Jump to content

EXP GDC Beast/Ares-V7/V6 discussion


Recommended Posts

Hey guys, just thought I'd share some of my experience on using the GDC EXP Beast V8.

  • I couldn't get gen2 speeds to work on it at all. I told the guys I bought it from, and they were kind enough to send me another Beast, so I actually took it, removed the HDMI socket connection, and soldered the cable directly to the Beast's PCB. It still did not work in gen2 but it did work on gen1 still.
  • At PCIe gen1 speed, the GPU bus is almost always saturated (e.g. at 100% usage). This will be your bottleneck 90% of the time, unless you are only running a GPU stress test. You can download EVGA Precision x16 and see for yourself; put the bus usage on the overlay while you play a game and watch it. By comparison, I have another laptop with an nVidia dGPU, and I can watch its bus usage stay below 10% all the time, just because it is tied via x8 or x16 connection (and probably PCIe gen3).
  • I play CS:GO a lot and wanted an eGPU to up my frames; sadly I don't think this is a good solution for me. I have not tried a gen2 speed adapter, but I don't think it would work even then. With gen1 speeds I get micro-lags every time I see an enemy, likely because at that exact moment the processor and GPU are communicating vigorously, and my GPU bus doesn't allow the information to travel that fast. I wonder if the same will happen on gen2 speeds, but to a lesser extent.
  • The particular Beasts I received from GearBest had a few missing things about it. It was missing an on switch even when there was space for it. The delay switch (0sec - 7sec - 15sec) was there but if you look at the PCB, the components around it are completely missing, so the switch does nothing. And, the Beast has a USB port, but as I was soldering the cable I discovered that the USB port did not connect to the HDMI cable at all, so USB doesn't work (though I haven't tested it in reality). I think these are ways to cut costs on manufacturing...though admittedly these are tiny cost cuts.

Hope that helps!

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
6 hours ago, yeahman45 said:

wire

 

Cable.

 

6 hours ago, yeahman45 said:

is there a way to extend it?

 

Yes.

 

6 hours ago, yeahman45 said:

is it a standard hdmi cable?

 

1. Oh, so now you realise it's a cable?

2. If it were, it wouldn't be mPCIe/EC on the other side.

 

6 hours ago, yeahman45 said:

possible to use an hdmi extender?

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/27/2016 at 5:19 PM, bleeper4 said:

Hey guys, just thought I'd share some of my experience on using the GDC EXP Beast V8.

  • I couldn't get gen2 speeds to work on it at all. I told the guys I bought it from, and they were kind enough to send me another Beast, so I actually took it, removed the HDMI socket connection, and soldered the cable directly to the Beast's PCB. It still did not work in gen2 but it did work on gen1 still.
  • At PCIe gen1 speed, the GPU bus is almost always saturated (e.g. at 100% usage). This will be your bottleneck 90% of the time, unless you are only running a GPU stress test. You can download EVGA Precision x16 and see for yourself; put the bus usage on the overlay while you play a game and watch it. By comparison, I have another laptop with an nVidia dGPU, and I can watch its bus usage stay below 10% all the time, just because it is tied via x8 or x16 connection (and probably PCIe gen3).
  • I play CS:GO a lot and wanted an eGPU to up my frames; sadly I don't think this is a good solution for me. I have not tried a gen2 speed adapter, but I don't think it would work even then. With gen1 speeds I get micro-lags every time I see an enemy, likely because at that exact moment the processor and GPU are communicating vigorously, and my GPU bus doesn't allow the information to travel that fast. I wonder if the same will happen on gen2 speeds, but to a lesser extent.
  • The particular Beasts I received from GearBest had a few missing things about it. It was missing an on switch even when there was space for it. The delay switch (0sec - 7sec - 15sec) was there but if you look at the PCB, the components around it are completely missing, so the switch does nothing. And, the Beast has a USB port, but as I was soldering the cable I discovered that the USB port did not connect to the HDMI cable at all, so USB doesn't work (though I haven't tested it in reality). I think these are ways to cut costs on manufacturing...though admittedly these are tiny cost cuts.

Hope that helps!

 

Using setup 1.3 and forcing gen2 on my EXP GDC V8, I could somehow 'achieve' gen2 but it is very unstable; crashing, restarts.  I can only play like 2 mins of game (tried battlefield hardline) and then it crashes or my laptop restarts.

I sometimes get an error:

"Directx function "device->CreateBuffer(.... E_OUTOFMEMORY ("Direct3D could not allocate sufficient memory to complete the call."). GPU : "NVIDIA Geforce GTX 750TI", ...."

I don't know if it is related to the gen2 signaling issue that Nando talks about in the first page of this thread? Will another adapter like the pe4H works better?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/11/2016 at 1:21 AM, Arbystrider said:

If you knew anything about computer performance at all, you would know that there are these programs called 'benchmarks'.

 

I hear they're the bee's knees!

 

Quit it with the sass, man. We're all here to help each other.

  • Thumbs Up 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Hi people!

Tell me please what color of the indicator must be on the adapter?

On the video it shows blue, but when I plug everything my adapter is red. Smth wrong or its normal? 

 

1.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Anyone know a seller for v8.3e? I have seen a couple of posts and videos that use it, but checking chinese sites I can only find v8.0. Is there even a difference between v8.0 and v8.3?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, quake said:

Anyone know a seller for v8.3e? I have seen a couple of posts and videos that use it, but checking chinese sites I can only find v8.0. Is there even a difference between v8.0 and v8.3?

I got mine from two different stores.

Banggood or GearBest

They both have the v8.3, I did confirm that before ordering.

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

my LED on v8 is BLUE. I've never seen any EXP GDC with RED LED before (perhaps new version?)

I couldnt find v8.3 either. Bangood doesnt reply me. They still using same old product photos.

But i can confirm you that there are new version on the mPCI signal cable. This could be easily identify by its physical form:

  • - Smaller/Thiner cable
  • - It has 'BEAST Pro' logo on mPCIe end
  • - There's no PTD switch
  • - 8 pin power connector slightly different

 

Beast Pro

3.jpg

Mine:

5.jpg

Blue LED On

2.jpg

Edited by ssamydla
photos unloaded
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/08/2016 at 5:42 PM, balonik said:

I bouth EXP GDC V8 recently, how can I tell if its 8.0 or 8.3?

The version is written in the circuit board of my adapter. It is visible through the plastic enclosure if I take a look at it from the top. It is located near the PCIe slot .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, mrdatamx said:

The version is written in the circuit board of my adapter. It is visible through the plastic enclosure if I take a look at it from the top. It is located near the PCIe slot .

You are right, didn't see it with the card on as the plastic is scratched over it.

Mine says v8.4d

I have PTD switch (off/7s/15s) and green led :)

 

Some experience with it over past two weeks.

 

My setup

HP 8460p, 8GB RAM, no dGPU, Intel HD 3000

Win 10

EXP GDC Beast V8.4d with EC

Setup 1.30 (DSDT and PCI Compact)

I am using External Monitor.

BIOS latest and all the other drivers as well.

 

I tried 3 GPUs, GTX 560 Ti, GTX 760 and GTX 750 Ti.

I was not able to get EC Gen2 working for GTX 560 Ti and GTX 760, both cards report that only x1.1 as supported after I install NVidia drivers. Tried 3 different versions of drivers, all the same.

screenshot of gpu-z here -

 

However, I got x1.2 using the GTX 750 Ti using latest drivers without any issue. Of course, GPU-z reports x1.1 first, but quickly switch to x1.2 when card is under load.

 

Whenever I switch EC to Gen2, the two first cards are even not detected, Win doesn't boot at all or everything is freezing after boot and PC eventually turns it self off.

When I uninstall NVIDIA drivers (using DDU), PC works fine even with EC to Gen2, but thats useless :)

 

Is there some trick to get those 2 cards working x1.2 or they just won't do it with EXP GDC?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

Is there a fix/workaround to make gen2 stable? I don't want to spend $88 on the pe4c v3.

 

p.s. I have EXP GDC V8 + gtx 750 ti evga FTW edition

 

On 06/06/2016 at 8:14 PM, Arbystrider said:

 

About 15-20%, depending on the workload.

 

You can look at the many benchmarks that other users have put up. Some of them compare scores/framerates both with and without external monitor.

 

x1 2.0 is the highest you can get on EXP GDC.

 

GTX 970 gives very strange results however: http://www.owen-lu.com/egpu/

 

how to use external monitor? I tried connect my GTX 750 ti directly to the monitor via DVI but the output is still on the laptop

Edited by nando4
combine posts
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

Please help me with the BIOS error message "System is not fully ACPI Compliant" and Graphics Card error Code 14.

 

I have connected my HP Laptop Pavilion DV7 with GTX 960 4GB card using the GDP Beast V8.0

 

> At first i got the Error Code 12 in device manager. Followed DSDT override to solve it. Loaded the updated DSDT file and then Large Memory is showing up correctly in Device Manager.

> The card showed up in Device Manager with Code 14 - This device cannot work properly until you restart your computer.

> When i restarted the computer with eGPU turned-on i got the blue screen bios error "The BIOS in this system is Not Fully ACPI Compliant". 

Laptop restarts itself after the blue screen and this goes on over and over in loop.

> I tried restarting laptop with eGPU turned-off. Got the same error "Code 14" in device manager.

 

Below are my laptop specs -

HP Laptop (Pavilion DV7 Notebook) with Wondows 7 Home Edition.

GT 960 graphics card and EVGA 600w power supply.

 

I am badly stuck here for a week now. Can someone please help me with this error - tried searching all the threads for anything similar but unfortunately couldn't find a solution.

Please please please help me out with any kind of expert suggestion. Thanks in advance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 21. 8. 2016 at 10:02 PM, Somik said:

Hi,

Please help me with the BIOS error message "System is not fully ACPI Compliant" and Graphics Card error Code 14.

 

I have connected my HP Laptop Pavilion DV7 with GTX 960 4GB card using the GDP Beast V8.0

 

> At first i got the Error Code 12 in device manager. Followed DSDT override to solve it. Loaded the updated DSDT file and then Large Memory is showing up correctly in Device Manager.

> The card showed up in Device Manager with Code 14 - This device cannot work properly until you restart your computer.

> When i restarted the computer with eGPU turned-on i got the blue screen bios error "The BIOS in this system is Not Fully ACPI Compliant". 

Laptop restarts itself after the blue screen and this goes on over and over in loop.

> I tried restarting laptop with eGPU turned-off. Got the same error "Code 14" in device manager.

 

Below are my laptop specs -

HP Laptop (Pavilion DV7 Notebook) with Wondows 7 Home Edition.

GT 960 graphics card and EVGA 600w power supply.

 

I am badly stuck here for a week now. Can someone please help me with this error - tried searching all the threads for anything similar but unfortunately couldn't find a solution.

Please please please help me out with any kind of expert suggestion. Thanks in advance.

make sure you have latest BIOS

hit F8 at boot and try "last known good configuration" or "safe mode"

uninstall all graphics drivers - use DDU http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

try to repair pc from windows media (dvd/usb stick)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I'd say use a card with less than 200W TDP. Leave an additional 20W headroom for the adapter's own power requirements, plus random power spikes and whatnot.

 

You can even use a card with over 240W TDP. I had a GTX580 (244W) running on a 216W PSU. I just had to undervolt it massively and underclock it slightly to keep within that power limit.

Edited by Arbystrider
  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

@mimen Although I do not own a DA-2 it seems like you should be safe with a 970. Actually, this card seems to be capped at 200W max. That is the reading I got from the nvidia-smi utility. My 970 seems to run at a constant 149W under full load, I am sure there must be higher power peaks during gaming but the 200W cap suggests you should be safe.

 

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.