antweb

My computer runs hotter when I am using my CPU (probably due to CPU compaction and w/e). You will have random CPU multiplier drops even though you don't quite hit the thermal limit (may hit the thermal limit for a second). Run Real|Temp on another screen (if you have multiple) and see if the 'OK' changes to 'LOG' while gaming. If you don't have another screen, just have it running while gaming.

I have no idea why you are so hesitant for establishing a Gen2 link, I had essentially all my issues resolved by establishing a Gen2 link (moving from Gen1). It helps immensely, so just do it.

When I use RealTemp it's more often HOT than LOG, but it stays around 95 which is more or less borderline. Will have to do for now.

After flashing several BIOS yesterday and playing around with my power settings, I found my Lenovo power manager at fault. It somewhat didn't like my Windows power profile. Once I set everything to performance in the Lenovo manager, my multiplier problem disappeared.

Now I'm ready to test Gen2. Fingers crossed.

On a gen1 link you will notice a performance loss. On gen2 you probably won't unless you are playing something super intensive. You should be able to run something like Borderlands 2 on Ultra with little issue. It should run even with a high temp. Even before some of my cooling modifications, my CPU was in the 90s C and I still wouldn't see a significant performance hit.

I know, but I'm trying to get a stable Gen1 setup before I start looking into my Gen2 issues.

Turns out, my temperature issues are not as bad as expected. With the fan set to full blast, I was able to keep the temp around 88C in BF3. Strangely enough, I'm still having the performance drops. My CPU multiplier is going down from 30 to 8 for one or two secons every 30s or so. And it's not eGPU related. Have same behavior when running dGPU only.

I wonder if the BIOS update messed something up for me. I didn't have these issues before I installed everything for eGPU.

DSDT - If it is not required for your system then don't worry about it.

You really need to set the port to G2, it will help SIGNIFICANTLY overall. I suffer with high temps too. I normally don't have issues with it though. Try the x1.2 first and see if that helps.

That's what I thought, thanks for confirming.

I even have temp issues when running a Virtualbox + Netflix on my Linux. It's not just eGPU related. Although I feel the performance loss most when gaming. Will have to take my T420 apart, clean all fans/heatsinks and replate the thermal grease I guess.

Thanks for the detailed instructions!

I checked the wires on the adapter and moved them around a bit to have some more space in between. My Windows didn't crash right away, but the performance still is extremely bad.

I will give your setup method a try once I find some more time next week.

I did manage to install latest NVIDIA drivers for my GTX 660 by disabling dGPU through Setup 1.x and now have all 3 GPUs active on my system without any warnings running perfectly with x1.1 eGPU speed.

BUT it seems like this is already enough to make my CPU the bottleneck in Battlefield 3. After some minutes of playing I get massive FPS drops. All points to my CPU downclocking because it overheats (goes up to 95C). Guess I'll have to fix this issue first before I can try out x1.2 speeds.

But coming back to your guide, if I understood correctly, a DSDT override only affects the address allocation for my GPUs. Are you sure it's neccessary for a T420? It looks like it's not really required for my system.

Assuming something internal of the cable isn't messed up (which would be terrible to replace), check the wires on the adapter itself.

I had a very similar issue where two wires were very close together/shorting. And it pretty much did as you described. Get some plastic implement and make sure the wires coming from the HDMI cable aren't touching (or very close). If you see some that are remotely close, separate them a little bit.

With mine, two were nearly touching and it was recognized but would hiccup often, separating the wires fixed it. I know it sounds pretty obvious but I kept think it was a software issue, but it wasn't. And no glancing at the wires either, look closely.

I have a very similar setup to you:

i7-2620M

16GB RAM

NVS 4200M

GTX 660 Ti

Windows 7 Enterprise x64

As for what I did (briefly, I plan to write a full write-up in a new thread):

If you can, you should perform a DSDT override, I will have more in my post

Disconnect your eGPU

Uninstall all Nvidia drivers (keep the Intel graphics driver)

Use Driver Sweeper and check all the Nvidia options, run, reboot, turn off computer -- don't install the driver for the NVS 4200M yet

Connect eGPU and go to Setup 1.x

Set your eGPU port to G2

dGPU off

32-bitA compaction for iGPU eGPU

chainload to your OS

Windows may yell at you to reboot due to hardware changes, don't quite yet

Check device manager, you might (I did) have error 43

Attempt to install the latest Nvidia drivers for you eGPU -- still don't install drivers for your dGPU

If your lucky, it will install, if not:

shutdown/reboot

Setup 1.x

do the same as before (dGPU off and such)

Attempt to install the Nvidia drivers again for your eGPU

After a few hours of fiddling around, you should get them installed

(keep your dGPU off this whole time)

ONLY AFTER YOU GET YOUR eGPU DRIVERS INSTALLED

(and as such, error 12 in device manager)

Go to Setup 1.x

Set port G2 on your eGPU port

32-bitA compaction for iGPU dGPU eGPU (or choose 36-bit if you performed a DSDT override)

chainload

You will probably get the reboot due to new devices again, but before you do, check device manager

Might have a generic VGA device or something instead of the NVS 4200M

Attempt to install the drivers for you dGPU now

If now luck, reboot and do the same Setup 1.x as before (with dGPU on)

Attempt to install dGPU drivers again

Reboot after you get your dGPU drivers installed

Keep the same Setup 1.x method

If your lucky you should have your iGPU dGPU and eGPU show up fine in device manager.

You can go to the Nvidia control panel and dedicate your NVS 4200M as your PhysX processor, it works really well.

^ over 20 hrs of fiddling around well spent ;-;

I hope that helped in some way. Lemme know if you have any issues.

Thanks for the detailed instructions!

I checked the wires on the adapter and moved them around a bit to have some more space in between. My Windows didn't crash right away, but the performance still is extremely bad.

I will give your setup method a try once I find some more time next week.

By now I suspect the HDMI connection of the PE4L to cause all this trouble. I moved the setup on my desk around a bit and actually got into Windows with a x1.2 link. I tried the render test in GPU-Z and it started off very sluggish until my eGPU changed back to x1.1.

The problem is that I can't seem to find a way to arrange my hardware without bending the HDMI cable by at least 90 degrees...

I can confirm that switching from Auto to Gen1 improves performance substantially. I was getting ~15 fps on all low setttings on BF3 on auto. After switching to Gen1 I got ~40 fps on auto settings.

I have a T420 with an i5-2450M w/o NVS and 6 GB RAM. I'm using an MSI GTX 650 Ti (OC edition, I think that's what it's called) with a 350W Rosewill PSU (12V 15A I believe). I am also using the latest BIOS afaik.

Let me know if you need help with your setup since I have my T420 working.

This is strange. Auto (Gen2) should boost performance significantly as it allows a x1 2.0 link with twice the bandwidth. Maybe the x1.2 link is just not stable enough for you as well.

Which driver are you using and are you booting your system with Setup1.x?

I ran benchmarks with Gen1 and both 3DMark 06 and 3DMark 11 finished without any problems. When I switched back to Auto after that, my system crashed the second I tried to open GPU-Z.

Important observation I made yesterday: once I set my ExpressCard reader to Gen1 in BIOS, everything seems to work fine. I'll try to do some stress testing tonight.

I'm running out of ideas with my eGPU setup, so I think it's about time I ask for some help.

First of all, here's what I have:

ThinkPad T420 with Quadro NVS 4200

Core i5-2520M

12GB RAM

EVGA GeForce GTX 660 ("Superclocked")

Corsair CX430M PSU (430W)

PE4L v2.1b with EC060A

External screen with DVI connection to the eGPU

Windows 7 x64

And this is what happened so far:

The day I got my kit I connected everything and booted up my existing Windows installation. After playing around with the existing Quadro drivers and Desktop drivers, I got it all up and running and managed to run some benchmarks. But then I decided to do a clean Windows installation and this is where all the trouble started.

First I had trouble installing the drivers, but after several ties and removing my Intel HD drivers, I got the hang of it.

Now with the NVIDIA drivers for my eGPU on the clean Windows installation, my Windows just breaks. I've experienced a mix of following symptoms so far:

- eGPU actually initializes properly and has 2.0 x1 link but runs extremely unstable (even dragging windows is sluggish) and falls back to 1.1 x1 eventually

- eGPU boots up with 1.1 x1 link and seems to run okay but randomly gets a "driver recovered/ not responding" error or just crashes the entire system

varies betweeen just a couple of seconds on desktop and some minutes of Battlefield 3

- random black screens / system freezes

- Windows get's stuck in login screen (sometimes manages to load Desktop with if I wait for several minutes but with broken themes) / Windows get's stuck on shutdown

I've tried various settings in Setup 1.x and several driver versions (Desktop and modiefied Verde) but I just kept making things worse.

Seemed like a messed up Windows first, but even a second clean installation didn't help.

Once I unplug my eGPU, everything is back to normal. I also tried to test with 4GB of RAM only and with dGPU disabled.

I've already wasted too many hours on this...

Can someone provide me with a working configuration (driver version/Setup 1.x options) for a similar configuration?

Or is there a way to debug this properly? That way I could at least narrow down the problem..

Setting the link speed to Gen1 in BIOS actually got rid of the Windows glitches. I tried to force the speed to Gen2 in Setup 1.x afterwards and that just destroyed my OS. Now I can't even boot it up properly with the eGPU attached. It hangs at the logon screen and then shows the desktop with the classic Windows theme (same as in safe mode).

I suspect that the driver for my ExpressCard USB 3.0 controller messed things up for me. It crashed the system, so I uninstalled it. But who knows what might be left of it. I'll just do another clean Windows installation without it and see if it changes anything.

Alright, it was not the ExpressCard driver. Clean Windows install didn't help. Once I installed the 314.22 Verde driver and rebooted (with dGPU disabled through Setup 1.x), it started slowing down extremely again and when I checked the device manager, my eGPU had an error code 43. Maybe it's the same problems MystPhysX encoutered?

Is there any driver you can recommend for a iGPU + dGPU + eGPU setup?

Same symptom occurs if running a non Gen2 compliant PE4L 1.5 or PE4H 2.4. You have a PE4L 2.1b so that shouldn't be occurring. That is unless you've inadvertently bent the PE4L cable causing the TX/RX pair to no longer conduct data correctly. Would need another PE4L 2.1b to confirm if that's the problem. Still, try setting the link speed to Gen1 using the bios options or Setup 1.x. Other reason your drive could be failing would be due to the video card being factory overclocked beyond the GPUs stable limits. Worth downclocking the card to see if it makes a difference.

Setting the link speed to Gen1 in BIOS actually got rid of the Windows glitches. I tried to force the speed to Gen2 in Setup 1.x afterwards and that just destroyed my OS. Now I can't even boot it up properly with the eGPU attached. It hangs at the logon screen and then shows the desktop with the classic Windows theme (same as in safe mode).

I suspect that the driver for my ExpressCard USB 3.0 controller messed things up for me. It crashed the system, so I uninstalled it. But who knows what might be left of it. I'll just do another clean Windows installation without it and see if it changes anything.

Hi everyone,

I've got myself a eGPU setup and after some initial testing, I'm having some stability issues.

My driver keeps crashing (sometimes manages to recover, other times it just gives me BSOD) and the overall performance on Windows is bad (even dragging windows is sluggish and leaves a nice trails, etc...). But only when I do these things on my external screen (so through the eGPU).

According to GPU-Z, the system sometimes boots up with a x1 2.0 link but then falls back to 1.1 when the card is under load.

The whole problem does seem to be somewhat random though, as I was able to play Battlefield 3 for at least 15min with the 1.1 link before it crashed. Other times it crashes the second I open my browser.

I've tried several driver versions (both Desktop and Notebook), but all have the same issue.

Strangest thing is that I didn't have these issues when I tested the setup for the first time with my old windows installation. I'm not sure about the link speed, but the driver was working fine. Can't exactly remember, but I think I was using the desktop 314.22 back then. Am I just missing an option somewhere or did I mess up my hardware?

Here's my setup:

ThinkPad T420 with Quadro NVS 4200

EVGA GeForce GTX 660

Corsair CX430M PSU (430W)

PE4L v2.1b with EC060A

External screen with DVI connection to the eGPU

Windows 7 x64 (clean installation)

NVIDIA Verde 314.22 (modded inf)