eGPU experiences [version 2.0]

[unreal25]

Hey,

Both laptops can with a WiFi adapter, so I'm not sure why you think Expresscard slot for that. You do need it for the eGPU interface, though.

Thinkpads are really great and I guess the difference comes down whether you want smaller or bigger (X220 also optionally comes with IPS screen). Also, from what I remember there was a line of X220 with that couldn't really handle i7 CPU and was overheating (>= 95 C). I don't know about the BIOS.

[Jono Hasnosurname]

Hey,

Both laptops can with a WiFi adapter, so I'm not sure why you think Expresscard slot for that. You do need it for the eGPU interface, though.

Thinkpads are really great and I guess the difference comes down whether you want smaller or bigger (X220 also optionally comes with IPS screen). Also, from what I remember there was a line of X220 with that couldn't really handle i7 CPU and was overheating (>= 95 C). I don't know about the BIOS.

How do you mean? I mean that I want to use a PE4L-EC2C configuration instead of the PE4L-Pm3N method? I specifically do not want to have to remove the WiFi card from underneath the unit each time I want to use the graphics card. (Which would be at home each day).

I've decided on the X220 though due the the T420 not being available here anymore.

[Squiggler]

After looking at scaling analysis on tomshardware and techpowerup I'm feeling optimistic about the bandwidth limitations of TH05/a 2.0 x2 link and especially about TH05's ~ x4 2.0 successor. That said, I have a question and a concern. First, techpowerup's scaling analysis shows that even though the 7970 and gtx 680 perform similarly when given abundant bandwidth, the 7970 does far better when bandwidth is limited. Does this difference hold between ATI and NVidia in general (if you ignore Optimus compression of course)? Second, I am concerned that the bandwidth limitations of egpu solutions may have the largest negative impact on fps during the most graphically intensive moments. Since these moments have the lowest fps to begin with, the average fps comparisons that tomshardware and techpowerup have done may cover up moments of extremely low fps. Does anyone know anything about this?

[Shelltoe]

bandwidth limitations of egpu solutions may have the largest negative impact on fps during the most graphically intensive moments

that sounds pretty logical O.o

could you link your sources please? i don't know those analysis.

i'm running th05 with a gtx680ti but have no ati card available for tests.

my fps seem pretty stable though. there will allways be bandwith limitations no matter how the eGPU is connected.

[Kanga]

--- QUESTION

so, for some reason, my laptop refuses to correctly make initial installations when my card is first plugged in.

From a fresh system restore, I put the laptop to sleep, plug in the card and turn it on, and then wake up the computer. The computer instantly detects new hardware, disables my keyboard and external mouse, and says it's installing a standard vga adapter. it takes about 5 minutes, but this install always fails. Later, when/if I try to install Nvidia drivers, the installer will recognize the card and allow the installation to begin, but pause permanently about a 10th of the way in.

Am I missing something? how do I install the drivers if my auto hardware detection/vga adapter installs always fail?

any help would be much appreciated!

--- NOTES

a few side notes,

- my safe mode no longer works, for some reason

- after my most recent attempt, I tried to system restore, and all of my restore points had vanished, so I'm stuck with the failed standard vga adapter install

--- SETUP

Lenovo X201T, intel core i7 L640 2.13 Ghz, 8 GB ram (TOLUD 0xC0000000)

Windows 7 Pro x64, dualbooted with Ubuntu 10.4

GeForce GTX 550 ti (Fermi)

[Squiggler]

that sounds pretty logical O.o

could you link your sources please? i don't know those analysis.

i'm running th05 with a gtx680ti but have no ati card available for tests.

my fps seem pretty stable though. there will allways be bandwith limitations no matter how the eGPU is connected.

I don't have any sources for my conjecture that bandwidth limitations impose the most severe penalty during graphically intensive scenes (which unfortunately are when fps are lowest to begin with). That's just my own conjecture.

As for techpowerup's and tomshardware's scaling analysis, you can find them by googling "site name<site name=""> scaling analysis". Most important are page 23 of the techpowerup scaling analysis and the sixth page at tomshardware. I'd copy and paste the links except... for some reason I can't copy and paste links in the reply box.

With regard to my conjecture, the optimal data would be an fps-over-time graph, though I guess just recording the min fps might be easier.</site>

[Tech Inferno Fan]

How do you mean? I mean that I want to use a PE4L-EC2C configuration instead of the PE4L-Pm3N method? I specifically do not want to have to remove the WiFi card from underneath the unit each time I want to use the graphics card. (Which would be at home each day).

I've decided on the X220 though due the the T420 not being available here anymore.

Since you've earmarked the X220, have you also looked at pricing of the competitor 12.5" Dell E6220/E6230 or HP 2560P/2570P systems? Below I've shortlisted their pros/cons. Sometimes can get a good deal on a refurb or 'as new' unit but this varies by locale. All can accomodate a NVidia DIY eGPU using their expresscard slot with 4GB+ of RAM.

12.5" Lenovo X220/X230

+ IPS LCD with wide viewing angles

+ dual-drive capable: mSATA + 7mm 2.5" HDD/SSD

+ 94Wh 9-cell battery option

-- X220 has quality and bulild issues with palmrest material above expresscard slot disintegrating, battery rattling around

- styling not for everyone -> same as from their 1990s Thinkpads

- non-upgradable soldered CPU

- short palmrest may be uncomfortable if have large hands

- whitelisted WWAN/wifi slots preventing use of future comms standards. I believe a hacked bios exists to get around this.

- uses Displayport rather than HDMI port

12.5" Dell E6220/E6230

+ contemporary styling

+ traditional keyboard

+ do not whitelist their WWAN/wifi slots

+ HDMI port

- no touchstyk

- non-upgradable soldered CPU

- no IPS LCD option

- only single 7mm 2.5" SATA SSD/HDD capable

- no 9-cell battery option, rather uses a slace.

12.5" HP 2560P/2570P

+ contemporary styling

+ socketted CPU -> can upgrade to faster dual or quad cores but confirm warranty implications

+ optical drive. Can be replaced by caddy hosting 2x9mm 2.5" SATA SSDs/HDDs

+ 100Wh 9-cell battery option

- uses Displayport rather than HDMI port

-- heavier and thicker than the above two

- no IPS LCD option

- whitelisted WWAN/wifi slots preventing use of future comms standards. No hacked bios is possible.

[boony1]

Hi Guys,

Just want to give my details on my eGPU experience,

Firstly I have to thank Nando who's actually provided a lot of help and without him this community wouldn't be where it is today.

Another huge thanks to Shelltoe who gave his eGPU experience and helped me a whole lot in getting my set up working.

I should also mention Oripash on another forum who actually provided a guide.

I essentially used Shelltoes setup on my 13" Retina Macbookpro.

Installed windows using REFIT. I won't go into a whole lot of detail as it's already provided.

Setup:

- Retina 13" Macbook Pro i7 8GB 512GB

- Bplus Th05

- GPU Palit GTX 670

- Display External (unable to use internal for now)

Installing windows 8 via USB using REFIT was a breeze very simple and easy.

The issue I came across after installation which I'd assume most would come across is no display or weird graphical glitch which are probably due drivers.

Below is a picture of what I came across. The way around is to delete the igdkmxd64.sys file. The easiest way I found was to boot via the windows 8 USB that I created and going into command prompt and deleting the file from there.

Once that file is deleted you will see Windows 8 how it should be displayed.

From there, followed what Shelltoe provided in his Macbook Pro Retina 15" thread.

I followed it to the tee but would come across no display, then realised I had to try it in an external monitor as the internal would not work which I was always trying it on.

Hopefully I can get the internal display working. Here are my results on Vantage and 3dmark 11 and a pic of the setup. The physics are quite low, can go from high 3k to low 4k in 3dmark 11.

[h=1]3dmark11 P6098[/h] [h=1]3d mark vantage P19501[/h]

[useafo]

I'm clueless now, guys. I want to know how to mod my ati legacy driver to add both ati iGPU and amd hd 6790. Please give me procedures to do that.

[Frula]

I'm clueless now, guys. I want to know how to mod my ati legacy driver to add both ati iGPU and amd hd 6790. Please give me procedures to do that.

Sorry but again i have to tell you to try XtremeG driver that recently added legacy support.You have 12.10 and 12.6 modded for legacy.

[useafo]

Sorry but again i have to tell you to try XtremeG driver that recently added legacy support.You have 12.10 and 12.6 modded for legacy.

Should I install it immediately, or should I modify it first?

[jedahan]

Hi Guys,

Just want to give my details on my eGPU experience,

Firstly I have to thank Nando who's actually provided a lot of help and without him this community wouldn't be where it is today.

Another huge thanks to Shelltoe who gave his eGPU experience and helped me a whole lot in getting my set up working.

I should also mention Oripash on another forum who actually provided a guide.

I essentially used Shelltoes setup on my 13" Retina Macbookpro.

Installed windows using REFIT. I won't go into a whole lot of detail as it's already provided.

Setup:

- Retina 13" Macbook Pro i7 8GB 512GB

- Bplus Th05

- GPU Palit GTX 670

- Display External (unable to use internal for now)

Installing windows 8 via USB using REFIT was a breeze very simple and easy.

The issue I came across after installation which I'd assume most would come across is no display or weird graphical glitch which are probably due drivers.

Below is a picture of what I came across. The way around is to delete the igdkmxd64.sys file. The easiest way I found was to boot via the windows 8 USB that I created and going into command prompt and deleting the file from there.

Once that file is deleted you will see Windows 8 how it should be displayed.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5377[/ATTACH]

From there, followed what Shelltoe provided in his Macbook Pro Retina 15" thread.

I followed it to the tee but would come across no display, then realised I had to try it in an external monitor as the internal would not work which I was always trying it on.

Hopefully I can get the internal display working. Here are my results on Vantage and 3dmark 11 and a pic of the setup. The physics are quite low, can go from high 3k to low 4k in 3dmark 11.

3dmark11 P6098

3d mark vantage P19501

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5378[/ATTACH]

Thanks for posting, this is exactly the information I needed to pull the trigger. Gonna try the same thing on a 2012 MBA 13. Just curious, did you buy the TH05 from TH05 ( PCI-Express to Thunderbolt? Adapter) ?

[boony1]

Yes I did buy from them.

Have done light gaming on it with Crysis 2, Borderlands 2 and I'm still surprised at how well it runs. Pretty much perfect, I'll be doing further tests when I get the chance.

[Psychotoxic]

Win8: Perform a DSDT substitution

I can confirm that I successfuly used an abriged version of this method for a Windows 8 DSDT override on a Fujitsu Lifebook SH531 - abriged because I did it without Setup 1.1x (as don't have it) and PCI compaction - using FreeDOS on a USB thumb drive (because the TrueCrypt bootloader sits in my drive's MBR) to generate a Large Memory entry.

At first I prepared a modified DSDT.aml as described in nando's post. I also removed the _OSI entries for older Windows versions to make it smaller. And looked up the DSDT starting address of course.

My steps were

• Create a FreeDOS bootable FAT32 USB thumb drive with unetbootin.
  
• Download GRUB4DOS and copy&paste everything to USB drive.
  
• Download Peritool for DOS and copy&paste everything to USB drive (How the hell did you find that piece of obscure software nando? )
  
• Copy&paste the modified DSDT.aml to the USB drive.
  
• Boot it, chose the FreeDOS Safe Mode method (otherwise GRUB4DOS would fail to start up with a "Probing ROM INT Vectors. If hang, unload a device driver or TSR and try again." error message for me).
  
• My USB drive had been automatically mounted as C: (the root, A:, is the FreeDOS ramdisk), so I switched to that.
  
• Run the peritool command as described by nano, which was pt MEM writefromfile 1 0xDAFF3000 dsdt.aml in my case.
  
• grub to start GRUB in interactive mode, chose command line, then chainloaded the TrueCrypt bootloader on my main drive (which was enumerated as hd2 by GRUB) with: chainloader(hd2)+1 [Enter] rootnoverify (hd2) [Enter] boot [Enter].
  

I booted normally then, and Windows initialized the eGPU sucessfully on its own after I hotplugged it.

Now the only thing left to do is to beautify and automate that a bit.

[dj_aris]

After hovering for hours around the forum, I realized that there can only be one compact, elegant and efficient solution:

A thunderbolt to MXM adaptor. Here's why:

1) Size: you could easily have an external MXM board with you. It's sized almost like a 2.5'' HDD.

2) Efficiency: an MXM implementation sips WAY less power than a full sized PCIe card.

3) And finally, there are quite a few REALLY powerful MXM GPUS right now.

Now, if only someone could make such an adapter...

[KamKemKimKom]

this is my 3DMark 11 result P5557

u think this is to low because of my cpu bottleneck or what?

one more thing is why at the result it say my gpu core clock is 705 Mhz and memory clock 3004 Mhz

my egpu setup is MSI GTX 660Ti Power Edition on PE4L-PM3N 2.1b

thanks

[Shelltoe]

Seems OK. i5 dualcore isn't that bad. a quadcore would almost double your physics score though.

GTX 660 ti has auto-overclocking and will allways show 705 Mhz in 3D Mark. should be somewhere between 900 and 1100 during stress.

[AC67NOWD]

Is it possible to use a eGPU with a Dell Notebook like the E6410, E6510, M4500 with already bulit in Nvidia GPU? This notebook don't support Optimus, and i don't know if its possible to use the Intel HD GMA CPU. (To disable the bulit in nVidia Card and use the intel GMA instead).

I wan't to buy a used M4500 or E6410 Notebook, but i'm not sure if it will work with the performance tweak for Optimus. And even if it work with the internal Intel GPU. If someone uses that combination it would be nice to get some more information. Awaiting some facts... thanks a lot.

[useafo]

I'm back, bringing you some update about my work:

1- I tried DNA-AMD gfx driver version 12.6b.2 , but it didn't work.

2- I tried Xtreme-g Driver version 12.10, it didn't work either.

My only solution: Need an easy instructions of how to mod legacy driver to include AMD of both iGPU and eGPU as a unified driver.

[Wes Lawrence]

Hey guys, so finally got around to ordering everything I needed to get an eGPU up and running. It should all be here within the next week, so I'll be sure to post my experience on setup and performance once it gets in .

My setup isn't the greatest, but I'm slowly working on making it into a semi-legit rig. College life ftw!

Just some insight, I started out with a used HP Probook 6460b that I got off Kijiji for supercheap.

More to come when the stuff gets here

[Kanga]

Bump. I could really use some help you guys.

--- QUESTION

so, for some reason, my laptop refuses to correctly make initial installations when my card is first plugged in.

From a fresh system restore, I put the laptop to sleep, plug in the card and turn it on, and then wake up the computer. The computer instantly detects new hardware, disables my keyboard and external mouse, and says it's installing a standard vga adapter. it takes about 5 minutes, but this install always fails. Later, when/if I try to install Nvidia drivers, the installer will recognize the card and allow the installation to begin, but pause permanently about a 10th of the way in.

Am I missing something? how do I install the drivers if my auto hardware detection/vga adapter installs always fail?

any help would be much appreciated!

--- NOTES

a few side notes,

- my safe mode no longer works, for some reason

- after my most recent attempt, I tried to system restore, and all of my restore points had vanished, so I'm stuck with the failed standard vga adapter install

--- SETUP

Lenovo X201T, intel core i7 L640 2.13 Ghz, 8 GB ram (TOLUD 0xC0000000)

Windows 7 Pro x64, dualbooted with Ubuntu 10.4

GeForce GTX 550 ti (Fermi)

[useafo]

Hi @Tech Inferno Fan

After a whole of struggling to make AMD Radeon GPU work, I have sold it and bought GTX 550 Ti, it worked without a hassle. I'll do benchmarking later.

[NefariousNyx]

Hello Nando, or anyone else here who may be able to help. I was on the old thread on notebookreview as Slagatron Prime. I've got an HP 6460B, pe4l 2.1b and GTX560ti setup. Theoretically, this should all work as I have an i5-2540, HD 3000, an EC slot, gen. 2 capability, and no dGPU. Running it all with a Corsair CX600 PSU, so there are plenty of watts and amps to go around. I have setup 1.x and I've become decently familiar with it during all the faniggling I've done trying to get this to work. I've tried two PE3A's, and this is my second pe4l 2.1b. The first Nando figured must be faulty, since I could never get it to connect through setup1.x. By hotplugging, I was able to get sporadic connections, but only ONCE did I get the card to appear in device manager as a 560ti. Usually it would be labeled as standard VGA adapter, error 10, and I may have seen error 43 as well, but it has been a while. Never got the drivers to install.

With the current pe4l, I can get the card to detect in setup 1.x as Nvidia after booting to setup 1.x, turning egpu off, then back on, then f5 rescan. Comes up on pci port 2 (1.2 connection) as an unconfigured Nvidia device. If I initialize and run 32A compaction across the board, I don't get the "unconfigured" part. If I check the PCIe device tree it shows a GF110 high def audio controller (meaning 500 series Fermi, which this card is), and an Nvidia card, but it doesn't say 560ti. I don't get why I need to do compaction as my TOLUD is 2.99 GB, But that seems to get it to connect.

Once I boot windows, I'm greeted with a Standard VGA adapter in device manager, and a wonderful Error 10 (device cannot start). Windows does not seem to view the GPU as being Nvidia, and if I try to install the modified verde drivers using their setup.exe, I get "you do not have a display connected to an Nvidia adapter". If I don't run compaction in setup 1.x, that Nvidia message reads "could not detect nvidia adapter in system" or something similar. So there is a big difference - Nvidia control panel sees their card, but it isn't set up right. If I use System Information Viewer and check my PCI bus, it reports that I have a GTX460SE v2 on pci port 2, which is where it should be, but isn't the right card. However, the high def audio controller portion of the gpu is detected as being GF110. Again, that is the correct board for a GTX560ti. Attached are screenshots of SIV and setup 1.x. Any help is appreciated. I feel painfully close to success here, but always disappointingly far.

Additionally, I have tried running an MSI ATI 6670 for variable elimination puposes, but I can't get that to detect at all. Not in setup 1.x, not in Win7, no matter what hot plug combos I use. Finally, putting my system on standby, hotplugging the eGPU, and resuming has never got me anywhere. Once again, thank you.

SCN002.BMP

SCN004.BMP

SCN006.BMP

[Kanga]

Updates: Ok, so I've managed to get my system sort of working.

I disabled intel HD graphics, and restarted with the gpu plugged in.

Everything worked fine, I'm displaying to my external monitor through my gpu, and my windows graphics subscores have shot up dramatically...

but now I am having trouble switching back. From what I had heard, when intel hd graphics are disabled, the screen should just switch to really crappy graphics for a bit while you boot up/down/whatever... but now my computer refuses to display anything when not plugged into my gpu, and if I try to reenable intel hd graphics from device manager while running on my gpu, it BSODs...

Help?

[useafo]

@Kanga

According to your specs, your laptop can do Optimus, which means you can run you gpu on both internal and external with better performance without disabling Intel HD graphics. First download the latest verde (mobile) driver from Nvidia website and follow the instructions on this page:

DIY eGPU experiences - Page 123

Press the spoiler button and follow the instructions. Enjoy the optimus setup my friend.