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eGPU experiences [version 2.0]


Tech Inferno Fan

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Hi Guys

I i got the PE4L adapter so i do not need setup 1.1x anymore does anyone know how to safely and permanently remove the setup from my pc? i Have uninstalled the imdisk virtual disk driver already anything else i should remove

Many thanks

Run c:\eGPU\uninstall-disk-image.bat

nando, im trying to replace my sony vaio s13 bios modded (13k 3dmark06) with another small laptop egpu capable and aiming at the thinkpad t430s to score at 20k +- 3dmark06, i got a thinkpad x230t now but its windows 8 so im gonna sell it and buy a t430s windows 7, what do you reckon? i may go for either 560ti or 660ti, and should i go for the PE4L? since i was browsing and seeing a lot of failed attempt on x230

Only issue I'm seeing with the x230 is 16GB configurations see the system run really slow. The solution being downgrading to 8GB. I'd say the T430s would have a similar bios so would be equally affected. Only advantage the T430s has over the X230 is the 900P LCD option, NVS5400M dGPU option and the Thunderbolt port on the i7 iGPU-only version. Disadvantages over a X230 being the larger footprint, smaller capacity battery and no IPS LCD option.

If you want to replace your x230 with similar sized system but with way more performance potential and better looks then consider a 12.5" HP Elitebook 2570P. It can have it's socketted CPU replaced with a 45W i7-quad (note: warranty implications) and is SATA-III RAID-0 capable. Only issue I've found is it's bios hasn't been optimized for battery life as described. Maybe HP will fix it? Ryan Bui had his one-gen older 2560P running with 16GB and an eGPU without issues here.

A s/h GTX560Ti or GTX660Ti are my recommendations. Avoid a GTX660 as it's overpriced - it has very little in common with a GTX660Ti. A GTX660Ti is closer to a GTX670 in it's architecture and only $30-$40 more.

my 3dmark06 (dx9) score now is 8.9k. can you explain how you start up your laptop? is it not like my above mentioned sequence?

Set the PE4L PERST# delay to be 6.9s (SW1=3). Poweron the eGPU, poweron the notebook. Halt Win7/8 loading by pressing F8 to get the Advanced Boot Options menu. Once the PERST# delay LED has turned off on the PE4L hit ENTER on the Start Windows normally option to load Win7/8.

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alright, i will change the switch later. but im sure f8 doesnt bring to advance boot menu for windows 8. do the f12 button work? (it will let me choose which method to boot from, ie internal hdd, usb, wifi...) or , google brings me this page Advanced "Startup Settings" - Boot to in Windows 8 do you mean this one instead?

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alright, i will change the switch later. but im sure f8 doesnt bring to advance boot menu for windows 8. do the f12 button work? (it will let me choose which method to boot from, ie internal hdd, usb, wifi...) or , google brings me this page Advanced "Startup Settings" - Boot to in Windows 8 do you mean this one instead?

Yeah MS removed the f8 feature from win8 because "it boots too fast to press f8 anyway". F12 won't help. You can only access the old menu by going through a series of options after fully loading the OS, or if the OS detects a startup problem.

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Yeah MS removed the f8 feature from win8 because "it boots too fast to press f8 anyway". F12 won't help. You can only access the old menu by going through a series of options after fully loading the OS, or if the OS detects a startup problem.

You can actually get the old f8 ->safe mode to work in win8, what you have to do is the following:

Run Command prompt as Admin and type (copy/paste the following line in command prompt):

bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

ensure operation completed successfully. restart system and you'll find F8 works

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Only issue I'm seeing with the x230 is 16GB configurations see the system run really slow. The solution being downgrading to 8GB. I'd say the T430s would have a similar bios so would be equally affected. Only advantage the T430s has over the X230 is the 900P LCD option, NVS5400M dGPU option and the Thunderbolt port on the i7 iGPU-only version. Disadvantages over a X230 being the larger footprint, smaller capacity battery and no IPS LCD option.

If you want to replace your x230 with similar sized system but with way more performance potential and better looks then consider a 12.5" HP Elitebook 2570P. It can have it's socketted CPU replaced with a 45W i7-quad (note: warranty implications) and is SATA-III RAID-0 capable. Only issue I've found is it's bios hasn't been optimized for battery life as described. Maybe HP will fix it? Ryan Bui had his one-gen older 2560P running with 16GB and an eGPU without issues here.

A s/h GTX560Ti or GTX660Ti are my recommendations. Avoid a GTX660 as it's overpriced - it has very little in common with a GTX660Ti. A GTX660Ti is closer to a GTX670 in it's architecture and only $30-$40 more.

i got the x230t (i7) and maybe because of the touchscreen the battery life is ilogical for 12.5, i am not experienced with laptops so i dont think that i can do a cpu replacement, i have bought pe4l, atx 750w, but i havent replaced my laptop or buy a gpu, if i replace x230t with t430s with 12gb ram will it be okay? do you think that the price difference of 120gbp for 560ti and 230gbp for 660ti worthed? since i am playing games like battlefield, crysis, planetside 2, + if its okay with you can i have your skype? and do you have any other recommendations since 12.5 inch is a bit too small for me, 13.3 inch is okay, 14 inch is the best. Ive also found http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-EliteBook-Folio-9470m-Ultrabook.87571.0.html it has only mpcie is it possible to have the same result as expresscard34/54?

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You can actually get the old f8 ->safe mode to work in win8, what you have to do is the following:

Run Command prompt as Admin and type (copy/paste the following line in command prompt):

bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

ensure operation completed successfully. restart system and you'll find F8 works

Interesting. I wonder if that will also fix win8 randomly failing to boot on my mom's laptop (it will black screen instead of showing the log-in page).

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You can actually get the old f8 ->safe mode to work in win8, what you have to do is the following:

Run Command prompt as Admin and type (copy/paste the following line in command prompt):

bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

ensure operation completed successfully. restart system and you'll find F8 works

i ran cmd as admin, operation successful, restart, but f8 is still not working. but when i press f12, it shows boot setting as legacy, instead of standard. it is the page where i can choose which device to boot from, bios configuration, uefi boot option...

also, i know where the PERST delay locates in the PE4L, but when i try to put some force in it, it wouldnt move at all. i didnt apply more force, scared that i might break it. how do you actually change the switch from 0 sec delay to 6.9? manual switch? or code? it looks like a dumb question i cant find any solution online

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Hey Jaster,

I'm really curious whether you face issues with lack of bandwidth with CUDA over egpu. I always wondered if I could use it to power the mercury playback engine in adobe premiere pro. Let us know what your experiences are with CUDA.

I use CUDA for computer vision purposes, mainly using OpenCV and EmguCV, so I'm not really familiar with the Mercury engine (the last time I used Premiere for anything serious was about 2003!!), but my experiences so far have been very positive - when compared with the workstations I use in the lab (i7 machines with Quadro cards, admittedly a couple of years old) my system will usually take just a little bit longer to compile the code (my system is an X220 i5 with 8GB RAM) but once that's done the proram will run just as fast, if not faster in some cases. I put that down to these modern cards having far greater numbers of CUDA cores than most cards did just a few years ago.

In summary I would imagine an eGPU would be able to handle this Mercury engine quite easily. I had a quick read about it on the Adobe site and it looks like it does similar things at the algorithm level to what I'm doing with robots but on video instead, so you should be good to go.

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Hello everyone! So, I originally was on the DIY eGPU thread over at NotebookReview, but it seems it's all moved over here. For the longest time everything was working well, but now I can't seem to get my computer to detect the eGPU. I am using a Dell Latitude e6420 with a EVGA GTX570 HD on the PE4L 2.1b. At first I thought it may have been an issue with the latest BIOS patch (A16), but I tried it on an old HP notebook (Core2Duo) and Setup 1.x still doesn't detect it. The video card turns spins up and lights come on with the PE4L unit. Is there any way to easily diagnose whether or not the PE4L is the problem? I don't have a Desktop handy to try my video card in anymore. I tried playing with the PERST delay values per the Setup 1.x instructions, but no luck. As far as I know the unit has been off for a couple months since I last played Fallout New Vegas (and it was working perfectly well back then).

Thanks!

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I use CUDA for computer vision purposes, mainly using OpenCV and EmguCV, so I'm not really familiar with the Mercury engine (the last time I used Premiere for anything serious was about 2003!!), but my experiences so far have been very positive - when compared with the workstations I use in the lab (i7 machines with Quadro cards, admittedly a couple of years old) my system will usually take just a little bit longer to compile the code (my system is an X220 i5 with 8GB RAM) but once that's done the proram will run just as fast, if not faster in some cases. I put that down to these modern cards having far greater numbers of CUDA cores than most cards did just a few years ago.

In summary I would imagine an eGPU would be able to handle this Mercury engine quite easily. I had a quick read about it on the Adobe site and it looks like it does similar things at the algorithm level to what I'm doing with robots but on video instead, so you should be good to go.

Appreciate your insight, was extremely helpful. Its great to hear that CUDA perfoms so well on the eGPU solution. I am sure that I will be able to leverage similarly impressive performance using eGPU for Adobe Mercury engine. Thanks a lot! :)

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Virtu MVP 2.0 HAS ARRIVED!

Even better it has a 30 day trial to try out. I would ask some of you who got a radeon already to test the internal screen with it. Since I would prefer to buy an amd too, it was just the lack of this stuff that held me back.

Benching on 3Dm06/Vantage/11 and Fire Strike are most welcome, but any gaming bench takes too.

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Virtu MVP 2.0 HAS ARRIVED!

Even better it has a 30 day trial to try out. I would ask some of you who got a radeon already to test the internal screen with it. Since I would prefer to buy an amd too, it was just the lack of this stuff that held me back.

Benching on 3Dm06/Vantage/11 and Fire Strike are most welcome, but any gaming bench takes too.

The new Virtu MVP2.0 version 3.0.104 installer is once again checking if it's a mobile or desktop system. Upon seeing a mobile system it bombs out with error below:

mvpfailedinstalled.jpg

Need someone to run regshot, run the installer on a desktop system with a SB/IVB iGPU, then repackage the binary + registry edits to (hopefully) once again get the Virtu MVP mobile product out of it. That would be a better packaged then the hack I did previously here where unfortunately regshot didn't work on that desktop surrogate system.

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The new Virtu MVP2.0 version 3.0.104 installer is once again checking if it's a mobile or desktop system. Upon seeing a mobile system it bombs out with error below:

mvpfailedinstalled.jpg

Need someone to run regshot, run the installer on a desktop system with a SB/IVB iGPU, then repackage the binary + registry edits to (hopefully) once again get the Virtu MVP mobile product out of it. That would be a better packaged then the hack I did previously here where unfortunately regshot didn't work on that desktop surrogate system.

So it means that lucid wants the virtu exclusive to Origin among notebooks? Thats quite a shame. I thought they make it available on all platform by started selling directly...

Thanks for the fast testing anyway!

Edit: I have asked around some other forums to get thoose regshots.

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Run c:\eGPU\uninstall-disk-image.bat

Only issue I'm seeing with the x230 is 16GB configurations see the system run really slow. The solution being downgrading to 8GB. I'd say the T430s would have a similar bios so would be equally affected. Only advantage the T430s has over the X230 is the 900P LCD option, NVS5400M dGPU option and the Thunderbolt port on the i7 iGPU-only version. Disadvantages over a X230 being the larger footprint, smaller capacity battery and no IPS LCD option.

If you want to replace your x230 with similar sized system but with way more performance potential and better looks then consider a 12.5" HP Elitebook 2570P. It can have it's socketted CPU replaced with a 45W i7-quad (note: warranty implications) and is SATA-III RAID-0 capable. Only issue I've found is it's bios hasn't been optimized for battery life as described. Maybe HP will fix it? Ryan Bui had his one-gen older 2560P running with 16GB and an eGPU without issues here.

A s/h GTX560Ti or GTX660Ti are my recommendations. Avoid a GTX660 as it's overpriced - it has very little in common with a GTX660Ti. A GTX660Ti is closer to a GTX670 in it's architecture and only $30-$40 more.

Set the PE4L PERST# delay to be 6.9s (SW1=3). Poweron the eGPU, poweron the notebook. Halt Win7/8 loading by pressing F8 to get the Advanced Boot Options menu. Once the PERST# delay LED has turned off on the PE4L hit ENTER on the Start Windows normally option to load Win7/8.

i got the x230t (i7) and maybe because of the touchscreen the battery life is ilogical for 12.5, i am not experienced with laptops so i dont think that i can do a cpu replacement, i have bought pe4l, atx 750w, but i havent replaced my laptop or buy a gpu, if i replace x230t with t430s with 12gb ram will it be okay? do you think that the price difference of 120gbp for 560ti and 230gbp for 660ti worthed? since i am playing games like battlefield, crysis, planetside 2, + if its okay with you can i have your skype? and do you have any other recommendations since 12.5 inch is a bit too small for me, 13.3 inch is okay, 14 inch is the best. Ive also foundhttp://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-...k.87571.0.html it has only mpcie is it possible to have the same result as expresscard34/54?

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Hey guys,

I wanted to play on my internal monitor with an eGPU. So if I have the Lenovo ThinkPad S430 or any other laptop that has both Thunderbolt and Intel HD graphics, I should technically be able to run eGPU on my internal screen right?

According to this Desktop graphics for your laptop using thunderbolt or expresscard - General-Laptops-Notebooks - Laptops-Notebooks (People didn't take him very seriously), you could use a PE4H-EC2C ver2.4 kit and spend an extra $20 for adapters. With this in mind, one would be able to run eGPU on an internal monitor I would think...

I don't know what the difference between PE4H-EC2C and PE4H-EC060A...so whichever works better I'm not sure.

I also don't know the difference between PE4H and PE4L...Is there some place where I can read up on this stuff?

[The other forum is dead and no one answers. Since someone posted Tech Inferno Fan is here on this forum, I thought I might give this forum a try for some answers that I either can't find or need logical clarification in. Thanks! #firstpost]

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So, I'm continuing to try to debug my egpu setup, but still no luck. It seems likely that the PE4L is dead, but it seems odd that it would die while not being in use. Does anyone happen to have what the proper switch settings are for this board (v 2.1b)? If I can get it back to defaults I can try it in another laptop. I was trying to see where the fault was on the board, but the schematics seem to have some mistakes in them. Power Supply voltage is fine, video card seems fine (again, I don't have a desktop handy to try it with but when I put in an older video card in the unit it still doesn't detect), but Setup 1.x just says nothing is detected. I would appreciate any help, since replacing this unit is a little pricey

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If you can't run the benchmark tests (scores listed on the first page) at 1280x1024 (my resolution maxes out at 1600x900), what would the next best resolution be for comparable results? I'm going to format my computer in March and hopefully be able to get my eGPU working with 16GB.

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right now, i can run my e6230 + gtx660 via PE4L 2.1b running at x1 2.0 using (SW1=1) PERST 0 delay and the other option(SW2) being 2-3. 3dmark06 score is 10200 (OC-ed)

then, i tried Tech Inferno Fan's recommendation of modding the windows 8 to enable F8 button to access advanced startup menu. F8 works now.

i switched the SW2=3 PERST 6.9sec delay.

i off everything => on egpu (now has a bright red light that previously doesnt exist) => on laptop => spam F8 (note: advanced startup is on internal LCD) => wait for red light to go off => start windows normally => external monitor no reaction => windows start up with internal LCD and HD4000 igpu (egpu not being detected at all).

whats wrong with my set up?

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Hey guys I'm planning on purchasing a 660ti as my 560 seems to be bottlenecking on a few games I play such as Battlefield 3. I was wondering how much of a difference I would see in games, even with the expresscard bottleneck. CPU shouldn't be an issue at all, as it is a 3rd gen quad core ivy bridge i7. Do you guys think it would be worth buying such a card or would a 660 be more than enough? I do plan on buying a somewhat futureproof card so if the 660ti will give me enough of a boost, I'll go ahead and bite the bullet.

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Some people said the GTX670 would be a better bet but the 660Ti is a more cost efficient card. I wasn't planning on getting any eGPU stuff until I got a Thunderbolt ported laptop; however, in the other thread: http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/2824-dell-xps-15-l502x-pe4h-pm3n-gtx-650-ti-%40-1-1opt-2.html daver160 says the bottleneck isn't that bad.

I didn't consider eGPU because of the issue of bottlenecking. daver160 says he will be doing some video recording later on so maybe ask him or wait for his recording to see some results. He's using a GTX650Ti @1.1 Opt with PE4H adapter. Dell XPS 15 L502x is his laptop and he has a Sandy Bridge processor.

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Do you guys think it would be worth buying such a card or would a 660 be more than enough? I do plan on buying a somewhat futureproof card so if the 660ti will give me enough of a boost, I'll go ahead and bite the bullet.

Don't quote me on this, but I've read here and there that some people do NOT consider the 660 Ti to be worth the extra dollars over the base 660. They say that unless you're addicted to stuff like 4xMSAA in your games, you'll see little to no major improvement with the 660 Ti.

Given this, my vote is to stick with the base GTX 660 and call it a day.

Hey guys I'm planning on purchasing a 660ti as my 560 seems to be bottlenecking on a few games I play such as Battlefield 3. I was wondering how much of a difference I would see in games, even with the expresscard bottleneck. CPU shouldn't be an issue at all, as it is a 3rd gen quad core ivy bridge i7.
I think it depends on what level you expect your GPU to perform at.

WHen you say that your 560 is bottlenecking on you in BF3, have you determined *what* is causing the bottleneck? Is it tessellation? Anti-aliasing? Are you running at 1920x1080 at Ultra gfx settings? Your 560 might be bottling necking you now, but how do you know that the 660 won't bottleneck in the exact same regard? Find out first what the bottleneck is, and then find a GPU that can address this issue and overcome it. For all you know, upgrading to the 660 Ti might not help you at all, and you'd be out $300.

Now when I said that the bottleneck isn't that bad, I meant it. But I meant it when I referred to my GTX 650 Ti, and my expectations for my eGPU setup.

I know that the GTX 650 is not a very powerful GPU, nor is it a slouch. I originally had my eyes set on the 660, but the 650 Ti was on sale for less than 1/2 price of the 660 I was eyeing (how could I say no?) With my GPU I am able to run all games at 30-120+fps, depending on the game engine and my settings. I Run all games anywhere from medium - high gfx settings, and 1600x900 or 1920x1080 resolution. Where I can, I enable frame rate killing features like ambient occlusion, volumetric lights, anti-aliasing, and DX11 features like tessellation. This makes my frame rates drop significantly, from something like 70-90 fps down to say 30-50. This is where I believe my hardware bottleneck/limitations lie, where the difference between 1.1Opt and 1.2Opt will be really obvious.

But I'm equally happy with having these hardware intensive features disabled in the game. In this regard, I consider the bottleneck to be very little, because I understand that the hardware intensive features aren't pertinent to my enjoying a game. This is how I mean that the bottleneck isn't really _that bad_ with my 1.1Opt setup.

For example, I play MechWarrior Online with everything on High and at 1920x1080. I'm getting a very steady 50-60fps (V-sync'd) and I occasionally dip into 20-40fps if I'm moving through a thick cloud or group of explosions. I consider this to be absolutely fantastic that I'm hugging the ceiling of the V-Sync cap, and I don't mind the dips in FPS.

Please take it for what you will, but do understand why I say that the bottleneck isn't bad for me. For others, perhaps running all their games at full 2560x1440 at Ultra with all hardware pumping features is a requirement. If that's the case, then yes, the bottleneck will be horrible for you.

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WHen you say that your 560 is bottlenecking on you in BF3, have you determined *what* is causing the bottleneck? Is it tessellation? Anti-aliasing? Are you running at 1920x1080 at Ultra gfx settings? Your 560 might be bottling necking you now, but how do you know that the 660 won't bottleneck in the exact same regard? Find out first what the bottleneck is, and then find a GPU that can address this issue and overcome it. For all you know, upgrading to the 660 Ti might not help you at all, and you'd be out $300.

Please take it for what you will, but do understand why I say that the bottleneck isn't bad for me. For others, perhaps running all their games at full 2560x1440 at Ultra with all hardware pumping features is a requirement. If that's the case, then yes, the bottleneck will be horrible for you.

Thanks for the reply. My goal is to play battlefield 3 as close to a constant 60fps as possible, and with my 560 I'm able to get close to that while on low settings 1080p. But I'm hoping that a bit stronger card would give me the kind of boost to achieve 60fps at medium settings. Kepler cards also allow for txaa, which I've heard isn't as power hungry as msaa. Another reason I want to upgrade my card so that it will last me at least until midway through college (currently a junior in high school). If I were to upgrade to a TB enclosure later down the road, my card would only have more potential and I'm just not sure how long a 660 would last me compared to a 660ti. You do bring up good points about some in game settings which could be bottlenecking my card, I'll do some tweaking once I get home. I'm also getting $100 off from my parents and found friends that would buy the three $50 in-game coupons that come with nvidia cards, so in reality price isn't an issue.

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I'm not to sure it's your GPU bottlenecking. How many RAM do you have? BF3 eats lots of RAM. 4GB and more are recommanded especially with Add-On's.

Actually I can run BF3 pretty smoothly with my internal GT 650m at medium settings.

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I have 4gb 1600mhz ram, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue. I'll be upgrading to 8gb in the near future though.

It's not like it runs horribly at medium settings 1080p, but I'm really looking towards getting a solid 60 with at least decent settings. And I also heard that CUDA cores greatly affects performance with external nvidia cards, so 960 on the 660 or 1344 on the 660ti would destroy the 366 on my 560.

Edit: I think I'll buy a 660 and use the money saved to purchase 8gb of ram for my mac mini.

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Hi

I would like to buy a graphics card "Gigabyte GTX670 OC 4GB GDDR5 256b 2DVI+HDMI+DP PCIe 3.0 GV-N670OC-4GD" and use it to render 3D graphics and some gaming :) I care for max performance. My current laptop is a little aging and does not have sand or Ivy Bridge technology, so I also planing to change laptop.

I have a few questions for you:

1. What will be the difference in performance between sandy bridge and ivy bridge?

2. What adapter should I use PE4H (v3.2 or v2.4), PE4L, and why ?

3. What should be the speed of the i7 CPU for this graphics card?

4. How much % of the graphics card power, I will be able to get with the best configuration compared to PC.

If there is anything I need to know please say :)

I will be very grateful for your response.

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