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

Correct. The "on" signal is to draw PS_ON low, which is what the motherboard does for you when you press the button to start the computer. When the computer is shutting down, the motherboard raises the signal high and the PSU goes off.

 

Ok I gave the express card and wires a wiggle and now the 8800 gts card is picked up in device manager through the express card slot.

Initially the connection felt very weak and the card was picked up and then not.
I switched the ends of the cable round from the express card to the PCI adapter and now it stays well connected without changing.

I try installing drivers but it either doesnt work or I get blue screen of death.

I disabled and uninstalled the onboard graphics card and the drivers but this isnt making a difference.

Please help, look forwards to your reply.

 

Are you installing forceware or microsoft drivers and what version? If nothing else works try to install XP driver for 8800, this way you probably won't need a driver for your onboard card

 

I actually got this to work for a split second. It wouldn't work from hibernating. All I did to make it work was boot up Win 7, and then plug in the express card when it was fully booted and then the drivers installed and I was able to get the video to display on my 2 external monitors.

Aidanvii, I'm not sure if I have the latest chipset drivers or not, I'm going to check that tonight.

Unfortunately I had some weird PSU issues when trying this out. Everything loaded up but then I was getting wierd noises from the PSU and then it crapped out on me. I have a different PSU (more powerful) that I am going to try tonight. I'm running an Intel GMA 4500 HD internally and trying to run an ATI 2600 for testing purposes. Once I get that running I'm going to look into a better card.

I'll keep you guys posted if I get it up and running.

 

I apologize if this is in the incorrect thread, or the question has been answered already. 100+ pages is a lot to read through.

I have a HP dv2000 running win7, and an nvidia 9800gtx. I ordered the PE4H to test it all out, but I'm not exactly sure what I need to do with my BIOS to get it up and running. I'm not exactly a genius with computers, but I know enough to get myself in trouble. Would anybody be able to give me more or less specific instructions on how to set this up?

Let me know if I need to move this post to another thread.

 

The experiences thread was designed to save the 150+pgs reading. There is an example of a DV2000 running a HD4670 there. Points being:

1. You can't boot with the PE4H attached as the bios then uses the external video card as the primary, causing XP/Linux/Win7 to fail boot. It needs to be hotplugged after bootup.

2. Need a DIY ViDock USB bootdisk with PCI config scripts to resolve error 12: cannot allocate resources. Try running the example dv2000pr.bat, followed by dv2000.bat. Likely *may* work for you with minimal changes since it was created for a DV2000.

3. Once booted into Win7, suspend, attach PE4H, resume.

 

Well I got it working for a couple of minutes then it just crapped out again. At one point I had 2 external monitors running on the 2600 and my internal LCD monitor running on the laptop ( it was quite cool seeing all three working!). Then after a couple of minutes the video card resets itself and I loose everything (all screens go black). I know the computer is still running because I had a video playing and the sound was still working.

Also, something weird. When I plug in the Express card, I loose my WIFI connection. Has anybody else experienced this?

Nando,
Currently one of my monitors is using an HDMI cable, I am going to try to switch that to a DVI connection to get rid of the audio and see if that helps. I'm also going to try a different video card.

If anybody else has any other suggestions on to why it will only work for a couple of minutes please let me know.

Thanks for the help,

Mike

 

In case anyone cares, there is a MSI 9500 gt 512mb on new egg for $30.

I figured some people would be interested in using this card instead of a more expensive card b/c if this one blows up you're only out 30 bucks, and its a 9500gt so the performance won't be that crappy (not like anyone can notice with a pci-e 1x bus). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127469

 

i doubt it'll work decently at x1
it's twice as slow as 240 gt http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3709&p=12 in all the tests and based on the 240 x1 results, 9500 will get like 1700 3dmark06

 

Hey Nando,

Your comment on the bit flip for PCIE 2.0 intrigued me more than getting the external card to display on the laptop so I started digging. Using the datasheet you found earlier I tracked down, what I think, to be the responsible bit. Go to page 48 and look at NB_PCIE_LINK_CAP. Both link speed and link width are there.

Now I just need to figure out how to "flip" it.

 

probably like this

pcitool /Wd:00:BUS ORT:64=11C22 :: 00000000 0 0 0 0 0 0 010 001 11 000010 0010 - 5.0GB/s x2

...the default value should be 11c01 or 00000000 0 0 0 0 0 0 010 001 11 000000 0001 in binary

 

I discovered today one of my mini HDMI cables was buggered. Strange since atiflash -ai would see the card OK. Symptom was failure to initiate the HD4670 to display desktop 2. Win7 would would either blue screen with an ATIxxx.sys error or freeze. Swapping the mini HDMI cable with a new one solved the problem. Recommend having US$6-delivered spare, confirmed by Max_Headroom to work here.

The link speed bits according to the datasheet are:

Code:

NB_PCIE_LINK_CAP (R)
0x64, bit 3:0 (1=2.5Gb/s, 2=5.0Gb/s) (default=1)

CURRENT_LINK_SPEED (R)
0x6A, bit 3:0 (1=2.5Gb/s, 2=5.0Gb/s) (default=1)

TARGET_LINK_SPEED (R)
0x88, bit 3:0 (default=1, I assume means 2.5Gb/s)

So could fire up Baredit, identify the Northbridge device and look at the values of those config registers and set them to 5.0Gb/s operation. Cut power to your PE4L/PE4H, then powerup and see if the link renegotiates at x2 1.0 speed. Could do the same using the DIY ViDock Bootdisk, setting x2 1.0 with setpci.

Worth too booting the DIY ViDock bootdisk, grabbing a PCI snapshot with PCI Scope's 'pcitool /db:RS780M' (it's supplied already) and posting RS780M.bpd on here so we can look at it with PCI Scope if further analysis is required.

 

OK, this is with 4GB of RAM, and with the graphics going to external monitor with the graphics card, and local without the card. (Pull = boot with DIY ViDock Bootdisk and dump .bpd file)

Todays Pull w/o external card

Last Thursday Pull w/o external card

Last Thursday Pull w/ external card

Right now my focus is to turn on PCIE 2.0, and 16x if possible. Second, is to set resources for hotplug with 4GB of RAM w/o "Code 12" (eventually I am going to upgrade to 8GB of RAM). Finally, I will start to work on local display capability.

Those who havn't tried it yet, Baredit is one of the best tools I've used. You can either use Device Manager or Everest to get Bus/Device/Function and use your chipset's Datasheet to find the correct offset. Nando, thanks for the heads-up on this tool (or whoever mentioned it first)!!

Again MUCH MAHALO for all the help!

 

AMD RS780M chipset -> switching to x1 2.0 speed (5GBps)

Based on your previous images here and here it appears your expresscard is connected directly to the RS780M Northbridge. In which case we see on your snapshot the ports, 0.4.0, 0.5.0, 0.6.0, 0.7.0 all have:

NB_PCIE_LINK_CAP(0x64)=2=5.0Gb/s
CURRENT_LINK_SPEED(0x6A)=1=2.5Gb/s
TARGET_LINK_SPEED(0x88)=1 (assuming it means 2.5Gb/s).

Appears your HD5770 is attached to port1 (0.4.0), so try setting bits below using BarEdit as taken from the AMD 780G Family Register Reference Guide

x2-780M.bat

Code:

:: Example to enable x1 2.0 on AMD RS780M chipset system on port 1 (0:4.0)
:: Using setpci with [register].[b/w/l]=[data],[mask] syntax below to switch
:: individual bits
:: 1. Disable Link - 0.4.0/0x68 (Link Control), bit 4=1
setpci -s 0:4.0 68.b=10:10

:: 2. Set target link speed=5Gbps
:: 0.4.0/0x88 (Link Control 2), bit 3:0=2 (5Gbp/s, *assumed, not in datasheet*)
setpci -s 0:4.0 88.b=2:F

:: 3. Retrain link
:: 0.4.0/0x68 (Link Control), bit 5=1
setpci -s 0:4.0 68.b=20:20

:: 4. Enable Link
:: 0.4.0/0x68 (Link Control), bit 4=0
setpci -s 0:4.0 68.b=0:10

:: 5. Disable retrain link
:: 0.4.0/0x68 (Link Control), bit 5=0
setpci -s 0:4.0 68.b=0:20

:: 6. Check the Link Status Read-Only register
:: 0.4.0/6A (Link Status), bits 3:0 (Link Speed)=2 (5Gbp/s)
echo Checking port status, bits 3:0=2 (5Gbps) 3:0=1 (2.5Gbps)
setpci -v -s 0:4.0 6A.b

As to your 4GB/8GB, the pcitool output is prior to the PCI space being initialised. I can't tell what your final memory allocation is. So could you try:

1. load PCI SCope in XP and save the .bpd snapshot within Windows with HD5770 attached *without* error 12? Warning: I was getting BSODs with PCI Scope in Win7. In XP it works fine.

2. Provide a Device Manager -> View Resources By Connection -> Memory screenshot so we see the allocation.

 

OK, every time I try to disable the link Winblows crashes/reboots. I also pulled a stick of RAM so I could hotplug and have both screens and still when I disable it, it crashes. I am going to have to trust grub2 and try it that way. I will keep you updated.

 

Can use the DIY ViDock bootdisk and just do setpci commands. When done run 'grub' or 'grub --config-file="menu.w7" to boot Win7. grub/setpci are supplied.

Code:

setpci -s 0:4.0 88.l      :: Find value
setpci -s 0:4.0 88.l=xx   :: Flip required bits

In hindsight, probably not a good idea to start changing link parameters on the northbridge once the OS is booted up and using the devices attached to it.

 

Whenever I put the .1 on 88.1 it throws an error, but if put just 88 it works fine. Also, do I use Hex or Bin?

 

It's a "L" for long, rather than a number 1.

* setpci -s 0:4.0 88.l (l=long/32-bit)
* setpci -s 0:4.0 88.w (w=word/16-bit)
* setpci -s 0:4.0 88.b (b=byte/8-bit)

 

LOL, I am an idiot. 0x88 is 16bits long so shouldn't it be w? Again, should it be in hexadecimal, binary, or does it matter?

(We need to setup an IRC channel if we don't already have one)

 

My bad. 16 bits means access it as 'setpci -s 0:4.0 88.w'. I'd suggest read it's value using 'setpci -s 0:4.0 88.w'. 3:0=2 for 5Gbps mode and 3:0=1 for 2.5Gbps, so it's effect on the total number is an addition of hex 1. (+1).

 

That kind of addresses my next question. When you do the setpci, is it a straight write, a mask that flips the bits on the 1's entered, or an add to the current value?

 

You are applying a bit mask (3:0). We know:
* 2.5Gbps = 1h = 001
* 5.0Gbps = 2h = 010

So you could plug it in Calc->Scientific mode, and apply a bitwise mask, then clock on "hex" finding that the original hex value returned by 'setpci -s 0:4.0 88.w' needs to be incremented by 1h.

 

From here.

SouthBridge
PORT 1 - empty
PORT 2 - empty
PORT 4 - wireless
PORT 5 - ethernet

NorthBridge
PORT 2 - mobility HD4650

OK - do you have 2 empty slots, a expresscard and an empty mPCIe? If have any empty mPCIe, can you move your wifi card into it and see what it reports in Everest? Also, if you have an e-sata expresscard, worth plugging in. These activities would ensure that those two physical ports correspond to port1+port2. A x2 1.0 link can be done by linking port1+port2 or port3+port4 OR port5+6 OR port7+8.

 

I received my PE4H in the mail today with the express card adapter, etc. There is a slot for a 12v adapter. Am I going to need that, or will my PSU power my card? I assumed the passive adapter wouldn't need it's own power source?

 

The 12V via either the DC jack or the floppy molex is needed to supply 12V/75W to the pci-e card. This is normally the case when you plug it into a desktop system, since each slot there is rated at 75W.

The additional pci-e power connectors on the video cards are needed when when 75W is not enough for cards such as HD47xx, HD48xx, HD57xx, HD58xx. A HD46xx/56xx or GT240 can run with just the 12V/75W in the molex/DC jack.

Which system are you using? RAM/CPU/video card, the southbridge ports like DV2000 example, do you have 256MB window free like shown in PCI Reallocation?

 

Ok, so if I have the molex running to the card from my PSU then I'm good to go for power?

I'm running a HP dv2000 with 2gb RAM and win7. I've got a 9800 gtx I'll be plugging in.

 

Yep - the molex supplies 75W pci-e slot power OR the regulated 12V DC jack does so too. The latter designed to run video cards requiring only 75W power using say a notebook adapter that's rated 15-19V 80W.

BTW - did you get the second MINI2 mPCIe socket, visible when you undo the HDD compartment, as described here? The bios enables port1, port3, port4 by default. port1=expresscard, port4=wifi mPCIe, which then suggests that extra mPCIe socket is port3. If so, could connect port3+port4, hardset as a lane reversed x4 link, which would then work as a dumbed down x2 1.0 link. So says the theory.. x2 1.0 would give another 40-60% GPU performance.

Will be great to get 9800GTX performance, some idea of performance here. What CPU are you running?

 

Can I run it without that second, and get it at a later time? More performance sounds great, but funds are limited currently. That's why I decided to go on the adventure of building my own as apposed to just up and buying the ViDock. Problem is... this stuff is all above my head. I didn't understand one lick of info in the reallocation process. I need, "Reallocation for absolute newbs". One of those threads I can find? haha.

I'm runnin a AMD duo core 1.8ghz.

 

Hello, I'm new to this and the gtx 260 on the m1330 IMMEDIATELY caught my eye. Now I have a feel questions:

1. Is that the highest card I can use for the DIY vidock on my m1330?
2. Is it compatible with my system of
Windows XP
T5750 2.00Ghz dual core processor
4GB ram (3582 MB listed in dxdiag)
8400m gs
3. What are all the parts I need?
4. Where can I find instructions to set it up?

Thanks so much!

 

See DIY ViDock - My experiences so far. The M1330 has quite a few pci-e ports enabled by default by the bios. Worth too swapping around the wifi and trying an e-sata card to see if can get a combo yielding port+port2 or port3+port4. If so, could do a x2 1.0 setup that would yield some spectacular numbers with say a HD5xxx series.

 

Hello, and thanks for the reply.
So to do what you have said above, what would I need to buy?
And being totally new to all this, I'm not quite following all this info.

 

Added a Getting Started section to the experiences thread.

 

WOW THANKS! +rep

 

Quick update...popped my PS while setting-up (I work on it at home and at work), so looking at which one to get to replace it with right now. Also, will be soldering in a power switch to stabilize power-up/down voltage/amperage spikes during setup.

 

Wanted to start off by saying this thread is awesome!!!

Was looking for some advice/suggestions on what video card I should use.
Right now I have a Dell XPS M1730 nVidia 8700M GT SLI running Vista 32 with 4gb of ram (ya I know)...
Haven’t had time to upgrade it to 64 bit cause I have some much crap on it...

I noticed Vista is a no go; so I need Win 7 64.
My intentions are to get 3 monitors working with my laptop (to extend my desktop) plus add some horsepower when gaming.
One monitor will be plugged directly into my laptop and the other two into the DYI ViDock. All three monitors will be used when working (2D apps); and the DIY with one or two monitors when gaming.

Can anyone suggest a video card to use that will allow me to use a resolution of 1920x1080 on both monitors preferably one under 80W so I won’t need additional power for the video card?

Another question, has anyone got an ICH8M chipset and >2.5gb of memory to work?

Thanks all.

 

I don't have 1x4GB stick for my single-slotted ICH8M 2510P, but was able to do PCI Reallocation as if I did successfully here. Something I suggest you try before purchasing the hardware to set it up.

Using a HD5750 with a 12V/80W PSU

12V/80W adapter presents a couple of options. Officially you'd be restricted to a HD5670, or a POWERCOLOR Go! Green AX5750 or Nvidia GT240. The safe performance option being the HD5670. However, the HD5750's higher performance at not much more cost is tempting.

HD5750's ordered by power consumption:

72W POWERCOLOR Go! Green AX5750
81W Powercolor PCS+ HD5750
81W? Gigabyte HD5750
85W Sapphire HD5750
92W HIS HD5750 icooler

xbitlabs here claiming 61W for a HD5750 and 81W for the HD5770. These power consumption figures suggest to me that a Powercolor HD5750 would work with 12V/80W. The following tweaks could be applied 'just in case':

- power starvation, if it is 81W at full load could just slightly underclock the HD5750
- if xbit's 61W is more accurate, then could overclock the HD5750 to near HD5770 performance levels as suggested by xbitlabs here.

This would need a patch lead to supply power to the HD5750's pci-e connector, as we can see here the power is split. Relatively easy to do on the PE4L if using the DC input. Just need a lead running from the floppy molex into the 6-pin pci-e power connector.

 

Thanks nando4.
Interesting thanks... I'll see if I can do a PCI reallocation, I'll have to read up on that... and install Win7... I'll install it on an older drive for now.

Would you happen to know if the HD5670 or HD5750 can output 1920x1080 on both ports?
Can the PEH4 handle a 18.5V/90W, will that work?

Which cards did xbitlabs use? [email protected] and [email protected]??? Those will work if I can find them...

Molex from the PCB to video card would be great; but what would be the power requirements 200+W?

 

Hello,
So I found a few pages on a cross-display driver perhaps being in development for this, after the XGP made its own...
Is this true?

 

Could you link these articles please?

 

It wasn't an article, it was just a brought up question, I don't even know if it's possible. Was curious though.

 

MSI GT627 has port 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 enabled.
I have seen 3 mini PCI e ports (one without a connector) + express card slot.

x4 should be possible, maybe...

EDIT: Using the old 1.0P BIOS you can choose which ports to enable/disable.

 

GT627's onboard 9800M GS would make a great DIY ViDock hybrid phys-X setup as explained in Nvidia helps the HD 5870 beat the GTX 285 in PhysX . Installation details here.

 

I'll definitely consider it, but a bit later down the track, when I need more power

 

I just can't get this thing to work!
I've got a my PE4H connected to an ExpressCard and using a 18.5/90W adapter. Right now I'm testing with two cards an old X600 pro and a 7600GT.

Both lights on the PE4H turn green; but when I connect it to my computer nothing happens?

I tried two different laptops one with Win 7 x64 and the other with Vista just to see if something would happen but no luck.
The ExpressCard slot works on both computers.
The USB connection on the PE4H works too.

I tried running ‘atiflash –ai’ using the boot disk and it doesn’t find anything.

Am I missing something? Is there a hardware problem somewhere?

 

May I suggest, trying any 12V PSU you might have around to bypass the voltage regulation. Can create a makeshift 12V connection using the two leftmost pins on the PE4H's molex connector (12V/GND). Just in case the voltage regulation is problematic. I didn't test that aspect since I use as 12V/80W adapter.

Also worth jiggling the EC2C in case it might not be sitting right.

 

I presume you are connecting the ExpressCard adapter cable to the leftmost connector of the PE4H. I doubt atiflash will be able to detect the 7600GT as it's an Nvidia card. It should see the X600 though.

Check Device Manager in Windows and see if the card shows up there (or maybe an "unknown device" or something)

 

I connected the floppy molex to a 450W PSU and still nothing.
Also tried to wiggle the EC2C on both laptops...nothing..

Yes into PCIe x1.
I was only running atiflash on the X600.
Device manager is clean no unknowns; nor does Windows make an insertion sound.

 

When you bootup the DIY ViDock bootdisk, run 'lspci' before and after connecting the X600. THe x600 will appear on the pci-e bus when the X600 is properly connected. If not, then there's some connectivity issue, requiring checking: cables, PE4H, power, etc.

 

Hmmm strange.
When I ran that commnad on the X600 nothing; but on the 7600GT success!!! I don't know how it's working now?

Code:

0d:00.0 0300: 10de:0391 (rev a1)

I booted windows and pluged it in, hello.. It works! Have no idea why it's working now. Didn't do anything different. Still using the 18.5/90W adapter.
For some reason the X600 is a no go, even though the card is still good. (Oh well)

Now I'm just getting a driver error; probably a resource allocation issue.

Code:

Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)

My next challenge, time to fix that one.

Thanks nando4 for all your help!

EDIT:
I don't really understand how to properly allocate PCIe memory.
Can someone please give me a hand.

Thanks

 

- There is also a device AGEIA PhysX 100 Series that appears on port5 which would indicate to me that there is partial inialization of your 7600GT.

- Your system already two 256MB windows free already: @C0000000 and @D0000000. No need to do any PCI Reallocation.

-Your snapshot file hangs loading on my PCI Scope, so am not working precisely here. Based on JohnnyEM's GT240 Nvidia parameters, suggest try:

Code:

:: Apprears you 7600GT is connected to 00:1C:04 bridge (port5)
:: Set it to use the D0000000 (256MB) Window
setpci -s 00:1c.4 1c.w=2020
setpci -s 00:1c.4 24.l=DFF1D001

:: A parameter you can try if no success
:: setpci -s 00:1c.4 20.l=F3FFF200

Likely the last commented parameter needs playing with. Your 8700GT requires 2x32GB of these smaller windows. There's no more room in Fxxx range, so could put them in Cxxx range.