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eGPU experiences [version 2.0]


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Well I cheated a bit by overclocking the card. My base score was around 4900, which is closer to your score.

I noticed you stated that you uninstalled intel HD graphics drivers to get your egpu working. I believe, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, that you need the iGPU to be detected for Optimus to work. What I did was I did a complete windows 8.1 pro reinstall on my laptop with the latest intel HD graphics from intel's website. I then plugged my egpu in for the first time followed my installing the Nvidia drivers.

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Well I cheated a bit by overclocking the card. My base score was around 4900, which is closer to your score.

I noticed you stated that you uninstalled intel HD graphics drivers to get your egpu working. I believe, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, that you need the iGPU to be detected for Optimus to work. What I did was I did a complete windows 8.1 pro reinstall on my laptop with the latest intel HD graphics from intel's website. I then plugged my egpu in for the first time followed my installing the Nvidia drivers.

yes Your process is completely correct. I forget to mention that what cuases the problem to troubleshoot. I remove Nvidia Driver on working eGPU because of Fifa15 stuttering prroblem. I did many trial and error But unfortunately the game have some lack....knowing searching EA forum..... anyway is it gtx 750ti can OC. I tried by Asus Gpu tweak driver crashes.....any suggestion?

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I have been out of the pc world since the pentium 3.06 came out so a lot of this nomenclature is a bit foreign to me. The question is I have a hp 500-c60 desktop. Well its a mini tower with laptop guts stuffed in the box that I found out after I bought the infernal thing. It's a amd a6 processor I think, with Radeon hd8400 integrated graphics. The rest of the rig performs OK I rekon but I really need a gpu upgrade. It mainly collects dust and xplane recommends a gpu with 2gig memory. The question is it has a half height mpcie slot occupied by a wireless network radio. Is there a viable option for me at this point? I have a few Xbox psu's laying around. Heck I even have a couple paralleled to run a 12v 1000w car amp pushing some old Jensen tower speakers, that I also run my gr-55 guitar synthesizer through. I looked at getting the v6 adapter with the mPCIe cable but all this nomenclature had me a bit confused. If anyone knowledgeable that could give some direction here i would be mighty grateful.

Edit it's a windows 8 machine. Hp support informs me that the mPCIe is a Gen/Version 3.0 PCIe. He also said that to repurpose for a eGPU that I will need to disable secure boot and enable legacy support in BIOS. That part I can do. So is this really as simple as getting a mPCIe PE4L Gen 3 capable adapter and running power to the gpu? And how the pie Gen 3 going to help with the selection of usable gpu's to choose from

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Hi everyone! At first, I'm sorry for the bad english. I've got an ASUS N56VM and I'd like to add an eGPU, but there isn't an external PCIe port or other particular ports. There are only four USB 3.0, an ethernet port and an HDMI port. How can I connect an eGPU?

Thankyou very much, Lorenzo.

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Hi everyone! At first, I'm sorry for the bad english. I've got an ASUS N56VM and I'd like to add an eGPU, but there isn't an external PCIe port or other particular ports. There are only four USB 3.0, an ethernet port and an HDMI port. How can I connect an eGPU?

Thankyou very much, Lorenzo.

If you have no Thunderbolt/ExpressCard ports, the only option is to use a mPCIe adapter. This involves taking apart the laptop's bottom panel and removing the wifi card, so kind of a pain. The best option is to consider a laptop with TB/EC the next time you're thinking of a new laptop.

I have been out of the pc world since the pentium 3.06 came out so a lot of this nomenclature is a bit foreign to me. The question is I have a hp 500-c60 desktop. Well its a mini tower with laptop guts stuffed in the box that I found out after I bought the infernal thing. It's a amd a6 processor I think, with Radeon hd8400 integrated graphics. The rest of the rig performs OK I rekon but I really need a gpu upgrade. It mainly collects dust and xplane recommends a gpu with 2gig memory. The question is it has a half height mpcie slot occupied by a wireless network radio. Is there a viable option for me at this point? I have a few Xbox psu's laying around. Heck I even have a couple paralleled to run a 12v 1000w car amp pushing some old Jensen tower speakers, that I also run my gr-55 guitar synthesizer through. I looked at getting the v6 adapter with the mPCIe cable but all this nomenclature had me a bit confused. If anyone knowledgeable that could give some direction here i would be mighty grateful.

Edit it's a windows 8 machine. Hp support informs me that the mPCIe is a Gen/Version 3.0 PCIe. He also said that to repurpose for a eGPU that I will need to disable secure boot and enable legacy support in BIOS. That part I can do. So is this really as simple as getting a mPCIe PE4L Gen 3 capable adapter and running power to the gpu? And how the pie Gen 3 going to help with the selection of usable gpu's to choose from

That pc is actually what's known as an ITX form factor. As far as I know, we only have Gen 2 capable PCIe adapters, so the PE4L v 2.1 will work for you. It also has a USB port so you can add a wifi dongle since you're giving up your mPCIe wifi card. Also, I don't think many people have attempted an eGPU on a desktop, so it should go either way.

Since it is technically a desktop, I would imaging it would be plug-and-play (after installing drivers), but you won't know until you try it. Another thing you'll have to consider is whether or not it would be worth it to just upgrade your rig. While it would cost more, it will have a full size PCIe slot so you don't need to spend more money on a PE4L, and you're pretty much guaranteed compatibility with graphics cards. The extra cost will also go towards improved performance since you'd be getting more up-to-date technology.

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TheDeathEffect,

Thanks for the reply, I was looking at the PE4L-PM060A from hwtools, and they say it supports PCIe Gen3. I was going off what they were advertising. According to the pictures the cable is soldered to the boards and not a mHDMI plug in.

As far as upgrading the rig, well the case is proprietary, so other than the ram stick, optical drive and HDD, it's practically useless trying to upgrade it I figure. I probably would be better off starting fresh with a complete build. This thing has a laptop power supply so I couldn't even use that.

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Hello world. Hope all you fellas doin well, lets get down to business

Came across 2 Lenovo x201 Notebooks.There both;

i5 Core

3-4 gig ram

200+Gig HDD

Intel Hd Graphics :( <--------------------- Looks like we have a problem. (Even cs 1.6 is 30-60 fps...wtf. No no No... fuck that)

Very Good working condition

Both have express card slot

I would like to know the best possible (cost effective/cheap) place to order the PE4L-EC060A and the essential parts.

I also dont know much about the power sources and would like to know which ones to buy.

And does it need a fan even though my pc GPU has a small one on it.

What should i make the case/shell for the eGPU out of?

Im getting this.. this is happening..

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Hi Nando,I've installed setup 1.30 and ran it. After reboting I'm getting egpu not found when i hit f5 at setup 1.30 and i cant do a pci compaction (dos area sector error).





The adapter pe4c v2.1 is in good condition and card (gtx660ti) is tested and working at desktop.

Do you think the pm100c cable is broken? I'm using a pe4c v2.1 via pm100c cable (slot mpcie). Thanks for your help.
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Hello world. Hope all you fellas doin well, lets get down to business

Came across 2 Lenovo x201 Notebooks.There both;

i5 Core

3-4 gig ram

200+Gig HDD

Intel Hd Graphics :( <--------------------- Looks like we have a problem. (Even cs 1.6 is 30-60 fps...wtf. No no No... fuck that)

Very Good working condition

Both have express card slot

I would like to know the best possible (cost effective/cheap) place to order the PE4L-EC060A and the essential parts.

I also dont know much about the power sources and would like to know which ones to buy.

And does it need a fan even though my pc GPU has a small one on it.

What should i make the case/shell for the eGPU out of?

Im getting this.. this is happening..

If you live in the US, one of the cheapest Buy Now prices for the PE4L is Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Bplus-PE4L-EC060A-Convert-add--ExpressCard/dp/B00GWM5ZLO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429231755&sr=8-1&keywords=pe4l#Ask

They have gone for as low as $20 on eBay if you're patient

As far as power supplies go, if you live in the US, you can get a 430W PSU for $15 depending on the sale 430W Corsair CX430 80+ Bronze Power Supply - Slickdeals.net

As far as graphics cards go, AMD is usually the better value, unless you want to be able to run it on your laptop's screen (using optimus). You can get a pretty good value for used last gen Nvidia cards on eBay.

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Hi Nando,I've installed setup 1.30 and ran it. After reboting I'm getting egpu not found when i hit f5 at setup 1.30 and i cant do a pci compaction (dos area sector error).

The adapter pe4c v2.1 is in good condition and card (gtx660ti) is tested and working at desktop.

Do you think the pm100c cable is broken? I'm using a pe4c v2.1 via pm100c cable (slot mpcie). Thanks for your help.



The eGPU may not be detected due to mPCIe whitelisting. Boot into Setup 1.30 with your wifi card installed. Confirm it's detected, then carefully hotplug the PE4C V2.1 PM100c cable in it's place. Hit F5 to attempt redetection.
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Well so far, no luck with my 2540p :( Pretty sad as I thought I was very close, but looks like I will need to buy the x220 or 230 or whatever after all.

First I had a ton of DSDT issues - fixed them - blue screen saying it was no longer ACPI compliant but only if I put 4 gb of ram into it. Spent hours researching this - couldn't figure it out. My guess is, the dsdt the compile right, so I started looking into acpi 4.0 and 5.0 and whatever the difference is and blah blah. I noticed when loading tables it told me it was using 4.0 acpi.

After a lot of mucking around and a ton of reinstalls I did manage to get it to compile with 0 errors, and boot with 4 gb. But error 12 etc. I was about to buy setup 1.30 since I figure eureka but then I messed it up again. I wanted to throw 2 gb into it and it just so happens that I.. used a 2gb I left lying around with crap on it and it fried itself. The installation then became corrupt (might be unrelated as I also updated some drivers - and I think the issue might have been a firmware update for the SSD - either way.. I'm fried too).

I tried retracing my steps to no avail (it included using latest iasl files unlike ones linked here, which end up compiling my dsdt with 2 errors - one of which is the dreaded syntax method/end not found or something - all the forums basically say that you have to do it all over when that happens. I also tried installing windows 8.1 and after 0 errors dsdt installation - the large ram wouldn't show up. I kept messing about with it until windows finally gave me the finger and I had to reinstall.

So at this point I'm basically going to put it on hold. It works with 2 gigs w/o any extra options which is enough to run almost anything (even cities skylines - after some tinkering - loads up and runs pretty damn well in 1080p). I don't understand this acpi issue at all but I guess I knew going into it that this wasn't foolproof.

I may buy setup 1.30 and fiddle with it anyway in windows 8 (nando said something to the effect it should work on the external - but my issue seems to be with the override and ram and acpi and not egpu but I guess I got this far). If I do end up getting it working somehow again - I'll post a guide. Otherwise, I'll just have to save up 500 or whatever I need for the x230 that I guess I should have gotten to begin with since many people are getting that to work.

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Otherwise, I'll just have to save up 500 or whatever I need for the x230 that I guess I should have gotten to begin with since many people are getting that to work.

If looking at the X230 then recommend a HP 2570P instead for it's superior performance upgradability (upgradable CPU, RAID-0 storage) : http://forum.techinferno.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/2537-12-5-hp-elitebook-2570p-owners-lounge.html . Ir if after 900P then consider 14" Dell E6430 or HP 8470P.

Those Elitebooks can do a PnP eGPU implementation for any of the NVidia cards that require 128MB+64MB+16MB of PCIe config space or less, eg: GTX560Ti/660/670/760/770/780. GTX650/750/9xx and AMD cards which all require 256MB+32MB cannot be accomodated due to too high TOLUD unless a DSDT override is applied.

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Great - thanks for the recommend - looking at it on ebay - it's within my budget. I loved the design of it most of all, so sturdy. I think my current one has Raid (at least in BIOS it does). And I did apply the dsdt override, as mentioned - it's just something to do with the compiler - I followed the advice given here but as you can see he suggests using ACPI 5.0. I could/can compile without doing this but my loadtables show 4.0 and then I get the BSOD with 4 gb ram, so the issue isn't resource allocation - but probably something with this particular model I have.. maybe the SSD - I don't have the caddy yet so haven't tried a different HDD yet.. maybe who knows what.

Either way - I've purchased the 1.30 from you just to see if I can make it work in 8.1. According to your post and what I've read, I will simply swap the iGPU with eGPU and that's perfectly fine for now. If it doesn't work, that's fine too since I'll just use it in another setup with the laptop you recommended. I'm not a huge gamer, just a huge nerd - my gf can't understand why I'm 'wasting' all this time on this when I can just build a desktop or another laptop or whatever but it's really exciting. I can't wait to get it going.

Looks like I can snag a 2570p i7 for 350 right now if I want to.. No power cord/probably shitty battery but everything is going to be replaced anyway. But what do you mean if after 900p - what's that? Or do you just mean screen size?

As long as the 2570p will work out of the gate (with enough patience of course) I'm fine getting that or are the other 2 better?

If looking at the X230 then recommend a HP 2570P instead for it's superior performance upgradability (upgradable CPU, RAID-0 storage) : http://forum.techinferno.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/2537-12-5-hp-elitebook-2570p-owners-lounge.html . Ir if after 900P then consider 14" Dell E6430 or HP 8470P.

Those Elitebooks can do a PnP eGPU implementation for any of the NVidia cards that require 128MB+64MB+16MB of PCIe config space or less, eg: GTX560Ti/660/670/760/770/780. GTX650/750/9xx and AMD cards which all require 256MB+32MB cannot be accomodated due to too high TOLUD unless a DSDT override is applied.

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But what do you mean if after 900p - what's that? Or do you just mean screen size?

As long as the 2570p will work out of the gate (with enough patience of course) I'm fine getting that or are the other 2 better?

14" E6430 and HP 8470P/6470B offer a 1600x900 LCD option and the larger chassis dissipates heat better if looking at a quad-core upgrade. 12.5" 2570P only has a 1366x768 LCD but in quad-core form is pretty much the most powerful ultraportable you can buy.

Dell E6430 pips the HP 8470P/6470B due to x2 2.0 eGPU possibility (no done yet, but @timohour looks to be onto it) as well as UEFI variable modification to probably allow unlocked turbo multipliers to function (i7-3720QM or better).

REF: http://forum.techinferno.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/8176-%5Bguide%5D-dell-e6530-cpu-tdp-multi-unlocking.html

http://forum.techinferno.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/6980-14-dell-latitude-e6440-owners-lounge-11.html#post129564

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The eGPU may not be detected due to mPCIe whitelisting. Boot into Setup 1.30 with your wifi card installed. Confirm it's detected, then carefully hotplug the PE4C V2.1 PM100c cable in it's place. Hit F5 to attempt redetection.

thanks for quick response Nando,

My wifi card is detected on p6x1.2 1814:3290x1.1 (Ralink), then when I'm hotplugging PM100C cable and hit F5 still it says egpu not found and it's no device found on pcie port6.

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Gotcha - thanks - I may consider them then (I'm looking at i7 for whichever one I do get), but 2570p really does fit all of my needs so most likely will just have to deal with its lack of HDMI and be grumpy :P

Back I go to tinkering with 1.3. Got it to detect eGPU but now same old bsod acpi situation is back with win7. Win8 is okay so now I'm just trying to figure out how to turn of igpu in setup and see it if works.

Cheers - and thanks!

14" E6430 and HP 8470P/6470B offer a 1600x900 LCD option and the larger chassis dissipates heat better if looking at a quad-core upgrade. 12.5" 2570P only has a 1366x768 LCD but in quad-core form is pretty much the most powerful ultraportable you can buy.

Dell E6430 pips the HP 8470P/6470B due to x2 2.0 eGPU possibility (no done yet, but @timohour looks to be onto it) as well as UEFI variable modification to probably allow unlocked turbo multipliers to function (i7-3720QM or better).

REF: http://forum.techinferno.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/8176-%5Bguide%5D-dell-e6530-cpu-tdp-multi-unlocking.html

http://forum.techinferno.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/6980-14-dell-latitude-e6440-owners-lounge-11.html#post129564

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Back I go to tinkering with 1.3. Got it to detect eGPU but now same old bsod acpi situation is back with win7. Win8 is okay so now I'm just trying to figure out how to turn of igpu in setup and see it if works.

Cheers - and thanks!

There you'd set PCI compaction endpoint=56.25GB. Then do a iGPU+eGPU compaction forcing the eGPU to 32-bit. The idea there is for the eGPU to hijaak the PCIe config space used by the iGPU and force error 12 on the iGPU. This is possible with Win8.x but not Win7 since the latter's driver model requires the primary GPU to be functional for any others to work.

thanks for quick response Nando,

My wifi card is detected on p6x1.2 1814:3290x1.1 (Ralink), then when I'm hotplugging PM100C cable and hit F5 still it says egpu not found and it's no device found on pcie port6.

Try booting Windows with wifi, sleep machine, plug in PM100C cable, then resume. Is the eGPU detected?

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There you'd set PCI compaction endpoint=56.25GB. Then do a iGPU+eGPU compaction forcing the eGPU to 32-bit. The idea there is for the eGPU to hijaak the PCIe config space used by the iGPU and force error 12 on the iGPU. This is possible with Win8.x but not Win7 since the latter's driver model requires the primary GPU to be functional for any others to work.

Holy crap it finally somehow worked!! I tried doing what you said - but to no avail at first. I have literally tried everything at this point (read through all your materials etc. and at one point it states that startup.bat can be edited to turn off igpu - you'd just have to deal with a black screen but it wouldn't work for me - I also couldn't ignore it nor turn it off in the hybrid gfx part - but then I kept fiddling with it and after the above, I turned off its port (again) and then hotloaded/init my eGPU and only then ran the above).

I don't get why it couldn't just turn off in setup 1.30 like it said but I don't care at this point. Strangely enough - my iGPU still works.. in gray. And sucks - I hate windows 8.1 lol but still this is all I wanted. Now I just need to reinstall win7 again so I can load it with 8 gigs of ram when I'm not gaming (I ran your setup 1.3 originally from win7 on win8 drive.. was probably the cause of my issue with the ram). Anyway, let me go back to making win 8.1 somewhat bearable and maybe one day I will figure out how to do a clear dsdt on my windows (I plan to buy another caddy and maybe do a fresh install off that - I suspect the SSD in this setup has an issue).

Anyhow - thanks mate - got it going! Sweet deal. I'll write up a guide later as promised because I think I've encountered every freaking problem out there lol.

edit: Looks like it did turn off my wifi for some reason but.. minor details. So as per the guide I remember reading once I pop extra 4 gigs into this, I will have to redo this process? Well, might as well as do it now.

edit2: well I've spoken too soon - got the latest drivers off intel's site for wifi, found the resource with the code error that the device was not connected - so something in setup 1.30 is preventing that from happening.. I would get a wifi usb stick but there's also audio issues and I think I'll just go back to 2 gigs and start looking around for 2570p =/ Great little laptop but it wasn't meant to be - either way I will do a write up of various things learned and such once I rest a bit

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I could use a little guidance with my set-up, I’m having trouble getting the eGPU to be detected and appear in device manager. My set-up is:

* Lenovo T530 with current bios 2.63.1.13, i7-3630QM, 8GB RAM

* Integrated HD 4000 and Nvidia NVS 5400M

* Windows 8.1 Pro x64

* GTX 680

* PE4C V2.1 with Express Card cable connection

* Dell 220W 8-pin power supply

* External monitor by HDMI from GTX 680

I’ve never been able to get the eGPU detected. I’ve tried powering on at various times (at start-up, in sleep mode, etc) and wiping all drivers. I’ve tinkered a little in the bios with gen 1 vs. automatic mode and disabling/enabling iGPU/dGPU.

All I ever see is the fan momentarily spin up when first powered on or returnign from sleep mode, then nothing.

What would you suggest trying next here? Thanks!

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I could use a little guidance with my set-up, I’m having trouble getting the eGPU to be detected and appear in device manager. My set-up is:

* Lenovo T530 with current bios 2.63.1.13, i7-3630QM, 8GB RAM

* Integrated HD 4000 and Nvidia NVS 5400M

* Windows 8.1 Pro x64

* GTX 680

* PE4C V2.1 with Express Card cable connection

* Dell 220W 8-pin power supply

* External monitor by HDMI from GTX 680

I’ve never been able to get the eGPU detected. I’ve tried powering on at various times (at start-up, in sleep mode, etc) and wiping all drivers. I’ve tinkered a little in the bios with gen 1 vs. automatic mode and disabling/enabling iGPU/dGPU.

All I ever see is the fan momentarily spin up when first powered on or returnign from sleep mode, then nothing.

What would you suggest trying next here? Thanks!

Ensure the expresscard slot is enabled in the BIOS, boot Win8.1, then hotplug the expresscard slot. If the eGPU chain (adapter, cable, video card + PSU, expresscard slot, ) are working then the video card will be detected. If it's not detected, then it's a matter of isolating parts that work in the chain to figure out what the problem is. I'll say I've had one PE4C V2.1 die on me from hotplugging it so that is the likely faulty component.

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Try booting Windows with wifi, sleep machine, plug in PM100C cable, then resume. Is the eGPU detected?

Tried it, and device manager detected the standard vga adapter, install driver, and it detected a gtx660ti with an exclamation mark, code 12 and requires a restart.

Strangely after restart, my laptop took 15-20seconds to boot, but thats not big a problem since it managed to boot into diy egpu setup 1.30 and finally the setup recognize egpu.

I performed a pci compaction 32bit, works fine, pcie write says yes, ignored and disable dgpu via setup 1.30, until I reboot again with egpu plugged on wifi port.

Second reboot, my laptop wont able to enter bios, boot into win 7 or egpu setup. Just a blank black screen, i wait for over 10minutes still nothing happen so i decide to re-plug the pm100c cable from wifi port and black screens gone, laptop enters boot menu. From that point i boot into setup1.30 and again, it cant detect any device on wifi port.

I guess there is something wrong with pm100c cable, i start thinking to buy a new pm100c cable or should I buy a new adapter instead?

I think write2dgray and I have a same problem.

I wish I could explain this in better words, sorry for my bad grammar nando.

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Eureka - got DSTD override to work and 1.30 to get my 750 TI SC (edit: this is for 2540p i7 with a SSD drive and 4 gb of ram - will test with 8 tomorrow). No HDMI audio, but I prefer head phones 90% of the time anyway. 7.7 scores for graphics. Will look into optimizing this thing later, I thought 750 or this laptop supported faster transfer but egpu only showing gen 1 - not sure if I need to manually push gen 2 through 1.30 but will check later.

Basically gave up last night but couldn't stay away and decided to read up pretty much through everything out there... I will write a full guide later because I can retrace all of my steps and some may help but basically it involved compiling my dsdt and fixing everything, including stuff everyone said you can usually ignore (remarks/warnings). So now I have a clean dsdt.. tested out cities skylines, runs great.

Quick question - when I upgrade it to 8 gb of ram - do I need to redo the setup process and everything - thought I read that somewhere? Or can I just pop it in and go with my current settings?

Cheers and thanks again everyone for all your comments here as every little bit helped. Feels like I should be coding apps now.

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