Let's figure out how to make a DIY eGPU (previously DIY ViDock)

What an excellent thread, this looks incredibly promising.

 

you can't just stick a 4890 in there. you don't have the bandwidth available that such a card needs.

edit: you could, but it won't perform any better than about a 4650.

who is this for? netbooks with pci-e slots i guess?

 

It's all in size too. If size isn't of concern, a conventional PSU will do. And even an older one will be fine with a 4-pin to 6-pin power adapter, or if the card doesn't require extra power at all!

Exactly. You have to reasonable. The ExpressCard slot only has so much bandwidth. It'd be good to know what the "max" card would be for this though, based on bandwidth.

 

yeah true there are some standalone cards that dont require external psu source

 

If I was going to do this I would get a cheap MATX or small mini tower computer case and run an extension cable out that goes to the laptops pci-e slot.

This would give you a good looking case without the trouble/time of building one and it would readily hold the power supply and video card pretty easy. It would basically be a stripped out computer since you dont need the cpu/mobo/ram etc you would be using the laptops.

But you could also toss some hdd's in there too and make it a full fledged laptop dock type deal.

 

For example, transfer rates cant be any faster than the memory clocks of its components.

We have for example the HD4890 with a Memory Clock: 950 MHz (3.9Gbps) the HD4870 (3.6Gbps), people remember that express cards can handle up to 2.5Gbps, but since ATI worked to simplify the transfer rates on their cards this might end up being possible, but I guess that using an HD4890 for the current hardware would be an overkill. In my humble opinion I think that an HD4830 or even the HD4850 could be handled, in fact the memory clocks of GDDR5 are in theory more than big for an express card port.

 

We need some volunteers. Iam sure you guys got a extra cheap gpu laying around. What about fitting in a agp gpu card. The bandwith is less but you need an adapter.

 

Heres an excellent case that would work out, http://www.enclosuresandcases.com/dtspecpage.html

 

Don't forget that ViDock is based on the same technology and they promised ViDock 3 and 4

That's really great idea

 

wait a second. holy moly the expresscard has more bandwidth than i thought. 2.5Gb/s is a lot more than i thought it had. that is plenty for a desktop ati 4850, for example.

dang.

i might have to look into this.

 

oh damn i got my GB and Gb mixed up again.

the 4850 can take advantage of a solid 1.8 GB/s of memory bandwidth(i think?)

and our expresscard has 2.5 Gb/s = 0.3125 GB/s...

so yeah, just re-lost interest in this. we would be looking at something like a 4650 max.

to increase performance, we would actually need new generations of cards, since we have a tight bandwidth envelope to deal with.

 

Isn't it incredibly inconvenient to open up your laptop every time you want to play a game, anyway? Just go with one of the new ViDocks when they're released. This is far from worth the hassle, even if it worked.

 

Please read the WHOLE thread.


Mmmm I also mixed the GB with Gb then , but anyway this could be a serious performance increase, also note that the card will not be working always at full load thats something that you should notice.

I guess that the top cards would be either HD4670-HD4830.
Dont loose interest, if the Vidock4 works this way and they claim that it works then I cant see why this could do the same or even better .

 

I think you are actually dead on. I'm not thinking straight today. Memory bandwidth is the bandwidth between the GPU's core and memory. It has nothing to do with the bus speed necessary.

So we really have no scope of how reducing bus speed affects performance. Nevertheless, I expect that it will basically have no affect until we get to a certain level of card and then we will just see no more performance improvement. But now I have no idea where that level is.

We could ask someone with a desktop to go into their bios and change their PCI-e speed on a 4850 to compare how performance changes as you drop lanes.

 

It loose alot of performance almost half.

 

I was looking at the vidock 2 case, it was smaller then i thought.

 

This sounds awesome but doubt it will ever work with my laptop.

 

I got an idea, we need someone to open up a vidock and look at all the connections. If its the same then were in business.

 

i wish this thread had a different title.

so misleading...

anyway, this is a reliable article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-2.0,1915-12.html

shows how changing bus bandwidth affects performance. whats interesting is that with the 9800gx2 (a massively powerful card, 2 9800's on a chip) the performance really tends to drop off once you reduce bus bandwidth to 500 MB/s. It usually dropped to somewhere between 25% and 80% of full bus performance. And there didn't seem to be any particular correlation between the types of games and how performance dropped. Crysis, for example, still performs 80% as well with only 500 MB/s of bandwidth. Flight Simulator X basically dropped to a halt, with only 16% of the original performance. Call of Duty 4 only performed 25% as well... so those numbers are all over the place.

We only get 300 MB/s with our implementation. So the 9800gx2 is probably not a good choice for our card. Pci 2.0 x1 = 500 MB/s.

The 3850 took the bus reduction a little better, but it is also a slower card than the 9800gx2. After looking at the results, I am guessing that the ViDock people did their research and the 4650 is about as high as you can go without losing all of your performance by dropping to 300 MB/s bandwidth (slower than 1 lane pci-e 2.0).

The truth of the matter is that if you want 4650 level performance, you might as well get a laptop with a 4650 in it. You can get small laptops with graphics cards that perform at that level. This would make a lot more sense if you could get like a 13" laptop or so with good integrated graphics (like a 9400m) and then hook it up to a gtx280 when you had access to your base station. but having to hook up to a base station to scrape by with 4650 level performance is just not that useful in my opinion.

 

Paladin is shaking with fear

 

wow. even more, this only works with an external monitor.

so at this point, our external graphics card solution consists of:

a) another case
b) another power supply
c) another graphics card
d) a monitor
e) cabling

you are well on your way to building a whole PC outside of your laptop and then connecting it to your laptop for no reason. mouse, keyboard, and ram are so cheap they are basically free. get a motherboard / cpu / hdd and you got yourself a full-blown computer.

it sounds to me like if you are serious about this external graphics card thing, what you *REALLY* want is a small form factor PC and a thin, light, cheap laptop, like maybe a netbook.

 

Let's not get our hopes up guys. I emailed the developers and here's the response I received:

I have some suggestions going back to them, and we may get a working model yet! We may have a joint patent pending if we can figure out their issue!

 

i want to have one computer so all my data and programs are in one place, a laptop that i can take with me every day to school and work
it would be for working on, so it could not be a netbook, but because i'm using it all day every day, it needs to be portable and have great battery life
a gaming laptop cannot offer this

when i get home at the end of the day, i put the laptop in its docking station to hook up to full monitor/keyboard/mouse/speakers

so if i can plug in a near-desktop-level graphics card and game a bit at home, i'm all for that

 

It's mainly about cost too. If the cost can be kept below $100, to have the additional hardware, it's not a big deal.

 

Okay somethings that need to be brought up before everyone gets too far into this.

Let's talk PCIE first.
PCIE x1 and PCIEx16 are no different from each other. If you put a x16 card into an x1 slot it will work perfectly fine. It will just be capped at x1. Google it and and you'll find people who melted the back end of the x1 slot to put an x16 card in. It's no big deal really which one you pick.

Now what about power requirements?
PCIE was designed to supply up to 75w of power. I believe that the first part of the card is the power part and the second portion is the data connection. as you already see, x1 just shortens the length in that data portion in comparison to an x16.

So where's the problem at?
Expresscards do not freely output 75 watts to the lane. If it did, then my last notebook would not have a power adapter of 90watts. Keeping this in mind, some may argue that there are always the six pin adapters. I'm going to put my bet on the fact that the card will draw a decent bit of power from the slot and supplement the rest from the power supply. If my desktop is 130watts. thats guestimate of 70 from the slot and 50 from the psu directly. We cannot accomplish this with the simple adapter unless you guys find one that will also feed power into the slot as well.

I hate to put it out there, but unless you can do some R&D and deliver power to the slot, its not really gonna work out so well. I could be wrong but the chances are that 4650 isn't going to work because your not going to output 75 watts on an express card.

On the flip side, I CANT BELIEVE AMD didn't push their XGP standard on all puma laptops. So many people would have bought them just for that feature. Its like an expresscard but a full fledge x16 bandwidth

 

its not necessary to output that power from the expresscard slot.

PSU - GPU - PCI Express Slot - Encapsulation Components - ExpressCard Device - ExpressCard Slot

This is the general diagram of how it might work. The GPU needs to hook up to a PCI Express Slot. Fine. That slot needs a certain amount of power, and the GPU additionally has its own direct power requirements. Fine. All of that can be built in a box. Then we just develop an interface between that box and our expresscard slot. We don't need the expresscard slot to be responsible for powering the GPU at all. Basically, since the GPU is outside and we have total access to it, we can rig it however we want.

 

I agree with that mostly, but the same goes for the Vidock.

 

Yeah, I think the ViDock is absurdly priced as well. It is almost $400, and the reason for that is that they had to build a pretty good percentage of a computer just to act as the GPU through your expresscard.

Anyway, a few more points:

1. What you really seem to want is the cloud. Have all your data be persistent, have persistent internet, and stream everything to your computer, including games, real time. We just need faster and more persistent internet for this, and google will handle the rest. A computer gets simplified to input and output. Soon enough!

2. we aren't going to get very far trying to get desktop graphics as an external laptop solution through the expresscard slot. at almost $400 for the retail solution, it outprices itself. I agree that it is great to consolidate and have one computer, but $400 for an external add on 4650 still doesn't make sense to me. It would probably cost about that much to sell your laptop and buy a new one with a 4650 built in. I don't know where you came up with the $25 DIY mark, but it seems like a DIY solution, even if we could do it, would end up around $400 with a graphics card. We need a lot of components to make this work.

2a. This might actually make sense if we had access to a legit pci-e 2.0 port. Since we are making our own custom port and laptop in this case, we might even be able to have the option of routing the video from the GPU back into the laptop monitor. Food for thought. And since it is built in, we should be able to actually buy a whatever desktop GPU we want at normal cost.

2a-1. Actually, we would still need to reconstruct basically the same type of thing outside the computer. We can't just stick a desktop graphics card next to our laptop. We need a case, another power supply, etc.

Conclusion: As it stands, you can already get thin and light laptops with good performance when plugged in and good battery life when on the go. If you invest in one of these laptops, the ViDock is useless to you, because you aren't going to get cards faster than that through the expresscard. If you got a really small laptop, like 13" or under, then you might be able to squeeze a bit of performance out of your machine when plugged in, for $400. Or you could buy an Xbox 360 for $200. Thus the thing outprices itself.

 

Also, another option is to get a desktop PC *just for gaming*. All your documents and work and programs would still be in one place (your laptop - they would be here anyway with the ViDock), and you would just install games on your PC. That is one solution to having all of your things in order and still make sense out of your money.

You can still hook up your laptop to your mouse, keyboard, external monitor if you want to work with a big screen in a desktop like way.

And you could spend $700 and have a powerhouse desktop with modular components that can be easily upgraded. This makes sense against purchasing a $400 device that is limited to slightly increasing the performance of a laptop.

I do agree that once we can figure out how to reduce the cost of this external GPU enclosure to around $25, and possibly increase the performance, it does start to make sense. I just think a DIY is still going to be hundreds of dollars.

 

when it works, take pictures, report back. i will be amazed. hopefully build a box for it as well.

i imagine that you could *maybe* hook it up, and if you can get that far, you could *maybe* get the correct power to the GPU, and if you can get that far, you would be stuck. there is also a pretty big software hurdle to jump in getting the gpu recognized and drivers working.

 

take some pictures when you get it working. i don't want to be pessimistic, i want to see it work.

 

I can build a desktop for $500 that will beat out the ViDock, my ultra high end desktop was not even $1000 with a 3.6ghz quad, and 2x 4850's in crossfire.

Im totally with MasterChief that this is kind of pointless if you really think about it.

You would have to break out your laptop and reduce performance and deal with adapters and gimmicky things, when you can pay just a tad more for a dedicated desktop with better performance.

heck my HTPC was only $300 and is probably on par with the ViDock

When/IF they ever come up with a portable solution that uses your laptop screen, thats when I think we should be interested in the external graphics solution.

This goes not for this DIY project but the Vidock too, I think its a pretty much pointless product. Your money would be better spent getting a small desktop.

 

Now that you guys mention it, you're right.

I built a Shuttle SFF system (refurb SG33G5) for about $300, granted I had a few spare parts that I used, but even buying those parts would have cost at most $200 more:

SG33G5, Core 2 Duo E6850 @ 3.0GHz, 4GB DDR2 800MHz, 2x1TB HDD, ATI HD 4670, DVDRW. Just build this with perhaps 2GB DDR2, 320GB HDD, and maybe a lesser Core 2 Duo and you're about $400.

Unless you're really in a pinch for desk space, but SFF PC's like the shuttle take up so little room. Also, upgrade your notebook for $400 and get a good dedicated GPU, with switchable graphics for power saving mode.

 

...yeah...

like i said, it out-prices itself.

even if you want a single computer, it doesn't really matter. by getting the ViDock, you have basically just built another computer, except that you are more limited than otherwise because it needs to feed off of your laptop. you could come up with a data-syncing solution between two machines if you cared to. probably utilizing google or something.

 

If you need your files synced there are several online server type programs that do it for you for free.

Also its nice to have a sever and have your files on a server.

I personally keep work and play separate, so the games would be on the game desktop while my work laptop would have the work files on it.

 

syncing files isn't necessary, you could just have a dedicated gaming computer without any of your work on it.

I guess this is what it comes down to:

If you

-----

- have an ultraportable
- have a performance processor
- do not have a discrete GPU
- want to play 3d games
- have an expresscard slot
- are willing to deal with an external GPU (wires, gotta put the graphics card in *something*, possibly open your laptop to connect everything)
- are willing to accept a pretty low performance discrete GPU (if everything goes according to plan, we get 300 MB/s of bus bandwidth, about 1/2 of a single pci-e 2.0 lane)
- have a budget of around $100-$150 for this (you still need to build something to house this safely)
- have an external monitor to use with it (won't plug back into your laptop monitor)
- absolutely refuse to get any other computer for some reason, and also refuse to play games on an xbox (syncing files isn't necessary for a dedicated gaming computer)
- are willing to accept the loss if it just doesn't work for whatever reason (the retail solution worked in a fraction of the tested laptops, our DIY solution is totally unverified, and relies on prerelease engineering sample hardware)

----

then the DIY external GPU is for you. there is a long list in between people and this solution.

now, a lot of this list can be made to go away. we need to check off this list of things for starters:

- verify that it works
- assess the type of performance we can expect to get
- figure out a decent way to safely house these parts
- bring the cost of the components down to $50-60 without the GPU (you may think you have already achieved this, but you haven't until you can show that it can be done. i guarantee that this project will end up costing more than what we have set aside so far. for one thing, we need to house these components! this isn't just a collection of wires!)
- simplify the final product if necessary (whatever we make in the toolshed ultimately just needs to be able to connect to the expresscard slot, we shouldn't need to modify the laptop to fit the product at all)

if we can do these things, then the implementation becomes desirable to a much wider range of people. so that is what i propose gets worked on first.

 

definitely no, for so many reasons.

1. adds another $60 to the cost
2. resolution is now 640x480i max
3. lag from looping the video back through usb
4. now we have another box and are using a usb port
5. it takes significant processing power just to process the usb video input, so now the computer is working hard just to display a blank image on the screen, which will cut into our already limited performance benefit
6. we have to run more software just to get the image on the screen

i was saying we could loop the video back IF we designed an entirely new laptop with an entirely new port (which we couldn't do on our own, anyway) - this is sort of like the Amilo, which might have that capability.

anyway, if you are willing to deal with the above issues, you could try it, but why not try getting the GPU to run at all, first?

 

I wonder how much the PEMINI2X1-F costs.
where could I buy it?

Edit:
found it:
http://www.orbitmicro.com/global/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=flexible

$100 for it is too much, i'll stick with the PM2C for $25

 

This might work but it will never reach the performance of the Vidock because vidock uses a special cable that could run high voltage frequencies or something like that,all of this it's explained in the Vidock thread.

 

I call bull,

Sounds like Monster explaining why there cables were better than the rest and why they were worth 5x the cost.

After the lawsuit against them for it people started to understand the error in there ways.

A cable is a cable is a cable unless its 3rd world uber cheap crud that is not made to spec.

 

OMG HERE IS PROOF THAT THIS WILL WORK:
http://maximumoverclock.com/?p=4

 

I believe it may work with my toshiba.

Edit: I'm going to send an email to see if the people at Bplus Technology tested this adapter with any sound or video cards, if they got it working with at least sound card then I will have to buy it and try it.

 

Did nobody see my earlier post? The developer of this product said it won't work if the device already has a VGA out.

They have 7 engineering samples, and will sell them for $40 + shipping. But please before your inundate them with emails, PM me first, as I already have a dialog going with them.

 

doesn't every laptop support VGA out?

Edit: Isn't there a workaround to this problem?
Is this the reason it's not for sale yet?

 

Why does he say this when it seems as if it's a software problem?

 

If you're asking why the next step is to try another type of card, then that's just to troubleshoot the problem with the video card.

If other cards work with the setup then it means there is a chance to get the video card working.

 

***oops, ignore this post, found my answer....

 

no one doubts that you can connect all the parts. i would still be surprised if you could get it to work. i don't think anyone has successfully done it themselves so far, so you might need to pioneer the field instead of finding links.

 

Kudos to your experimenting and breaking new territory Maybe someone with enough technical insight who has a ViDock can give you further insights on how to proceed...

 

I found two more links to show.

the first is a mac forum where they talk about the same idea:
http://powermacmini.wordpress.com/tag/mini-pcie/

and the next is a blog where the adapter was used and it worked for HDD:
http://translate.google.com/transla...om/tag/mini-pcie/&sl=fr&tl=en&history_state0=