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

still waiting on you to rig your graphics card to your laptop.

 

Is anyone willing to test this?

 

Stop pushing him to rush. He is trying to think of doing it in all aspects to get it working (On theoretical part).

It's really unpleasant thing to get your idea on the theoretical part to work, then applying it in real life to discover it wont work and losing your motivates (While the reason might be a small thing you didn't consider about, that prevented it from working)

I know most people are so rush on seeing this working in real life, but I say we wait all the time for such product to come (Although not on external monitor & external Power) , we wont die if we wait even more to see it coming.

 

i'm glad he is doing a bunch of thinking and article posting
just because he isn't doing anything hands-on yet doesn't mean he is providing no value to this conversation
no need to be a jerk to the guy

 

i'm just excited. i want to see him do it!

 

I know , aren't we all?

you will do the expresscard mod or the mini pci-e mod? because if it was the mini-pcie I feel the cable length is a little bit short and will prevent you from using your laptop in a comfortable way (Its really short - everything I feel is need to be close to your laptop) the only advantage I might see is the internal resistance of the cable might be less, so It 11'inches cable is going to be faster than 1 mile cable

you know, we also arent in rush take a month or two and dont rush in getting a job only for this

 

I also would like to test my ideas and buy the needed parts, but Im broke atm ...

 

This document suggests MXM has LVDS signals output signals so in theory could be switched straight into the LCD *if* there was a LCD HD connector allowing signals from either the systemboard OR the MXM card. Just need to be wire up it's pci-e lines directly to the mini pci-e/expressport pci-e bus.

 

Oh sorry, I expressed what I want in wrong way.
Anyway I wish you good luck in having a nice job

That would be a wise decision

 

Hmm, this looks good.

im interested in the Expresscard way to do it. because that way, you dont have an x1 slot. The expresscard goes straight to a x16 slot. Which would probably mean faster/less or no bottlenecking from the x1 slot speed. Correct?

I am thinking of testing this out. in the OP it says $30. i could try to get up 30 bucks to try it. So, where can i buy it?
Just a note, if i do try it, it wont be with the newest GPU or anything. But it could see if it would work overall...

 

Hmm. I see

So, mini pci-e is also connected with an x1 slot?
then, expresscard and mini pci-e will be the same speed, correct?

and there is no faster connector on a laptop im assuming...
What about the IEEE 1394 plug or something?
or maybe where your CD/DVD-ROM plugs in or something like the HP Expansion Port?

One more thing im confused about. With the PE4, the Expresscard slot turns into the PCIe port. But how is the card powered? (Aside from possible extra PCIe power connectors). Because normally, the PCI-E port is powered, and theres no way Expresscard can power a graphics card...

 

Ok. Thanks.

But Expresscard 2.0 will also need a new 2.0 Port on the laptop i assume...
What type/kind of port is it? that powers the PE4? i didnt notice it listed.

Sorry bout all the questions.

EDIT, lol, one other thing...
i noticed the PE4 is Expresscard/34. While many if not most laptops have /54. Does this measure speed? If so, maybe we should be looking for something like the PE4 but with /54?

 

If you wan't expresscard 2.0 you will need to buy a new notebook. Will be available sometime in 2010.

 

Ok. i thought so.

Any answers to my edited question? and about the power connector on PE4?

BTW, +24 rep for the thread, idea, and all the help so far.

 

both /34 and /54 have the same connector, so they have the same speed.
the only difference is the shape/size of the cards.

 

here is a nice wiki page that explains it more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExpressCard

BTW thanks for the rep.

 

Ok, thanks for clearing that up.

Anyway, do you know what kind of power connector does the PE4 use?

And another issue...
On the page to buy products from HWtools, the PE4 isnt listed!
http://www.hwtools.net/Buy_It_Now.html

 

The PE4 is still just an Engineering Sample Now.
It can detect standard PCIe add-in cards.
They have 7 engineering samples, and will sell them for $40 + shipping.
Right now they don't work if the device already has a VGA out. I'm sure when this problem is solved the PE4 will be available to buy.

I'm not sure about the power connector, from the picture it looks simmilar to what you have in a notebook.

 

Oh, ok. now what i read earlier makes sense. Didnt understand before.

What about the PE2 then this thing you posted earlier?
But i dont see a power connector on the PE2 anywhere...

 

with the PE2 you don't need the extra 16x adapter, 16x cards will fit in the 1x slot if you cut the sides a bit.

PE2 specification:
Internal 12V/0.2A(Max), 3.3V/1.3A(Max)
x1 PCI express support
Use 30CM custom PCIe x1 cable

PE4 specification:
External 100V~240V AC to 12V/5A(Max), 3.3V/3A(Max) DC adapter
x1 x4 x8 x16 PCI express card support
Use 300CM, 200CM, 150CM, 100CM or 30CM length custom PCIe x1 cable

so as you can see the PE2 is too weak for an external graphics card, it doesn't support external power. It could maybe work with a standalone VGA card.

 

Ok. Thank you. It is much appriciated.

So, it looks like for expresscard, your best bet is to wait for the PE4.
...I wonder how soon it will be fixed and released.

 

we just need a pioneer now

 

I cannot see why this shouldn't be possible. But again, i don't see why. As others mentioned, it will only work with an external monitor, and second, price approaches that of a dedicated desktop lowend gaming system.

There is, however, some interesting uses for such a device. One would be running CUDA/OpenCL applications. Another use could be adding a lowend 8xxx/9xxx Geforce card to an already Geforce equipped laptop and use the second card for physics. A third use, which would be quite difficult to DIY, would be a express card with both PCIe and USB going into a box with a PCIe graphics card and connecting a USB device to capture off the DVI port and use software to play it fullscreen on the laptop. But AFAIK no such device exists. I don't believe that would give any noticeably latency problems.

In reply to the 1x vs. 16x debate, i have modded a ATX board to take 3 graphics cards non-SLI, one in a 16x slot and 2 in modded 1x slots. All 3 cards are Geforce 8400 with 256 mb RAM and gaming performance is almost the same, except when using high resolution textures. The bottleneck is quite clearly when the card has to request textures from main memory. As long as everything fits inside the card, theres almost no performance degradation. If anyone's interested, i can do some tests with a 8600 with 512 mb.

 

After the PE4 is available, i may test it out.

 

PLEASE

That would be very helpful for this thread.

 

Yes, please do.

 

is this pci-e 2.0 or 1.0?

it matters only in that the bandwidth per lane is different between these two specs.

 

any updates?

 

hmmm maybe this can be my next pet project...now that I'm done with my 4650 upgrade.

It would be terrific if we could somehow use a TV tuner or something of the like to re-display the output of the card on the monitor...looking into this as we speak...

 

People keep saying that ExpressCard slots have bandwidth equiavalent to a PCI-E 1x lane, but on expresscard.org it states it's pci-e bandwidth is up to 2.5Gb/s, which would be equivalent to about 5x lane on PCI-e 2.0.

I need some clarification. D=

 

Actually they just needed a 64bit operating system so that the system could correctly handle the memory amounts. There are obviously issues having the ViDock eat some of the alocation for the main ram meaning there is no room for it in address space. If you can't address the ram then the card is useless.

 

Perhaps very bad for me Im running 8gb of ram.

This is the only bad thing of having 8gb .

 

According to Wikipedia, ExpressCard in PCI-E mode is the same bandwidth as a 5x PCI-E 2.0 slot or 10x PCI-E 1.0 slot.

If you really want to know what kind of card bandwidth you can get, look for Crossfire benchmarks on a P35 board, as those were 16x / 4x PCI-E 2.0. From preliminary Googling, at least an HD 4850 will work.

 

I wish! Please provide a reference. wikipedia says expresscard transfers are at 2.5 Gbit/s (PCI Express mode), the same as a 1x PCI-E slot as shown here. expresscard.org explains it nicely:

ExpressCard Interface
The ExpressCard technology improves the data transfer speed by using higher performance serial data interfaces rather than parallel buses. ExpressCard-compliant host platforms must support both the PCI Express and USB interfaces. This includes a single PCI Express lane (x1) operating at the baseline 2.5Gbps data rate, in each direction, as defined in the PCI Express Base Specification 1.0a by the PCI-SIG. The host interface must also support the low-, full- and high-speed USB data rates as defined by the USB 2.0 Specification of the USB Implementers Forum. An ExpressCard module may use one or both of the standard interfaces depending on the application requirements.

​

250GB/s is bytes. 2.5Gbps is bits. There are 8 bits in a byte, but when you add 20% communication overhead 2.5Gbps becomes 250GB/s.

We can see from the above that expressport is simply a more conveniently packaged mini pci-e port, so those without expressport can tap the mini pci-e port to get the same functionality.

So can try the DIY ViDock for systems only with mini pci-e on the first post. Can cost next to nothing to try if you have an IDE cable, a $5 mini pci-e blank card to solder onto, a 12V psu (or 40W capable at > 8V), a soldering iron and some time. Or otherwise pay for the $100US PEMINI2X1-F.

whitelisting - appears to apply only to wifi/wwan as per this comment:

WLAN slot checks PCIe device ID against whitelist and throws an error if not there. Which means USB devices don't throw an error - but without taping pin 20, BIOS will (wireless-)disable it, thinking nothing's there.WWAN slot is basically vice-versa.

There are WWLAN/WIFI pins on mini pci-e, and if the they are active then likely whitelisting is applied. So could just not connect to them, or put cellophane tape over those pins.. another solution if encounter such a problem.

 

Eh Wikipedia needs to better lay out their pages and give bandwidths in the same nomenclature then. I read it wrong.

 

My laptop has a mini pci-e, but i think the space is too small to add anything. It's also located on th bottom of the laptop. Is there any way I can solve this? If can, I'll give it a go.

 

If you look here:
http://www.orbitmicro.com/global/pemini2x1-f--base--p-8244.html

you can configure that to 12 inches. Then just find a hole in the notebook to put it through.

Edit: That would cost $118 though.

 

wow so your saying some has found how to do it?

 

yes it works.

I will definatly buy the PM3. Hopefully it will work just as well as the PE4.
I can't wait.

nando4 you have done a lot of work on this, +rep.

Just wandering if an 100cm cable will cause problems.

 

I will post this again:

So 100cm cable length is not a very good idea, best to go with the 30cm cable.

 

ok another question will nvidia cards work or will it just be ati?

 

as you can see from the screenshots on nando4s post, nvidia works great with it.

 

thats what i thought but was just making sure
wow for 40 bucks that is impressive

 

now some of these old laptops are not totally useless anymore like the small form laptops since gpu plays a huge part of win7

 

4gb didn't work?

 

Hrmm, this is interesting.

Would it be possible to hijack notebooks' gpu native interconnect to gain the bandwidth needed for high end cards?

 

This is PERFECT, Im going to wait for the PE4, Ill mod a case, power supply and some fans, this is my next big project.

Ill use many systems not only my gateway lappy. .

Thanks Nando! +rep you are very gentle.

Btw according to some electronic ecuations the WIFI power (2.4ghz) using a cable is halved when using 40CM+ cables, and since it seems that this works at 2.5ghz, I would get the 30cm one.

BTW Nando please ask them if they can use an external PSU for cards like the HD4890, or if its possible to put more powerful cards that need more power, or if they have a more powerful PSU for the PE4.

 

...Sounds like we are getting closer...

Do we know what kind of power connector the PE4 takes though?

 

Specification/Requests for PM3/PE4 product

OK - below is what I've been able to come up with that I'd like to present to Gerry for evaluation. The intent being for him to consider the needs to accomodate as part of the the PM3/PE4 product design:

Some questions/requests to Gerry from HWTOOLS RE: PM3/PE4 product

1/ Request: OFF function to avoid bios hangups

Request: ability to "OFF" the pci-e card to allow bios to boot in the event there is a pci-e resource allocation issue. When "ON" it acts exactly as if hotswapping the device in and can use hotswap! system tray icon's Scan for hardware changes to quickly and easily have the video card added to the system. Maybe just disconnecting the 12V DC to the PCI-E card is enough?

-> This has been added as a 6.9 second reset delay on PM3N

2/ Request: allow up to 75W regulated/unregulated 12V pci-e input via DC jack or molex plug

- request a input of 12V, 6.25A max (75W) to drive the pci-e card as the pci-e 1.1 specification rates pci-e at 75W

Request: Suggest regulated and unregulated power plus DC AND molex input power connector:



So could use a spare notebook power adapter to drive it. Eg: HP 18.5V/3.5A 65W Barrel Center + 4.75MM X 1.7MM X 9.5MM (shown up right) or a loose molex like on above pci-e riser card allowing external ATX power supply to drive it.

3/ Request: addition of USB port to the board hosting the pci-e card

Useful to have accessories associated with a fixed location like home, eg: USB hub, wireless keyboard plugged into this so don't need to attach/detach on notebook's USB ports. viDock has this. If existing 30/100cm lead has 2 wires spare can easily add the Data+/Data- signals leading from mini pci-e/expressport to a USB plug on the pci-e socket end.

USB Port Pinout

1 Red 5 Volt 2 White Data - 3 Green Data + 4 Black Ground

4/ Request: consider making PM3/PE4 wiring compatible with pcie-2.0/expresscard 2.0

ViDock4 is planning to be expresscard 2.0 compatible. Based on pci-express wikipedia page and pcisig pci-e 2.0 specs, it appears there is a doubling of clock rate to double the throughout. I'm not sure if that means different wiring for PM3/PE4, being an intermediate between the mini pci-e slot and the pci-e card. You may wish to evaluate the pcie-2.0 wiring specification as part of your design to perhaps make it compatible with the newer 2.0, with Card ElectroMagnetical (CEM) specification document available here.

5/ Request: use a x2 socket and allow an optional input from another mini pci-e socket to give x2 mode

See Wiring up a x2 pci-e link mode to get a background as to why this small addition is desirable to provide a major increase in performance.

6/ Request: Investigate if mini pci-e slot already has RESERVED pins enabled for a second lane, to do x2 link

mini pci-e specification has RESERVED pins for a second pci-e lane as described here. Toshiba Tecra A9 and HP 2510P have at least the GND pins of those RESERVED 2nd lane lines already connected which according to the spec, should be unterminated unless they are being used as a second lane. The Toshiba A9 confirmed to run tracks off the other non-GND reserved tracks. This would indicate to me a very high possibility that the second lane is already connected for at least these two systems. The pci-e spec allowing link polarity inversion, so there is flexibility in getting the interconnects right. Please refer to info here for more detail.

7/ Request: Screw holes on circuit board hosting the pci-e card (PE4H/PE4L)

As requested here, (If they arent there already) One or Two screw holes in the PE4. This could help in mounting it or placing it. Im not sure another way we could secure it. Im planning to make an enclosure/case to hold the PSU and card. But need a way to secure the PE4.

8/ Request: Add x4 capability as requested here and show is supported by the chipset here. This would need an additional 2 mini hdmi connectors to allow ganging expressport+mPCIe+mPCIe+mPCIe. The latest PM55's pci-e 2.0 spec meaning this would be a x4 2.0 link, very fast indeed.

9/ Request: A cheaper x2 kit PE4H-EC2C+PM3N+100cm cable. The total of the package as is now on Buy It Now is $85+$20+30=US$135+$28 postage=US$163 which some ppl have commented is outside of their budget so are considering using the US$55+US$18 delivery PE4L modified for x2 mode as shown here.

10/ Request: pre-tinned mPCIe socket for those with systemboard pads

A pre-tinned mPCIe socket to attach to systemboards with pads for an additional mPCIe port (WWAN or pci-e), but no socket. If the product is pretinned it should be simple enough to just align to the pads and apply soldering iron heat to attach to the pretinned pads without causing damage or having solder runs. The following are are few examples that have the pads, but no socket:

HP DV2000 | Toshiba Tecra A9 | HP 8710W | Acer AS1410/1810T

Compatibility List

1/ ViDock's Compatibility list showing confirmed success with Integrated graphics: Dell E6400, HP 6930p/2530P(2GB only)/2133 , Satellite L305B (not 4GB) + other Nvidia/ATI dedicated graphics systems

2/ Lenovo_X200 (2GB only)

3/ Tomshardware ViDock: operating system factors and workarounds

 

Hey I'm all for the project. My kinda thing. Just to say: "Look what I did." and be proud that it was done.