based notebook PC for which Intel have already combined ports as either x2 2.0 or x4 1.0. Sony being the first to provide notebook PCs with Thunderbolt ports.

Though x1 2.0 Optimus on a X220 then would get some pretty impressive performance. We still require hwtools to provide pci-e 2.0 EM compliance of their hardware to make that possible.

I'm running a GTX460 with a 12V/15A ATX PSU here. Based on you linking ebay-au, have you considered an ebay GTX460 instead? They go for b/w AU$110-$170. Your Inspiron 1545's 4500MHD means a x1.Opt link is possible so a GTX460 would have a ~10-30% performance gain over a GTS450. A better bang-per-buck option imho. Careful of the GTX460SE Smart Edition, it has 15% less CUDA cores than a GTX460; 288 versus 336.

 

That Sony Vaio Hybrid PC (described here) sounds just like what we were looking for. A lightweight Core i7 2011 equipped laptop with a Thunderbolt-linked base station sporting an AMD/ATI next-gen Whistler GPU, Bluray writer, ethernet, usb and VGA/HDMI out? Sold! Better still, Sony expects to launch it this Summer, going against predictions of Thunderbolt-equipped PC laptops being released only in Q1 2012.

Excellent news! I was getting an itchy trigger finger for the Lenovo X220 but I can wait until Summer.

 

that's disappointing especially since Intel decided to partner with Satan for their Thunderbolt release.

Do you see some fix in the future for this? An x1 2.0 link would probably be okay with lower resolutions I suppose. I'm a bit disappointed to hear this since the X220 seemed so perfect with all the spare mPCI-e ports on the bottom, and at such a low price compared to ridiculous Sony stuff.

 

Two problems:

(i) Lenovo now has msata pins rather than pci-e pins on the WWAN slot. So it looks like the system only has 2 pci-e ports. Those ports also must be electrically wired as port1+2 or port3+4 or port5+6 for x2 link width to be possible.

(ii) Someone needs to hack the flash descriptor part of the X220 bios to set the port to be x2 width. Start hacking here: PCH_SPI_Programming_Guide.pdf, search for "PCIEPCS1" and PCIEPCS2".

Now if Lenovo were clever they'd have already created a Thunderbolt port capable system by engineering their schematic to allow a x2 link by combining EC+mPCIe. Then they'd only need to:

(ii) provide a retrofit package so a user can internally combine the mPCIe + expresscard slot leading to a Thunderbolt port hosted on the expresscard slot . Even better would be the expresscard slot being prewired for x2 2.0 with just an expresscard to provide a Thunderbolt port.

(iii) provide a bios option that allows a x2 link width on the "Thunderbolt" port.

I agree. If the X220 had a Thunderbolt port it would be the perfect pocket rocket. Let's see if HP add a Thunderbolt+IPS+msata+weight loss to their 12" 2560P. Dell's E6220 doesn't have a Thunderbolt port.

 

whether xps15 can?
from this picture:

there is only one full mpcie card slot which is wwan,so is it OK or other way to apply the vidock

 

That looks like a nice card, but it starts to push the budget a bit far. I had planned to outlay around $200AUD (~$190USD) for the total project, but I had decided to pay the extra $30 for the GTS450.

Given that the Inspiron 1545 has a 2.2Ghz dual core with 4GB of RAM, will the 450 be suitable for running games like Black Ops and GTAIV?

I'd preferably like to run this on a 1920x1080 resolution so I'm happy to turn down the graphics a bit, but will the 450 be suitable? Or will I notice enough of a difference using a 460 to warrant the price?

Also just noticed that you recommend a PE4L, but your setup uses a PE4H. Is there any reason for this? If I can use the PE4L, I'll go with that because it's cheaper and I'll then be able to get the GTX460.

 

HWtools wrote me Thunderbolt adapter will come in Q4/2011.
Thats very late, maybe i have to get an expresscard 2.0 solution :/
The performance of both solutions would be interesting.

 

I've found today something quite interesting for us:
Products — PCIe-over-Cable — Host Adapters — Express Card PCIe Host Interface Board OSS-PCIe-HIB2-EC-x1/x4

btw. what is "redriver" ?
"Redriver Pericom P12EQX 4401"
I found this chip in my advanced docking station and want find out what is for.
That's how I found this kit :>

 

Hi Nando,
A little update. Got my Macbook pro running with a radeon hd 5770 with 5 mini display ports. Needed 3 active and 2 passive mini display port to dvi adapters. Compaction still occurs with largest free block at e00000000 and still have to plug in and unplug on boot so it is the same procedure as before. I now have 5 displays connected to the radeon, 1 directly connected to the dvi port on the side of the mac and 1 internal lcd making 7 displays. Works perfect.

Thanks again

 

Hey peeps,

So I replaced my galaxy card with a Zotac and tweeked the fan and everything is fine! At idle it is at 30 C and at max 60 C. But I have a new problem: My monitor would shut down and tell me that there is no signal during some gaming, even when the card is not under stress. I am using an acer monitor and wondering if its the card thats causing this or is it the monitor?

 

Well you know what, its pretty obvious now that the monitor connection has an issue. You would not even have needed to replace the card, but it is nicer to have one that runs cooler. Although I can't quite conclude what is wrong with the monitor, seeing as to how it turns on for a while.

 

are there any ways to check files or reports on why it crashed?

 

Not unless your monitor creates log files. Which it does not. The graphics card should still be running, can you still hear game sounds?