Future eGPU setup

Hi,
Let me get straight to the question. I am willing to pay for a new notebook, since this one is having errors from time to time, and it's old. I know notebooks with express card are getting more and more out of date, I mean, not many notebooks are made with those one am I right? So my question is, can a notebook with USB 3.0 slot handle the external card, and can I attach it somehow? Or still the express card slot is the only way? Still no USB 3.0 solution?
Thanks in advance

 

The two easy ways to connect an e-gpu would be express card or thunderbolt. You could use the mpcie port inside your laptop but that involves cutting your case. USB 3 is not pcie, so it could not be used. There are some nice thunderbolt laptops on the market, including some from Apple, Asus, and Thinkpad.

Recently, Bplus stopped selling the th05 thunderbolt-pcie adapter, and as of now the only other thunderbolt solutions are $600+ external cases and aren't even at full 2.0 x4 bandwidth (limited to 2.0 x2 until 2014 I think, Sheltoe should know more on that) so it might be worth buying this at a later time.

What are you planning on using your setup for? I hate to say it but as of now, waiting is not a bad idea as TB cases should hopefully become much cheaper in the future. I would choose thunderbolt over express card though, as while not fully supported, its the best egpu technology available to the masses at this time.

 

I am willing to use it for casual gaming. Running games at decent graphics, or at least running them, since the one I have at the moment can't even handle them on very low-res, low settings. I wish to buy a laptop because i want to be able to use it at the university, and when i get home, i could just use the e GPU to play some games. I should look for laptops that use thunderbolt then right? I guess i could build the gpu if someone told me what port to buy. But the thunderbolt solutions then are over 600$... that's a lot.

 

I use an expresscard (check my signature for setup) and even with it, there is a huuge performance boost.
Battlefield 3(ultra):3 fps with intelHD3000, 30 fps with egpu. Same story with Just Cause 2 and many other games. I mean even though it isn't the best out there, express card gives a huge improvement.

I would definitely buy a new laptop, though. If you can, find one that has a quad core processor (sandy or ivy bridge) and the CPU usually bottlenecks the egpu. My dual core i5 isn't the best for gaming. I haven't looked too much into windows laptops with thunderbolt, but if there is one with a quad core i'd buy it.

If you aren't looking to play games at super maxxed out 1080p, then you could buy an express card-to-pcie (vidock or one from bplus) and use the sonnet echo thunderbolt/expresscard adapter. It's an additional $180 for the TB cable and adapter, but it would still be cheaper than buying a $600 case (more like $800 as I believe that is the first one that supports full length cards). This also means that once thunderbolt cases come out to be cheap, all you have to do is replace the case as you'd have the gpu, cable, and compatible laptop.

Whats your spending budget? I guess include the budget for the laptop too.

 

1000-1200$ for the laptop seems logical. I have been thinking about as the eGPU a Radeon HD 7750, seems enough for me and it's cheap. So should i go for the express card or for the thunderbolt. I have checked the internet for thunderbolt equiped windows laptops, they are almost all like ultrabooks, those are far beyond my budget, or gaming laptops ( the ASUS ones ), which are not so mobile to bring them to university...

 

In that case an express card would probably be ideal. And it's not like performance will suck, it'll still be lightyears ahead of integrated graphics.

I've looked around and haven't found any cheap quad core laptops with express cards, so you might just look into buying an ivy bridge dual core i7 if you can find one.

I would use an NVidia card (4xx series or above). Paired with an intelHD and NVidia gpu, optimus compression is enabled which is a monumental boost in performance and gives you the option to use the laptops internal lcd. AMD cards need an external monitor and when side by side with an nvidia with optimus, there really isn't a reason to not purchase NVidia. A 650 is within the same price range as a 7750, or maybe a 460.

 

Actually i have just talked to one of my friends, who can give me a nvidia GTX 650, it seems quite good for me, if it has the optimus what you said. So i should go for express card slot equiped systems? I checked Lenovo's thingpad s430, too bad it only has a dual core CPU, but it still has a thunderbolt, and it isn't that expensive... I couldn't find any good portals that list if the notebook i am viewing has an express card slot or not. Pisses me off...

 

Not a bad deal.
It really depends on if you want to upgrade later on to a thunderbolt expansion box. What route are you thinking of taking?
You might just want to spend a bit extra on a good laptop, as that will be the hardest part to upgrade down the road. Upgrading your gpu would be like $100, while you probably want to hold onto the laptop for a long period of time.
Which games are you planning on playing?

 

I think i want a laptop with thundebolt port, since it seems to be the future. Do you think this is a good idea? But the thinkpad s430's processor isn't that good, I need a notebook with better cpu that has thunderbolt. And at the moment it seems only the macbook can provide me these features, but that one is much more expensive. What laptop should i buy, what do you think?

 

Might check what happens in the next few days with CES 2013, there's usually some nice laptops that are announced then. I believe they announced several thunderbolt laptops last year so I'm guessing more will be announced this time around.

It will be hard trying to find a cheap quad core laptop with thunderbolt, thats for sure. You definitely don't want to cheap out on a laptop now, as it should last much longer. Are you in any big hurry or just want to play decent games?

 

I really only want to play games at decent graphics settings. I am thinking of a macbook pro, with quad-core cpu. It has a thunderbolt port and it's faaaast. I just have to save up some money for it. And start working besides university... I may worth it lol.

 

Lol yeah if you could find a used 2011 15inch macbook pro, that would do it. It'll cost a lot up front but be very worth it in the long run.

 

Whoops double post

 

The 2011 15 inch one has a quad-core cpu? If it has one, it may be my pick. With windows 7 I think, i have used windows since my young ages, after dos, and i am using that interface and enviroment to study at school, so the ios must be replaced. ( i study business informatics.)

 

Yeah the 15inch has a sandy bridge quad core 2.1ghz or 2.3ghz. You could always do what I did and take out the disk drive and place another drive inside, I've got my windows 7 running on a 250gb samsung 840 while os x is on a 120gb ssd (I got a bit hooked on ssd speed haha).

Heres a nice price on an Apple refurb 15inch. These are pretty much brand new and come with 1year of apple care.

Refurbished MacBook Pro 2.2GHz Quad-core Intel i7 - Apple Store (U.S.)

Heres one if you're into ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Early-2011-quadcore-2-3GHz-i7-8gb-Ram-500gb-HD-Perfect-/300843688996?pt=Apple_Laptops&hash=item460bae6424

 

I was checking them too there, and additionally on amazon. I found these in extremly good prices, and i think i will soon buy one. Will get back here soon. Anyway, the thunderbolt port adapter now is only 2x then, when it could 4x too?

 

To my knowledge express card is still a standard feature in almost all business line notebooks from dell, lenovo and hp, among which many are thin/light type.

I recently get hold of an old latitude e4300 and managed to get it working with my eGPU (expresscard + pe4h + gtx580). After browsing throught the web I think a GTX650 (which is powerful enough for the low resolution gaming on my small laptop screen) plus an ITX PSU (which is like less than a quarter in size/weight of a normal PSU) can fit comfortably in my normal 14" laptop bag which will provide sufficient mobile gaming capability and at the same time good portability if I want to ditch the eGPU stuff on business trips.

 

Hey, I also have a 2011 MBP with an i7 and 6750m.
If I take the same build like yours, how much will it cost in total? and can i use native screen? How is the booting speed?
Thank you.

 

This topic is very interesting guys. I thought the thing with eGPU was dying slowly because the amount of notebooks that are coming in the future "wouldn't" have Express card slots. But it seems like that isn't the case. I am wondering what the speed differences are between Thunderbolt/new USB 3.0 and the Express Card slot is.

I would think a typical Express Card slot would be 2.0x16... Correct me if I am wrong but if Thunderbolt is slower than an Express card slot, I would want a business laptop just for the sake of having the express card slot for eGPU purposes. I know that Thunderbolt is 10gb/s per lane and if attached to one device, it technically goes up to 20gb/s on two lanes. Express Card 2.0x16 would have an effective transfer rate of 4gb/s per lane which equals 64gb/s.

Now isn't that a big difference compared to Thunderbolt/new USB 3.0 (said to be 10gb/s and USB 3.0 has 2 lanes). The bigger issue is if I wanted a Nvidia GTX670 for my eGPU, which one do I read to compare it? The Memory Clock or Memory Bandwidth? I would think it's Memory Bandwidth and with that in mind, the number would be 192.2gb/s. So if I took the 64gb/s (Express Card 2.0x16) and divided by 192.2gb/s = 33.3%, doesn't that become a major bottleneck? I see people say you'd still get 75-80% retained for eGPU with Express Card slots. I might be misunderstanding something here. Please correct me if I am.

 

about usb3.0. there isn't such a solution and there won't be in the future. you would need to rewrite loads of drivers and it would be a pain and it would deliver worse performance then thunderbolt. thunderbolt is the future, haswell cpu's will have native thunderbolt support. expresscard is pretty much dead. most new notebooks don't have it anymore.
about performance, it all depends on the interface and application you are using. the bottleneck can be 0% to 40%.
thunderbolt x4 with current applications has a bottleneck of 0-15%.
your thoughts are right but your numbers are wrong. no way expresscard has that speed, if it had there would be no bottleneck.
please check a list of device bandwidths and then check pci-e scalling analysis and you'll get the right results you are looking for.
one thing you have to realise is that devices don't use all the bandwidth, this is, a graphic card with a pci-e 3.0 16x interface won't work at that speed. it will be much slower. and that is even application dependent. browsing or playing crysis @ max don't make the card run at the same bandwidth.

I'll do the work for you:
List of device bit rates - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ivy Bridge PCI-Express Scaling with HD 7970 and GTX 680 Review | techPowerUp
PCIe Scaling Analysis : PCI Express And CrossFire Scaling: Is P55 Good Enough?
GeForce GTX 480 PCI-Express Scaling Review | techPowerUp

 

Yea for express cards, I got an answer from a Youtuber who told me express card slots on laptops are x1 so my math there is definitely wrong hahaha.