jot23

13,3' or 14' notebook with powerful MXM graphics and maybe aluminium body would be nice.

Thank you, but I'm testing Radeon R9 270 now. I'll try with the GTX660 soon, so your advice may be useful.

That explains your CPU Usage. This map is made for a single player? I mean that there are no enemies, just you and the map and jets/tanks etc.? I'll give it a try tomorrow, to make my benchmarks comparable to yours.

It's interesting. Your CPU doesn't seem to be much more powerful. Which map did you play? The Siege of Shanghai map is more difficult to handle for the CPU. I tried other maps too. Your GPU Utilization is way more stable, which means that the CPU is not bottlenecking the GPU that much. Mantle shows better results, while comparing powerful CPU and GPU combinations, but it should work with the weaker ones too. Your GPU is a much better performer. I'll make sure about Mantle working or not with the Star Swarm benchmark.

Yes, I am sure. Safe mode and many reboots to be sure. I used the latest 14.3 drivers and older: 14.1 and 13.9 (with lack of Mantle support). The performance was pretty the same. I'll check if Mantle works in the Star Swarm demo tomorrow. I could post the videos, but I'm still working on my DIY enclosure... and I'll need to return the GPU on Monday. So, I'm not sure if it will be possible to record the video. If you're planning on making an DIY eGPU, why don't you stay with Nvidia graphics? They work very well, the performance is quite good. Only Geforce is capable of the fastest Expresscard, 1.2Opt connection. Radeon lacks the Optimus support and AMD didn't make an Optimus alternative. I hoped, that Mantle could be a performance booster.

First log: BF4 on map Siege of Shanghai. FullHD + medium settings. eGPU setup: HP 2570p i5-3210m MSI Radeon R9 270 Starting at 7th minute, I played with Mantle. First 7 minutes is gameplay without Mantle. As we can see, Mantle gave me... nothing. Framerate is not very good, many drops below 40 FPS. The CPU Usage is very high and it bottlenecks the GPU. Mantle should help the CPU Usage, but it does not. I'll check out the Star Swarm benchmark to see, if Mantle even works on eGPU. For now, Mantle gives me nothing.

That solved the issue! I'll post the logs soon.

I have HD400 iGPU and no dGPU. Maybe it's the driver conflict, because usually I'm using GTX660. I didn't uninstall Nvidia drivers. But Geforce GPU works fine with AMD Catalyst installed.

I wanted to benchmark Battlefield 4. Unfortunately, FPS stayed at about 20-30 FPS. GPU Usage seems strange, it's 30-50% all the time, while CPU Usage gets 100% constantly. Moreover, the GPU Render Test in GPU-Z shows barely 20 FPS. I tried 4 different drivers, turning ulps off, different PSU... Nothing helped. Do you know, what could be an issue here?

Finally I've got my hands on MSI R9 270 GPU. My 3dmark11 score: i5-3210m + R9 270. GPU score is significantly higher than the GPU score of GTX660: 6785p vs 6019p. Does it perform that well in games? No I've tested Crysis 3, ACIV, Batman Arkham Origins. Some HWINFO logs: a) Crysis 3. Played on low settings in FullHD resolution. The performance is way worse than on GTX660. The FPS peaks in vents etc. are higher on R9 270, but overall, 660 beats R9 270. The third mission is barely playable on R9 270 with low settings. With GTX660, I could play the mission on mixed medium to very high settings, getting higher FPS (about 35 average). I don't have a log for the mission 2 "Welcome to the jungle" with the "grass problem", but the FPS was about 10-15% lower on the grass, reaching 15 FPS minimum. Both cards can't achieve playable framerate on this grass level. Batman Arkham Origins Played on almost full settings, without motion blur. The game is fully playable on both cards. The benchmark contains both mission in a closed space and some city free running. For now, I am disappointed with the R9 270 eGPU performance. I hoped, that the GCN architecture could give me some magic like Nvidia Optimus does. I'm going to test BF4 with and without Mantle, to see if that helps. In theory, CPU Usage should be lower with Mantle and the communication between the CPU and GPU, which is a serious drawback of eGPU due to PCIe bandwidth, should be faster.

Hi! Nit sure if you saw that, but I've tested HD6850 eGPU at x1 bandwidth. Drivers used were 13.9. No severe slowdowns caused by drivers, I think. You could check out my Crysis 3 benchmarks (FPS logs) in the main topic. Since 5770 and 6850 are based on the same old architecture, I think the same drivers apply to them, so the performance loss shuold be comparable. But the performance I've got is quite as expected from such eGPU setup.

And here, catch "The root of all Evil", part one from the beginning to destroying the badass Hydro-Electric Generator. HWInfo log: Screenshots: Placed in a spoiler, because there are 20 screenshots, and someone might have not played the game yet... it's my favourite mission in the game, spectacular and mind blowing, even on low settings like in the test. I don't have the GTX660 log at the moment, but I remember the mission was fully playable at >30 fps min and about 35 average, played with high textures and med-high settings, so again, way better Maybe the FPS was higher because of better CPU Utilisation? The CPU Usage stays at 60% avg on hd6850, and on 660 was more like 80-85%. Because I need a GPU comparable with GTX660, so I'll rather stay at the level of HD7870/r9 270. But the new Radeon series is... strange. R9 270 is sometimes better, sometimes way worse than 660, and it costs about 10-20% more than I payed for 660 four months ago. 270x is a bit more powerful, but 270 should be easy to overclock to match 270x performance. Then there is a gap, because the next GPU is 280x, which can be compared to 680. There should be a r9 280, priced at 200$ and being a good competitor for 660ti or 670. I'll propably take the 270 one or find an older 7870 GPU, which has better GPU clock, but worse memory clock... and that's the only difference. I can take 7870xt too. It's priced at the level of R9 270x here in Poland, and it's performance is better. But it's only available in Club3d and XFX versions, and I'd rather stay with Asus, MSI or Gigabyte ones.

First GTX660 vs HD6850 comparison (I don't have access to 660 atm...on the other hand, such comparison is a bit pointless, because 6850 is way weaker than 660, and it seems like it's more limited by pcie bandwidth): Crysis 3, mission 6 (from the beginning to the second Ceph AA defence, getting there took me 7 minutes on 660 and 12 minutes on hd6850 due to lower FPS, which makes it hard to play well). Settings: Resolution: 1920x1080 All low [email protected]: Look at the red line, green represents gameplay at high setting (textures and the rest) and is really short. AVG FPS: 45 [email protected]: AVG FPS: 27 Like before, the CPU Usage is way lower then it was with GTX660. It's really worth consideration, because as we know, Nvidia drivers cause a greater CPU load then AMD drivers. It's much more visible on older Core 2 Duo based desktop PCs, causing microstuttering, but I think that it might affect Core i5 as well. The problem should be not present when using quad core CPU. On low settings, GTX660 should easily get average of 60 FPS. Not sure about HD6850 performance, but according to benchmarks, 28 FPS is a valid result... for high settings. On low it should be more like 40 FPS I suppose. So, we can see that both cards are limited. By... and now it's starting to get really difficult. I'm not sure which of the factors is more important here. Maybe the performance is CPU limited, like I think it is on Welcome to the Jungle level. Of course, when it comes to the "grass moment", the PCIe bandwitdh is a real drawback there, giving us drops to 20 FPS instead of a way more playable 30-35. On GTX660, mission 6 is really playable, even at high setting. On HD6850 it's not playable on low settings, which keeps mi thinking about how a GCN-based card would perform. It would have to be less bandwidth-limited to maintain good FPS. p.s. I'm going to buy a GCN-based card like HD7870/7870xt/r9-270(X), but given that it's Christmas time, I think I'll have to wait till January, because prices are a bit higher now and shipping might take very long. Which is really important, because in Poland when buying online, I could give the GPU back after 10 days of testing without providing any cause of it. So, I'd like to use that privelege for an almost-free benchmarks, if I won't stay with AMD GPU.

OK, maybe there is some magic that AMD implemented in GCN architecture, which works well with eGPU as the Nvidia Optimus does, and AMD does not know how brilliant they are So, I'll try to get my hands on any GCN-based GPU. I'm excited about this benchmarks too.

OK, I hoped that my score was to low Looking at my performance, I doubt if going with AMD GPU is a good choice. I thought it would be less PCIe bus demanding, but it's not. And using Nvidia GPU is easier.