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

Sorry, I still don't completely understand...Do ports 1 and 2 have to both be used to have x2? Or can it be any ports as long as you use 2 ports (so if I use the ExpressCard slot (port 2 I think) and port 4 will it work)?

 

rivatuner can mess with device id but it only allows changing the last part of it, so you can make 8600 look like 8700 or 8400 to windows.... for example if DID is 1234 rivatuner lets you change it from 1230 to 123f or something like that.

In addition to DID there is a class of the device at offset 0a, 300 is for VGA, so windows could be detecting all video cards based on their class.

Also Vista ignores whatever is done with pcitool in dos and turns on the onboard card

 

From here

Usually Win7 will find the external video card and upon having resource allocation errors will through an error 12. It sounds like in your case the video card is not even seen or detected. Suggest:

- Boot DIY ViDOCK USB bootdisk
- Run 'atiflash -ai' for it to scan and report ATI cards it finds.

If that doesn't work then need to check if your expresscard is active/working. Ensure bios has expresscard enabled if there is a setting for that.

Worth too running 'lspci'. It will report devices found on the PCI bus. A vendorID of 1002 refers to a ATI device.

 

Another thing to check invisibleman is to make sure you are feeding the 3870 enough power. It needs just over 80 watts (81.1) of juice during peak performance, so make sure the rail you are using can handle it.

 

also, be sure to connect your molex connector to your power supply and use the paper clip method to start the power supply

 

if nothing else works, solder TP1

 

Thanks for the responses everyone. I will try the above when I have more time tomorrow.

I have indeed used the paper clip method, and I'm fairly certain my PSU is good enough http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817822002. I have the 6-pin PCIe connector on the HD 3870 as well as the molex connector on the PE4L. I set the JP3 closed and JP4 open as per the PE4L's instructions.

 

For those debating 512MB vs 1GB video ram here's video memory usage in Oblivion + Qarl's TP3 + hi-res landscape LOD 1920x1080, 0xAA - see screenshots

 

HP Pavilion dv6645
2 gigs RAM
Nvidia 8400m GS onboard
Expresscard slot

PE4H with EC2C (expresscard adapter)
Nvidia GTX260 PCIe x16 v2
420 watt power supply


I got my adapter today, and have so far had no luck with it.

I tried it under Linux, winxp, win vista, and win7.

Linux tells me that the card is there but I cannot seem to activate it, I'm working on it still.

WinXP also finds the card and allows me to install the driver, and it tries continuously to reactivate it, making the laptop screen flash on and off. I eventually saw "This device cannot find enough free resources, code 12". I believe this is a memory hole allocation problem.

Vista just keeps "badunk badunk"ing at me, ie it is trying to activate it, but can't. I'm guessing this is the same issue as XP is having. I don't even get to the stage of installing a driver.

Win7 again, nearly the same result as for WinXP, but I got an erro when installing the driver, and it refused to shutdown. A forced shutdown completely hosed Win7.

If I could figure out all this stuff about a bootdisk and messing with PCI allocation, I'm sure I can get the blasted thing working, but it's a bit confusing.

Help required

 

Try a 'full' driver from here http://www.magma.com/support/drivers/index.html that might get rid of error 12
if that doesn't work try a 'standard vga' for 8400

 

For my WinXP install, I diden't install any video driver for the built in 8400, I just left it as "Standard VGA".

I don't understand the drivers in that link, which one should I grab, and what should it do?

Thanks .

 

FULL_FUNCTION_2_6.exe - This driver installation package is for chassis that support hot-plugging and have an error code 12 issue after boot on a specific platform.

basically if you have error 12 it could fix it

 

Wait so you guys are working on something to connect to the laptop screen? If so what and how do you plan on doing it.?
Will the vidock 2 go down in price, i feel that its highy overpriced and should be lowered to at least 200.

 

Here a few answers to that question xxbadboy93::

There is a thread (Nando has posted links to it several times) that considers a MXM interface which seems to be extremely difficult due to the many different standards per manufacturer. The other is to create a sort of a KVM (of course only the "V" portion pertains) type connection to the LVDS port. Either would require quite a bit of modification to your chassis/casing.

The other is, it seems a possibility that the AMD RS780M chipset might actually provide a synergistic output with ATI graphics cards to the laptop screen. We are currently waiting for invisibleman (is having detection issues) and myself (waiting for my video card to arrive) to test this possibility.

 

Doesnt the fijistsu amilo work with its laptop screen. Malumake, iam not quite getting you with the mxm interface, how owuld that be able to drive the laptop screen, also if you have a mxm gpu wouldnt you need a fan to cool it?

Thanks

 

The thread is here. It would just be an interface card with no true processing on board, just a cable feeding out to your external device. As for the Amilo, it looks like it too feeds external monitors only, but supposedly there is a driver that allows it to use the laptop screen (This is what invisibleman and I will have to research if we can't get it to work for us out-of-the-box). The specsheet also states only supports 8x.

To all parties concerned, check out the update at the end of the article here. The laptop itself utilizes the RS780M chipset. The only caveat I see in this is that the Amilo utilizes a proprietary cable (XGP?). So hopefully once I get my graphics card, we'll find out.

@invisibleman-- any updates?

 

Tried the "full function" magma drivers, but the only thing it did was screw up windows startup, prompting it to fix the issue by doing a system restore. I still get the error 12.

My laptop doesn't seem to be able to boot from the usb drive I made using the diyvidock files (used lexar's bootit application to make usb key bootable). I hope to get this fixed soon, as I will be going on vacation so I won't be able to work on this for 2 weeks.


UPDATE - PARTIALLY WORKING

I noticed that BIOS was being displayed, though there was a blank screen with a blinking cursor as Windows started up.

I went from 4gb of ram to 2gb, and I was actually able to get it working for a bit. It looked strange because at desktop the entire screen was being rendered at a grayish dim manner except for my mouse pointer. I went ahead and started up Race Driver GRID, and amazingly got it to work... for 5 minutes. I suddenly lost signal to the monitor and everything just froze. My laptop screen was just a zoomed in view of my desktop in that same dim gray rendering.

Also tried Modern Warfare 2. Results were even worse - upon loading the first level it began to stutter, displayed a few frames, then cut out and froze.

Any thoughts?

 

Malumake and invisibleman,

The feature that allows to display externally accelerated graphics on laptop's LCD panel is called "Cross Display".
Cross Display is possible due to CrossFireX functionality of G780M chipset in your laptops which essentially allows to connect both the IGP and external card in CrossFire with IGP being the primary video output card.

Here's a video of it working on W7 x64:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZY8d14n5DA
Pause at 0:28 to see what Catalyst's screen should look like with everything setup correctly.
Following is a video of what should happen when you have "Accelerate Existing Displays" set and plug in your external card:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBdT1Tu6c6Y&feature=fvw

Here's a link to an older XGP driver that supports Cross Display:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=M21LDFZS
However, it might be limited to 3 series external mobility video cards only.

Earlier I posted a link to Acer Ferrari One's DynaVivid XGP driver for W7.
Here it is:
http://global-download.acer.com/GDF...e&Step3=FO200&OS=722&LC=en&BC=Acer&SC=EMEA_27
It supports Acer's DynaVivid XGP box with mobility HD4670 inside. I am not sure if it supports Cross Display(some versions do and some don't), but the only way to find out is to install it instead of your main chipset driver(uninstall the stock driver first).
I would also install the desktop card's driver on top. All of this before plugging in the external card.

Error 12 should not come up with these drivers installed as otherwise it would be coming up with XGP boxes, which it doesn't(at least in theory).
The other problem could be in the fact that the desktop driver is not "tied in" with the XGP driver, so black magic might be in order to get it properly integrated(inf/vbios/did editing and so on).

Good Luck.

 

I don't seem to be able to use any XGP settings from those drivers.

My solution was to use 2gb of ram. I think my problem earlier was a that the hd 3870 wasnt seated properly in the PE4L, as I've been able to get some game working without any crashes. I'll have to go back through the threads more carefully to figure out how i can use 4gb of ram...

I've also noticed that browser use seems to have an adverse effect on USB audio (whereas it normally doesn't), perhaps theres some sharing of bandwidth going on?

 

invisibleman,

1. Did error 12 disappear after installing one of the XGP drivers with a desktop driver on top(i.e. do you still have an XGP driver installed)?
If not, what did you have to do(having the card firmly plugged-in wouldn't be the reason for the error to go away)?

2. Are you experiencing USB audio problems with every USB port?

XGP settings aren't available becuase you might have to edit the inf file with your hardware IDs. As i said - don't expect things to work out of the box. On the positive side - all the functionality is there, just need to unlock it.

 

I installed an old 6.2 driver for x1400 lol and a catalyst dated sep'09 for 5750 in windows 7 without crashes and now both cards are on and don't show any errors in device manager. Catalyst control center won't start because of the old driver.

So how do I get windows 7 to display something on 5750?

 

You're primary video card, the x1400, needs a proper Win7 driver.

Load linked Win7 drivers: x1400 and HD4670 drivers from Windows Update website.

Patch the HD4670 driver to use HD5750's DID as shown here.

Test and report your results.

 

Couldn't install the drivers from those cab's. Tried pkgmgr and spoonfeeding the inf's to device manager, although it sees 5700 series and all kinds of 5750, 5770, 5850 with that inf it says files are missing but doesn't show which ones.

Instead I installed xp drivers for 5750 in vista + either 6.2 catalyst xp or microsoft non-wddm drivers for x1400 and disabled x1400 in device manager. And now I got the output from the 5750 on the monitor dx9 works and obviously dx 10 & 11 don't

When I do the same with wddm + vista 5750 driver, with x1400 idisabled and 5750 on, it doesn't let me choose the monitor like it does with xp drivers.

 

I confirmed your results. I loaded XP's X3100 driver and HD4670 driver in Win7 finding the HD4670 functional with X3100 disabled (in Device Manager) or via the pci-e configuration scripts. The latter being the technique used to allows 3GB of RAM on a DV2000 to work.

So another workaround: using XP's drivers can get Win7 to function with > 2.5 of RAM for systems with IGP. Obviously no DX10 and aero if doing that. It is not possible to install say the X3100 XP driver and the Win7 HD4670 driver for this to work. Both must be XP drivers. The hack to enable Aero with DX9 doesn't work with Win7 RTM either.

Now why do the Win7 drivers depend on the IGP to be active for the external graphics to also work? How can that be disabled??

 

Hey, this topic is very interesting I was wondering what would my i7 PM55 laptop need to run x2 considering that according to various sources the ExpressCard is 2.0, would a PE4L be enough?

 

If anyone is interested in power consumption. my 5750 eats 55W including the psu (around 80-85% efficient) @ 1920x1080 in oblivion, it was 50fps at the time of measuring.

cards with huge plastic covers like 5850 might not fit into PE4L because of the molex (if you're using a desktop psu) and usb connectors. but I guess you could cut the plastic connector a bit and bend the wires lol

 

PM55 chipset datasheet snippet below tells us it's PCI Express 2.0 specced, but still only 2.5Gbs. The Link Status registers in this document confirm it's 2.5Gbps as well. So unfortunately no x1 2.0 (5Gbps)

 

Just a quick update.

I ordered a 5770 from Newegg, received the unit and.....it would not power-up (I really wanted to pop-off the fan assembly and check the caps, trans, and ICs, but didn't want to void the warranty). I tried it in several workstations, mine and couple friends and it didn't work. I am currently in the RMA process with Newegg. Just FYI their process is horrible and they aren't being very cooperative. I usually extol their great products and prices but their return process and support is proving absolutely horrible. I have heard this from a few acquaintances, but have shrugged it off since I have always had great service and have never received a defective product from them (I have been ordering stuff from them since they opened in '01)

@Invisibleman:: Any new progress? I ask, because once I get a card I will most likely be in the same boat as you.

@Nando, toshiki, moral:: After updating to W7U64, Everest now shows I only have one open pci-e port of 4:

Port 247 = Empty but what is Port 247?!?
Port 2 = JMicron JMB381 PCI-E 1384a OHCI FireWire Controller, JMicron JMB 82 PCI-E Memory Card Host Controller (Did not report under Vista)
Port 3 = Atheros AR5009 802.11a/g/n Wifi Adapter
Port 4 = Realtek RTL8139/810x Fast Ethernet Adapter

As stated what is Port 247?!? Also, I had to pop open the laptop to test a hdd from another unit, and found that there is an unused mPCIE slot with a TV-Tuner symbol next to it, so I might have an easy access mPCIE slot to play with later as well, assuming that it is fully traced.

Aloha! and Happy Holidays to all!!

 

Sorry, no new progress (I'm currently away... won't be back for about 10 days).

 

Judging by the fact that Intel never pulled their finger out to replace MB/s with Mb/s in their datasheets(for YEARS), I would not be surprised to find that they "forgot" to properly update the PCI-E spec section.
PCI-E 2.0 specced root ports can't run at PCI-E 1.X speeds by definition. It just doesn't make sense.

Malumake,

Spare TV Tuner slots are generally wired for USB only. You could check by sticking your wi-fi card into the slot - nothing should happen.
Port 247 looks like your ExpressCard port.

 

PCI-SIG specify PCI-E 2.0 is specced at x1 2.0, 5GT/s, as shown here quoted below:

If we use PCI-SIG as a reference, it suggests the expresscard slot is 2.0 (x1 2.0). Intel documentation suggests it's pci-e 2.0 but at 2.5GT/s which makes no sense. The only way to know for sure is to connect a PE4L or PE4H to a PM55 chipset system with a pci-e 2.0 compatible video card (eg: Radeon HD4xxx/HD5xxxx) and note what GPU-Z says. Or do comparative performance testing.

Any volunteers? If found to be x1 2.0, then for DIY VIDock purposes the PM55 chipset is far more desirable than GM45/PM45.

 

Well, I should correct myself:
PCI-E 2.0 is backwards compatible with PCI-E 1.X so it WILL run at PCI-E 1.X speeds, but only if the plugged in device is PCI-E 1.X limited.

Here's the PCI-E spec line from Intel's datasheets that virtually hasn't changed(same for PCI-E 1.X and PCI-E 2.0 specs):

GB/s should be Gb/s. Copper wire is only rated at 10 Gb/s. PCI-E 3.0 goes up to 8Gb/s with little overhead, but after that the concepts have to change.
Anyhow, there are clearly misleading glitches within Intel datasheets that have been there for years.

(Off topic) For the interested, here's a "peak" of the most likely nearest future in bus tech:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak

 

This link might help for those who want to use the notebooks internal screen:
http://jlime.com/mw4/index.php/Accessing_BGA_pins

 

Awesome link. Useful also if anyone want to access the extra 4 TX/RX pins of the SATA controller. There are *3* sata ports on a ICH8M, with usually only 1 used for the primary drive. There are *4* on ICH9M with only 2 used - one for primary drive and one for optical drive. Means there are still 2 ports available that could allow connection to a netbook-type sata mini PCI-e SSD to be attached (4 TX/RX pins + 3.3V and GND). See Theory: enabling and connecting to the ICH8M native SATA port if interested. The ICH8M SATA I/O port pins are right against the southbridge edge too.

 

Is it possible to play GPU accelerated HD decode over the 1x? (since the decoding is done on the GPU, this should use very little PCI-E bandwidth??)


I think games like Star Trek Online cannot be played over the 1x? what about for 1024x768 resolution?

thanks

 

Resident evil 5 with my external HD 4850 is fully playable @ 720p, including the HD videos, I dont think star trek online would be a problem...

 

Im not sure we are all talking about the same thing I see some of you referring to PCI-E 2.0 instead of ExpressCard 2.0 witch I think are 2 different things or maybe I'm just confused, I will read into it, so wen my 1557 comes I know if its worth going the DIY Vidock route.

 

EDIT:
I found some info from here: http://laptopprocessor.info/2009/12/06/i7-laptop-processor/

and..

not sure what it means by 2.5GT??
Edit:

Answer to GT: http://www.tmworld.com/article/318759-What_does_GT_s_mean_anyway_.php

Noticed you guys had already mentioned it above.

Maybe ExpressCard 2.0 is not available in the PM55 I have not seen it being mentioned anywhere else.

Even if it is wouldn't the PE4L or PE4H have to be ExpressCard 2.0 compatible to use the extra bandwidth?

 

Appears Sandy Bridge chipsets scheduled for Q1 2011 will have expresscard 2.0 capability as explained here.

Can a HM55/QM57/PM55 do x1 2.0?

So looking forward to someone benching a HD5770/HD58xx series in a PM55 system. In case anyone missed it, a i7/HD5870 desktop at x1 2.0 gave 3dmark06=21911 here.

From: Geoff Gasior <[email protected]>

Got this from [email protected] when queried about HM55/QM57 chipset's PCI-E 2.0 ports

 

But see here is were I get confused, we are using expresscard so why are we checking PCI Express speed?
Offtopic: Dell taking so long to senf my 1557

OR.. are we implying that we use the mini-pcie connector inside the laptop to get the 2.0 speed?

 

FYI: I've reorganised the table in DIY ViDock - My experiences so far by performance (highest to lowest).

GTX260 performance

What interests me is the GTX260. We have only the single RE5 benchmark result, showing faster-than-HD5770 performance but slower than HD5850. The comparison is not really equivalent since the GTX260 was done at the higher 1280x1024.

In my locale a GTX260 is only a fraction more than a HD5770, so might offer great bang-per-buck if wanting to couple with an external PSU. The HD5850 is almost twice the price of a GTX260 here.

Hoping someone does a PM55 implementation, which could see almost a doubling of the HD5850 benchmark results.

 

I can't even play solitaire at 800x600 at 1x

 

But I have just read that PCI-E 2.0 is supposed to be 5GT/s and the Intel data sheet says 2.5GT/s, I guess we will get an answer until someone tries it out.
The the question arises are these adapters 2.0 capable?

Found a pic I don`t know if its worth anything:
Its from a PM55 sistem.

 

I had absolutely no luck with my gtx260, it's a v2 as well, maybe that has some bearing.

It was detected, but it just seemed to keep turning on and off rapidly. This could be a HP BIOS problem too.

The problem is that I didn't have a desktop to try the card in, so I wasn't even sure that it actually worked (although it's a brand new card), there are so many variables to deal with here.

I gave up and bought a desktop system instead, the PE4H now sits in a corner gathering dust, complete waste of money .

The good thing is that I now get over 300fps in ETQW on full high graphics settings, and 1920x1080 res .

I've had this game for over 2 years and can finally play it, 27fps on a tiny 15" screen is simply unplayable.

 

You could use it on a future notebook. Or pop it in the NBR market place, you might get your money back

 

Random question, but is there an advantage/disadvantage of using either the mPCIe or the Expresscard slot? I've read that the ViDock's current bottleneck is the ExpressCard's bandwidth so I was wondering if the mPCIe is the same or worse/better?

 

mPCIe has the same bandwidth.

What you might be able to do is use both the expresscard slot + mPCIe slot to get a 2x connection. That would be really good, but nobody has tested it yet as far as I know.

 

They're one and the same, just different connectors.

 

For Intel ICH7M/ICH8M/ICH9M I/O chipsets, mPCIe and expresscard are just different ports off the same I/O controller in a different physical package. They have exactly the same performance.

There are other advantages to using the expresscard slot over mPCie slot:

* Expresscard has USB pins connected as part of it's specification. mPCIe might or might not, depending on the vendor implementation. My checking so far showing both the DV2000 and 2510P do not have USB pins connected to their mPCIe slot. With USB pins connected, it allows docking of external keyboard/mouse/pendrive to the PE4L/PE4H's USB connector.

* Expresscard is easier to connect, designed to handle such wear.

* Expresscard is not whitelisted. mPCIe slot is often whitelisted by the big vendors to allow only their wifi cards to work in that slot. Some older systems don't have an expresscard (eg: 2510P) so mPCIe is the only option. [ worked around this with the 2510P ].

* mPCIe slot is usually used for wifi, so if you only have one of them can't have wifi + DIY Vidock working concurrently. Can workaround by going external USB wifi.

The combo of expresscard + mPCIe in a port1+port2 layout would be useful for a faster x2 connection. Though as yet there has been no confirmation of that working. Would be a great for pre-PM55 chipset systems without mPCIe/expresscard 2.0 to see superior performance.

 

ok, i was doing some thinking (as a scrooge does on christmas day) and why are we using 16x PCI cards and not 8x AGP cards? surely if the speed is being reduced to 1x or 2x, reducing it from 8x instead of 16x is better, no? the 3870 512mb gddr3 AGP gets pretty respectable scores in most benchmarks (only slightly lower than a 4670 PCI).
since its already running at half the multiplier (is that the right term?) it should hold its speed better at the lower mulipliers of 1x or 2x right?


on a side note, could the proprientory expansion port used for docking stations be used?