14" Dell E5420 + GTX760@4Gbps+c-EC2 (EXP GDC Beast) + Win7 [SRJ]

[SRJ]

This site has been very helpful to me, in allowing me to get my eGPU running properly, thank you all for your time, and dedication in supporting this effort. I figured I would provided my experience in getting the GDC V7 Ares running, and hope it would be helpful too.

Equipment

Dell E5420

CPU: 2820QM

Windows 7 Professional SP1

8gb G Skill DDR3 1600

320gb HD

LCD: 1600x900

Dell Bios version A03

GDC V7 Ares Expresscard Dell DA 2 power supply

Video Card: MSI Geforce GTX 760 Mini-ITX Gaming

Let me start with details about the laptop. I purchased a used Dell E5420 off Ebay for $77 + shipping with missing LCD panel and detached keyboard. Used working ones go for about $330 to $400.

I did a couple of upgrades to the latop to maximize the performance. First instead of buying a 14" 1366 x768 replacement screen, which the Dell service tag said was the panel it orginally came with, I took a gamble and bought the 14" 1600x900 which was an upgrade option when the laptop was new. It only cost me about $60 (Ebay) so it was not an expensive risk. It worked fine without the need for any further modification and or cable change.

Next I upgraded the CPU from an Intell Core i5 2410M (Dual Core -Sandybridge) to a Core i7 2820QM (Quad Core- Sandybridge). Also a small risk, it cost me $150 on Ebay. It worked fine too. Though it is a small jump in wattage from 35 watts to 44 watts, I have had no heat issues. The 2820QM performs about the same as a 2500K, sometimes faster sometimes a little slower, but overall very fast.

The video card is a MSI Geforce GTX 760 Mini ITX which I purchased for $160. It works well, very fast and most importantly very compact (6.5" long). It even has a backplate to protect the board.

I purchased the GDC V7 Ares from Bang Good for $50 + shipping. The item arrived on the east coast in about a week and couple days, no problem, excellent place to buy.

It contained the PCI-E slot board, expresscard with attached cable, and PCI-E power cable, ATX power adapter converter. I purchased a Dell DA 2 for $10 on Ebay.

Setup

When I hooked up the card. I did run into a couple issues. First was the BIOS the laptop came with, A01, would not properly recongnize the device. So I updated the Bios to A03. In fact Dell mentions in the update notes that they fixed some Expresscard issues.

The other minor issue was I was not pushing the expresscard in far enough to click lock it in. I am used to the old PCMIA cards that did not click like these do now.

After that everyhting worked fine, on 2 different video cards I used, on both as internal and external screens, no special softeware or hacks necessary. I tried an Evga Geforce GTX 570, and the previously mentioned MSI Geforce GTX 760 ITX-Gaming. I also tried a AMD Sapphire 5770, which did not work, as it gave me the device driver error mentioned in many posts here, as I understand due to address space allocations.

Use

The to Nvidia cards only works at PCI x1 1.1, so it is bandwidth starved, but all the games I tested, new and old were playable 35+ frames. I tried Borderlands Pre-Squel, Crysis 2, Just Cause 2, and FEAR 2. I was able to max out all settings for all the games and typically got between 35 to 60 fps at 1600x1200. The performance between the 570 and 760 were close. The 570 was a little slower, and more power hungry, as it would break 200 watts under Furmark (measured with a Kill-a-Watt on the DA-2 plug).

Though using an external screen the frame rate was higher than internal laptop screen frame rate. It seems that using internal screen starves the GPU of bandwidth.

Benchmark wise, the scores were decent, but you could see how bandwidth starved these cards are. Benchmarks that saturate the bandwidth but not the GPU have a wide range of variance fps, ones that fully load the GPU but not the bandwidth get scores very close to the cards true performance. Standard 3dMark Fire Strike score was 4900 (should be 5600), and extreme 2650 (should be 2700), from the 760 on the external screen. On the internal screen the standard score was 3600, while the extreme score did not drop much.

I hope to to try to get the PCI-E working at 2.0 and 2X, as the chipset support it. Any suggestions?

Hope this was helpful

Benchmarks

3dmark-FS.gpu=5502 (external LCD)

3dmark-FS.gpu=3641 (internal LCD)