Advanced dock + GFX

The other threads on this topic seems slightly dead and I didn't find the answers I need. Please point me towards the proper thread if my questions have been answered elsewhere.
I just started looking into upgrading my dock again and I could use a few tips.
From other threads, it would seem that it is possible to use:
(i) Certain Radeon Cards (like 4350 & 4550) that have a low enough Power consumption (<50W?) to be used "natively" in the dock, or with a Pci riser card in case the card physically to to big for the dock.
(ii) Certain Radeons cards (like 5770) with a bigger power consumption, using an external PSU (and the riser card solution)
It seems then, that the cards that will NOT work, includes:
(a) Most or all Nvdia Cards (like 7800GT) due to a Pci x16-> x1 scaling issue.
(b) Any card using more power than the dock can supply while lacking the option to connect an external PSU
I need help devicing a theoretical list based on the assumptions above.
At the moment, I am looking at a few cards that sell for next to nothing, in order to try the mod and get a bit more performance than offered by the intel Gfx in my T61
I am looking at HD4550, HD5450, HD 5550, HD4650, HD4670 and HD5670
as they all sell for less than 100$ in DK
I am looking at Sapphire, XFX and Asus, and most of these cards (exept 5670) are passively cooled.
The question now, is, to figure out which cards will work natively as (i), which ones will work with a PSU (ii), and finally, which ones that will not work at all (b).
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Note: the primary purpose is not gaming but rather Photoshop, Premiere, Blue-ray and such, whereas I do a bit of occasional EvEonline/wow gaming (and yes, these games DO require much more than an onboard gpu

 

Was there a question?

What laptop do you have, and what is the exact model docking station you are wanting to buy?

 

i suggest you get a DIY vidock or Vidock 4 instead.

 

I have a T61 7661-gn3, but it has PCMCIA+smartcard instead of expresscard so the DIY vidock will not run faster than the dock+gfx.
I already have an advanced dock (I think it's called 2503. I don't have the exact modelnumber as I am not at home atm) I also already have a PCI risercard as I tried getting my old 7800GT to work in the dock (powered by a 450w PSU) with no succes.

As far as I can gather, all of the above cards run solely on bus power unlike the 5770 featured in This thread
The essential question then: What is the fastest card that uses little enough power to run buspowered?

 

I am sorry for keeping several threads alive, but I still didn't find any comparative list of working/non-working setups...
As to the wattage, According to This list the TDP of the of the buspowered cards I am looking at are as follows:
Below 50W:
5450=19W
4550=25W
5550=40W
5570=43W
Above 50W (and thus presumably not compatible with the dock at anything close to full load):
4650=55W
4670=70W
5670=61W
Theoretically speaking, is going for the 5550 or the 5570 gonna be cutting it too close? Strangely, in This thread, jbren states that he is running a 4650 in the dock with no mention of load/stability however.
Furthermore: Should I expect any significant changes in power draw between the different version utilizing different size/speed RAM and passive/active cooling solutions?

 

You are not cutting it too close with those two devices.

Anytime you move to active cooling, you increase the power load.

Renee

 

The 5450 will work because I did tried it before selling my dock. You can look at it here.

As long as it is 30W or less you don't really need to modify it.

 

Seems to me the roles you mention below are CPU bound roles, not GPU. Am I wrong on that?

If so, I'm not sure I'd recommend the route you are taking (investing in an aging T61 machine). It might be worth considering a good quad core desktop or laptop like the ThinkPad W510.

 

Yeath, as soon as I am done with my masters I'll get a nice i7,SSD rig, but for now I am "stuck" with a T61 that I got for free, so I am looking for cheap upgrades that can be used in other systems when the T61 is retired.
Thus, I figuired that I could always use a passive 50-90$ gfx in a furture HTPC or in case I go with the 5570, perhaps even in my future highpowered rig.
I know that the applications I mentioned might be CPU and RAM intensive, but I am faily sure that any newer gfx will provide me with quite an improovement over my onboard gma x3100 in various ways.
I am buying upgrades that are either rather cheap and/or can be used in my next system (upgrading cheaply to 4gb ram and looking for 2. hand cpu upgrade on ebay - looking at a small intel SSD and cheap gfx)
I am still a little unsure is going with the 5550/5570 is going to be safe powerdraw wise, but I might just give it a try as the 5450 seems a little too underpowered even at 50$

 

Please come back to this thread and report your results and impressions later. I am interested to see how this turns out.

Good luck!

 

Hello eyeland

I used to install HD4550, which is made by Sapphire, with T61, windows 7 Ultimate 64bit.
It has little big heatsink that does not fit inside Advanced dock, so, I used to open the cover of PCI-E slot.
There were no problems with this card except HDMI connector that did not work. I could not figure out this problem and supposed that HDMI port is not compatible with Advanced dock because I saw the several same cases in the Internet.
However, I did not experience increased graphic performance with HD4550 except 3D performance. What I wanted and expected was outstanding capacity of 2D graphics for Photoshop and image rendering. I guess this is the lack of x16 PCI-E slot (as you know Advanced Dock has only x1 PCI-E) even though I could see Windows System Rating increased from 3.5 to about 4.1 in Graphics and also from 3.1 to about 4.8(?) in Gaming graphics.

At first, I thought as you did to minimize the upgrade cost but I disappointed performance of HD4550 with Advanced Dock so I just refunded it. Now I am using T400 with discrete graphics.

I am wondering about HD5450's real performance if there are any other performance lacks or not in Advanced Dock.
I am looking forward to your results.
Good Luck!!!

 

I'm trying to do the same for my T61, dun have ExpressCard so DIY vidock it's not a good option for me. Too hard and time consuming and I have to disarm completely the T61 if a get the PCMCIA/Expresscard part to install it

 

Can do a mPCIe-based DIY ViDock implementation instead using the wifi slot. Means you'd have a mini HDMI cable running from underneath your notebook. There's a x61T user example here.