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2014 15" MSI GE60 + R9_390@4Gbps-mPCIe2 (EXP GDC Beast v8.4d) - Win10 [MrRare]


MrRare

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Prologue

 

I like hardware. But I don't like spending money where I shouldn't. One of those things are a new desktop for just some casual gaming. Since I am already running a decent laptop as you can see down below. I wanted to get the best out of my money, and I already knew that CPU's age very well, as there are no major improvements in the last few generations of Intel's line up. (~5 - 15% IPC increase from haswell to skylake). But GPU's are improving very quickly these days. The one big BIIIG draw back with laptops is that they aren't quit upgrade-able, apart for some memory here and there. Luckily, with some work arounds, I found out that using these kinds of devices called mpci to pci-e extenders you can connect a full blown desktop gpu to your laptop. So, me thinking... buying and building a desktop is way more expensive and a waste of money if you still have a decent laptop with at least a decent CPU. (Though, depending on what Zen turns out to be, I will build a new desktop... just because...) . Right, so first step... finding the right eGpu dock for me out there. I do travel quit a bit to college, were I do need my laptop. So I want it to be easily disconnected and reconnected. My search very quickly narrowed down to the EXP GDC BEAST, though, I knew that it wasn't a so called "quality" product. But portability was a bit more important, and including the pretty low costs of this device, I just went: what the hell... why not. By that time, I still had my old hd7850 laying around. So all went well, it got delivered... all fine. My stupid excited head didn't do a good enough research and just went straight ahead and plugged the 4pin male plug that sits right next to the big motherboard connector of my PSU into the bloody thing.... WROOONG. It didn't fit quit right either, but with some wiggling it slid in just as well, so I was just thinking that it had to be the bad quality that I so much heard of.  Right... smoke. Yup... but that wasn't only due to me misplugging the damn thing, I forgot to switch the switch for PSU <-> Power brick as well. Which defaults to Power brick... MOOOOORRRE SMOOOKKEEE. (Though in my defense, noone ever mentioned that there was a switch for that.... at least in the manual). But by some miracle... after doing everything right this time... it still had live in it. I got my old HD 7850 working like a charm. A few days later, I got notice of a fellow student which happend to be my friend that he was selling his "old" GPU, the Sapphire Nitro R9 390 8GB. He had money to spend so he went straight to the 1080 ^^. He didn't really care about the market value of the damn thing apparently, as he offered to sell it to me for just about 150 euro (he had the GPU for about 6 months). Newly bought this things currently still sells for 400 ish euro in my country... I couldn't let this deal slip right past me.  Ok. Back to the egpu. Somewhat skeptic, I swapped it with my HD7850 and to my suprise... it didn't budge a bit, worked straight away. But then.... (tensions rises).... the day after.... when I was just casually watching a Youtube video... poof. Gone. Dead. Cold. My gpu suddenly had a heatstroke apparently and no matter what I did, neither the HD 7850 or the R9 390 could be recognized by my laptop.... Sad face me still in shock went ahead and tried to get my money back from the shop where I bought it. Luckily... after quit some discussion with the service people there (they were trying to put the blame on me, but didn't have a clue about what they were talking about),  I got my money back... But I got hooked... It worked just perfectly fine, my GPU's weren't faulty (my grandma desktop recognized them) and I really didn't want to sit there waiting for zen with my newly second handed r9 390 in my pocket.  So after some more googling, there apparently was a warehouse in the same continent that sold it as well.. cheaper. I was already set on spending my money at something to get this working, and since it probably was partly my fault that my previous exp gdc beast died. I wen't ahead and bought it again.... and now we are here :D.

 

Hardware

 

My laptop: MSI GE60 2PC Apache (2014)

-i7 4710HQ @2.5Ghz

-8GB RAM (1x Kingston Value @1666Mhz)

-GTX 850M 2GB Maxwell dGPU/HD4600 iGPU

-Windows 10 Pro 64bit

 

My eGPU:  R9 390 Sapphire Nitro 8GB GDDR5

- EXP GDC BEAST v8.4d mPCIe

- Corsair CX600 PSU

- external LG 22EA63 21.5" @ 1080p

 

My (temporary) setup:

 

http://i.imgur.com/KedPWB2.jpg

 

Configuration

 

At first it didn't want to recognize my old gpu (the hd7850), but I found a option in the bios which sets the timeout time where a PCI device needs to report back within. It was set to 32, after tinkering around... it started working after I put it to 96/128. Right... following steps are just installing AMD's drivers (not even removing the other drivers from Nvidia/Intel...). To boot it up... just turn on the PSU before turning on your laptop. Couldn't be easier. 

 

Right time for some benchmarks... I put together a "album/post" on imgur with pictures of the scores mentioned below which you can see here: http://imgur.com/gallery/niTRv.  I also ran them on my old gtx 850m, just to see the difference:

 

The 850M runs at stock speeds here, but the R9 390 got a OC to 1140/1600. I take the results from the GTX 850m as 100% mark. 

Benchmark GTX 850M Maxwell R9 390 Increase (%)
3DMark Time Spy (Demo - Total score) 1097 3740 ~341%
Unigen Heaven 4.0(Extreme FHD) 405 1297 ~320%
Unigen Valley (Extreme FHD) 722 2193 ~304%

 

This tells me... I got 3 times the performance. :D

 

All together... I spend about 200 euro to get this "upgrade". Well... if I had to buy a PSU as well, it would've cost me about 230/250. Which is awesome :D. 

 

And to finalize to comparison with a R9 390 not being bottle necked by a PCI Gen 2 x1 bus speed:

(The non bus bottleneck scores are taken from the resources noted down below, please be reminded that those numbers can vary per card, I just picked the best one that I found (considering cpu as well)).

Benchmark R9 390 at Gen 2 x1 R9 390 at Gen 2/3 x16 Difference (%)
3DMark Time Spy (Demo - GPU Score) 3740 3904* ~5%
Unigen Heaven4.0(Extreme FHD) 1297 1490** ~13%
Unigen Valley (Extreme FHD) 2193 2515*** ~13%

 

So at max, if you take the cpu out of the equation (3DMark score includes CPU), the bottleneck created by the PCI bus is around 13%. 

 

Now for the sources:

 

http://www.3dmark.com/spy/41464

**http://www.overclock.net/t/1568187/lightbox/post/24559352/id/2621443

***https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKO7GSmokwE

 

You can see me here doing the GTA V benchmark while playing a tiny bit with the settings, but please do ignore my terrible english talking/accent.

 

 

 

Edited by nando4
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  • Tech Inferno Fan changed the title to 2014 15" MSI GE60 + R9_390@4Gbps-mPCIe2 (EXP GDC Beast v8.4d) - Win10 [MrRare]

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