16" Sony VPCF13XFX/B + GTX970@2Gbps-EC1 (PE4C 2.1) + Win7/64 [dromi]

[dromi]

Hi everyone,

First of all a massive thanks to Tech Inferno Fan for all the invaluable help I got from him when I bought setup 1.30.

It was all a bit of a gamble, but I am quite glad to report that is working really well for the purpose that was intended, gpu rendering with octane.

My intention was to run the setup without an external monitor, but using the laptop display.

My setup was a 16.4" sony vaio F series with an i7 Q740 1.73hz, GT425M dGPU, Windows 7. I realised it had an express card slot that I had never used before, so that got me going. I also had a antec 850 PSU from an old built, and a gtx 260 for the initial tests.

The first thing I did was to buy the PE4C 2.1 kit

I had to pay £19 of import duty, but overall the service was good and it arrived in record time. Here is my intial setup with the express card interface.

The first time I started the egpu I could see the card being recognized, but was getting the dreaded error code 12. I soon realized the only way forward was to get setup 1.30 and go the whole way.

I donated the $25 dollars to Nando, and in no time he had sent me the software with some instructions. He was also very kind to guide me a hit my first wall, the DSDT override.

So this are the steps I did once I had setup 1.30:

1) DSDT override: Still not sure what or how it does but it seems to unblock an additional PCI slot. For the DSDT override and in general I followed this guide. You only need to do this once at least on win 7.

2) remove all NVidia: using DDU remove registry entries, and drivers.

3) restart and choose setup 1.30. (Only insert the express card, when setup 1.30 asks for it).

- Perform 36-bit PCI compaction of the dGPU+eGPU, with the eGPU forced to 32-bit effectively hijaaking the dGPU's 32-bit resources"

- initialise the nvidia card.

- Then choose chainloading and when window restarts install the driver for egpu card ONLY. Once that's done restart agaon

4) restart and choose setup 1.30

-Perform 36-bit PCI compaction of the eGPU then choose none.

- Iniitialise the nvidia card, and chainload restart. Now you can leave the express card connected and it should restart windows without taking your display.

5) from then on, you only need to select setup 1.30, and chainload. Since the info is stored in startup.bat and you don't have to do anything more in setup 1.30.

The card then appears as CUDA enabled device in octane, and I could actually turn dgpu off in octane and only use it for viewport/navigation. Really the best of both worlds.

Finally I realised my GTX 260 was way too old, so sold it on ebay and got a GTX 970 instead. My internal dgpu I was benchmarking 5, with the GTX 970 I am on 80. happy man, and glad all the effort paid off .

I am now considering getting a case, I am in two minds about this. Having the gpu running on air seems to be optimal heat wise, but yea it looks a bit messy and it will get dusty when not in use. Maybe I will just buy a cover for when I am not using it.

Anyways just thought I share my positive experience.Beside , I would like to thank users Tech Inferno Fan and angerthosenear for all the help and online guides. There are also a couple of youtube videos from angerthosenear that were quite usefull.

[Tech Inferno Fan]

@dromi, thank you for your post detailing your successful eGPU implementation.

Would you like to include 3dmark13-fs and 3dmark11 benchmark runs so I can place you in the appropriate spot in the Leaderboard at http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/6578-implementations-hub-tb-ec-mpcie.html#Thunderbolt?