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Low benchmarks with x230 + GTX660ti


brownian

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I was able to connect the gtx660ti to my thinkpad x230 with a pe4L 2.1b + E2C2 and a corsair 600W psu. I installed all of the current drivers on to the hard drive (the operating system is installed on to the msata ssd). The gpu is connected to an external monitor and it seems to be working okay. GPU-z is showing a 1x 2.0 connection, but I am getting a 3dmark06 score of ~7800 and 3dmark vantage score of 8947, which appears to be low. From what I read on the forums, that would indicate that optimus is not enabled? Should I have installed the drivers onto the ssd?

Here are my specs:

CPU: Intel Core i5-3380M @ 2.9GHz (dual core)

RAM: 4GB

OS: Win 7 Home Premium

SSD: Plextor M5M 128GB

HDD: 500Gb

Video Card: Asus Nvidia Geforce Gtx 660 ti with 2 GB of GDDRAM.

PSU: Corsair CX600

post-16504-14494995952777_thumb.gif

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What is happening to you is your current X230 bios is seeing the eGPU and setting it as the primary video card rather than the Intel HD4000 iGPU. You need the iGPU to be primary for Optimus to engage where you'll gain x1 pci-e compression and internal LCD mode. You can confirm if the iGPU is/isn't enable by viewing Device Manager->Display Adapters.

The solution if the iGPU isn't active when you boot with the eGPU is either:

1) Flash a newer bios. Lenovo may have corrected the behaviour. Certainly they've been adding dynamic TOLUD depending on what the BIOS detects on the expresscard slot on boot. If that doesn't solve it then:

2) Ensure the bios doesn't see the eGPU on boot. That can be accomplished by either hotplugging the PE4L 2.1b after boot or set the PERST# delay to 6.9s (SW1=3) and powerup the eGPU a fraction before cold starting the X230. You'll need to cold start the X230 everytime for the PERST# delay to work. Warm reboot won't work.

Now when you have the iGPU + eGPU active TOLUD needs to be lowered to accomodate both. Refer to the DSDT override section for details on how to check your TOLUD and a solution if TOLUD is too high to accomodate both GPUs.

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I have the latest bios flashed, and both the igpu and egpu show up on the device manager. Hotplugging the egpu results in a code 12 error. The Tolud appears to be dyanamic (the memory address is 00000000CFA00000). Should i perform a DSDT override?

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Got it working. I had to boot the laptop with the egpu plugged in first, then disable the egpu from device manager and unplug it. Then I hotplugged the egpu back in and enabled it through the device manager. 3Dmark06 went up to 19924. I guess having the egpu plugged in when booting decreased the TOLUD size, allowing for hotplugging?

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Got it working. I had to boot the laptop with the egpu plugged in first, then disable the egpu from device manager and unplug it. Then I hotplugged the egpu back in and enabled it through the device manager. 3Dmark06 went up to 19924. I guess having the egpu plugged in when booting decreased the TOLUD size, allowing for hotplugging?

My point earlier was that the iGPU needed to be enabled where it was believed booting with the eGPU prevented that. However you've indicated that doesn't apply since both the iGPU and eGPU were listed in device manager AND disabling/hotplugging/enable the eGPU sees x1 pci-e compression engage.

So it's a bit unusual then why the Optimus features didn't engage upon a standard boot without your unique process to do it.

I would suggest uninstall your current Intel HD4000 and NVidia driver and install the latest version of both, doing a 'clean' install of the NVidia one.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have a similar (same) setup from a functionality standpoint, x220, gtx650 and pe4l 2.1b with a new lenovo bios with dynamic tolud.

For me the following works 100%:

Insert express card > power on egpu > power on laptop

No need for the pe4l delay switch, dstd, devicemanger or hotplugging.

Just plug and play.

Maybe your problem is a driver issue after all.

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  • 1 month later...

Hey Tech Inferno Fan, and thread author.I have bad situation with my lenovo x230.Gen 2 speed doesnt work for me.I tested it with many videocards like amd radeon 7950, gtx 760, gtx 660, gtx 650 and my laptop dont recognized them as vga.Ony 550 ti works fine (plug&play completely), but only gen 1 speed.I set pci-express speed to gen1 and all work fine.External display, nvidia control panel etc.When im trying enable gen2 speed, by setting pci-express speed to automatic, things gone weird.My system starts a bit longer.I saw a notification "windows not connected to service".Nvidia control panel just doesnt open.Its looks no error issues.

My tolud:

post-12308-14494996401277_thumb.gif

Deice manager:

post-12308-14494996401163_thumb.gif

GPU-z (no clock, no memory.Looks very strange.)

post-12308-14494996400897_thumb.gif

Should i work with setup 1.x.x to solve this problem?And whats probably happens?

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Hey Tech Inferno Fan, and thread author.I have bad situation with my lenovo x230.Gen 2 speed doesnt work for me.I tested it with many videocards like amd radeon 7950, gtx 760, gtx 660, gtx 650 and my laptop dont recognized them as vga.Ony 550 ti works fine (plug&play completely), but only gen 1 speed.I set pci-express speed to gen1 and all work fine.External display, nvidia control panel etc.When im trying enable gen2 speed, by setting pci-express speed to automatic, things gone weird.My system starts a bit longer.I saw a notification "windows not connected to service".Nvidia control panel just doesnt open.Its looks no error issues.

My tolud:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]9554[/ATTACH]

Deice manager:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]9553[/ATTACH]

GPU-z (no clock, no memory.Looks very strange.)

[ATTACH=CONFIG]9552[/ATTACH]

Should i work with setup 1.x.x to solve this problem?And whats probably happens?

You are likely experiencing the NVidia driver having problems maintaining Gen2 link. This would make sense since Gen1 works fine.

If you are using Gen1-only compliant hardware (PE4L 1.5 or PE4H 2.4 or older) then it would be no suprise that this happens and so need to upgrade the hardware or use a Gen1-only link. It would be unusual for you to experience these driver problems if using Gen2-compliant hardware (PE4H 3.2 or PE4L 2.1b) with a Gen2 link.

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@Tech Inferno Fan

Im using PE4L-EC060A V2.1b Adapter

[ATTACH=CONFIG]9556[/ATTACH]

Since it supports gen 2 speed, im kind of need help.Me specs of hardware also:

i5-3320M , 4gb of RAM, Win7 Home Premium x64 and ssd intel 520 series 240gb + eGPU Gigabyte 550 ti OC 1gb

The problem with nvidia drivers?Should i "uninstall my current Intel HD4000 and NVidia driver and install the latest version of both, doing a 'clean' install of the NVidia one"?<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

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@Tech Inferno Fan

Im using PE4L-EC060A V2.1b Adapter

[ATTACH=CONFIG]9556[/ATTACH]

Since it supports gen 2 speed, im kind of need help.Me specs of hardware also:

i5-3320M , 4gb of RAM, Win7 Home Premium x64 and ssd intel 520 series 240gb + eGPU Gigabyte 550 ti OC 1gb

The problem with nvidia drivers?Should i "uninstall my current Intel HD4000 and NVidia driver and install the latest version of both, doing a 'clean' install of the NVidia one"?<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

If it all works at Gen1 speed but fails at Gen2 then it's a link issue. No need to play around with different drivers then. The problem will be either your X230 has poor termination, somewhat unlikely given other X230 owners have done Gen2 implementations. Or you have a a PE4L 2.1b with some cabling/soldering issue. For the latter you'd best speak to BPlus about getting a replacement unit.

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My x230 totaly not best candidate for egpu.Im found only 2 imp. and this thread.One case is that im need setup 1.x.x to get more powerfull gpu to work such as gtx 580.On the other side, Sandy Bridge x220 works plug&play with a lot of videocards, without tolud issues e.t.c But the threads author make it work on gen 2.Im suppose to test some other adapter and trying to talk with Bplus technical support.Im not sure about product replacement, since its for engineric purpoes.Did they recieve some kind of report about adapters work?

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Hello,

Just received my PE4L 2.1b + E2C2 for my Thinkpad X230 and Gigabyte GTX760. All done well under Win7, no issues, but I'm concerned with low benchmark on 3DMARK 11 Adv.Ed. -- performs just P5650 (default settings), max FPS about 40 in 1st test.

BIOS is updated to the latest from Lenovo website, no additional settings were made.

I tried SW1 / SW2 in different positions - no difference, unpluging from device manager and back - no difference.

My equipment:

CPU: Intel Core i5-3230M @ 2.6GHz (dual core)

RAM: 4GB

OS: Win 7 Ultimate

Video Card: Gigabyte Geforce GTX760 with 2 GB of GDDRAM.

PSU: Corsair GS600

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

GPU-Z screenshot:

g0g.png

One more questions: how to make my video card detected in Ubuntu? Not appearing anywhere..

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Anyone can help me? Tried GTA4 - driving a car is very slow, sliding. Impossible, even on mid-settings.

External or internal LCD? Internal LCD uses some of the precious bandwidth to pass image display traffic. An external LCD sends the image data directly out the VGA/Displayport/HDMI port so is faster.

Ensure too you've set your power profile to "High Performance" so the CPU isn't say being limited to lowest multiplier. Disable using the NVidia Sound device instead use the internal notebook soundcard.

If performance is still bad then if you have a spare HDD suggest do a fresh OS install along with NVidia drivers to see if that solves the problem.

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Hi Nando!

Thanks for reply. External TV over HDMI no big difference, about P6000. Sound no difference at all. High perfomcance on CPU and this is fresh install.

How to make sure this is not CPU limitation (i5 2cores) or iGPU vs eGPU issue? I can see both VGA displays in Control Panel -- could it be that they still have conflict? Tried hot-plugging but see no difference.

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Hi Nando!

Thanks for reply. External TV over HDMI no big difference, about P6000. Sound no difference at all. High perfomcance on CPU and this is fresh install.

How to make sure this is not CPU limitation (i5 2cores) or iGPU vs eGPU issue? I can see both VGA displays in Control Panel -- could it be that they still have conflict? Tried hot-plugging but see no difference.

Suggest run the benchmarks listed in the implementations to ensure your results are within ballpark. If all checks out then you may just have a game that is very pci-e bandwidth dependent. In which consider tweaks in Pre-purchase FAQ 5. (Performance) What affects the performance of a eGPU? as well as trying to switch the game via commandline to run in another DX mode. Eg: DX9/DX10/DX11.

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  • 10 months later...
Hello,

Just received my PE4L 2.1b + E2C2 for my Thinkpad X230 and Gigabyte GTX760. All done well under Win7, no issues, but I'm concerned with low benchmark on 3DMARK 11 Adv.Ed. -- performs just P5650 (default settings), max FPS about 40 in 1st test.

BIOS is updated to the latest from Lenovo website, no additional settings were made.

I tried SW1 / SW2 in different positions - no difference, unpluging from device manager and back - no difference.

To bring life to an old thread, another person stated low benchmarks due to not having the battery attached, which could also happen if the battery is low. Appears this is due to having a 65-watt power adapter, which cannot provide enough power on it's own, resulting in under-clocking. Solution is to make sure the battery is full or use a 90-watt adapter. That and using a gtx760 is overkill for an egpu due to the restricted bandwidth - lower end cards are supposedly more efficient. Also Lenovo just released a new bios which may improve the performance, and if so, please confirm for other x230 owners.

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