ugleex

Okay.. strange problem just happened when messing about with setup 1.x and internal setup without external hooked up using 2570p and 680 gtx evga using bplus 2.1a. (Have been using for about a year without issues, also have a clean dsdt override that I did to make this setup work with my 750TI before getting the 680). If I right clicked on external before, the nvidia panel would show up but on the internal it would not - this didn't bother me as I always have used externals. But the other night I was bored and wanted to mess about without the monitor so I reran setup 1.x, wasn't really sure what to run if anything (but it wouldn't recognize the card until then). Got it working (still is) but the usb xbox 360 wired controller is no longer recognized by games. It's recognized in windows, no flags of any kind but in all of the games I've tried (fallout 4, shift 2, bastion, don't starve, others etc.) it defaults to keyboard/mouse. Just wondering if anyone has any advice before I reinstall everything (something I don't want to do). I tried various work arounds like starting windows without setup 1.x as before, rerunning setup 1.x with other options (including just plain reset), starting without the card, then plugging it in, but it still recognizes nvidia on both screens (unlike before) and regardless of which screen is main, the controller isn't being recognized. Seems like an odd bug to have, hoping for some advice. Thanks.

Could someone please help me out with my power supply issue - I have the bplus 2.1a PE4L adapter and I have it working with 750 TI just fine. However, I don't understand how to get my GTX 680 to work. Here is what I currently have egpu - Album on Imgur That is how I normally run my 750 TI, but this time, if I put the 20+4 pin rail into the adapter, the card isn't recognized and the fan is spinning like it's at 100%. I've tried emulating something like this http://forum.techinferno.com/attachments/diy-e-gpu-projects/14970-58l5rfw.jpg but with little luck. Each time, the card sounds like it's about to go off the rails if I connect the 24 pin into it. And I'm afraid of shorting something. Any help? =/ edit: the PSU uses 22a on +12v and its max load is 400w It's brand new - I have another 350w I can also try but it's pretty crappy -always on- one. I did try waking it up from sleep, I've also tried using the delay switches - nothing helps. From sleep it simply restarts my pc, and if I have the express card in instead of hotplugging, the pc won't start. edit2: well just for kicks I dusted off my 2540p and tried it with that.. with delay switch set to 3, I was able to get it going. http://imgur.com/a/QMfFV So that's cool - so something must be off with my 2570p? Maybe it's the gen2 thing that bplus doesn't like? But my 750 TI is set to gen2 and no problems there. Hm. edit3: resolved? I set both of the delay switches on bplus to 3 (usually this fucked stuff up with my TI), and this time the PC booted up right. Everything is systems go, running Witcher 2 maxed out at stable 60 fps weeeee.

Hey, the amp was around 16a (too lazy to get up to check) - I bought another 400w PSU with 22 amps and higher reviews and no change. I'm pretty sure the card was either a dud or I shorted something by connecting the cables. Like, I couldn't even start it (edit: this is after I had it initially 'running' with monitor flickering and all - again not sure how exactly I did it but it did 'work' so yeah maybe a dud - maybe usps threw it around too much cause the seller didn't write fragile on it) by hot plugging during startup, tried with switches at 2 and 3 and only then the fan would spin but eventually nothing. When you say 12v from PSU into GPU you mean into the adapter right, because the GPU itself only has 2 6-pin molex inputs. Either way I had tried all kinds of combinations and eventually it just gave out. I'm going to buy another 670, brand name this time, and if still nothing - maybe it's the adapter itself in which case I'll just have to suck it up and buy another adapter. I didn't realize there was a 2.1a and 2.1b versions until much later - the one I bought off amazon simply said 2.1. But yeah.. the a is like outdated or whatever and gives a lot of people problems so =/ p.s. yes tried gen1 and all that. Once i get another 670 (trying to find a ftw evga or msi pe oc one) I'll post the update here.

Hiya, I was/am using bplus 2.1a PE4L. I have it working with 750TI (after a lot of work) but just couldn't get it going. I couldn't even hot plug start it, so the more I think about it, the more I think it was the power supply (350 watts but for all I know, it could be running at 50% of it since it's a crappy one). If it's not that - I ordered a new one that should arrive today or tomorrow but if it's not that, I guess I'll have to order another adapter and make sure it's 2.1b this time as I hear 2.1a can give issues. I'm also not sure if I'm connecting it properly - am I supposed to connect from the adapter to the 2 3-pin connectors on the top or is it already getting sufficient power through the 12v?

Could someone who has successfully hooked up gtx 670 through the express slot using a 2.1 adapter shed some light unto what I may be doing wrong? All I have to do is plug it into the adapter, hook up my 12v rail from the ATX into the adapter, plug it into the EC slot right? If I run it like that w/o setup, I get code 43, if I use any combinations of setup 1.3 it hangs. I thought 670 was the way to go, and after finally acquiring one today.. I've dumped hours upon hours into trying to get it going and nothing >< Using 350W ATX P/S; had it going at first but screen was unstable, figured it was a driver issue, did a fresh reinstall of everything (video drivers, setup 1.3 etc.) and now the best I can do is get to windows loading screen > black. I thought it's supposed to be easier than 750 TI with a clean dsdt but nothing I do seems to work - really bumming me out =/

Hey guys - hoping someone can help me before I redo everything. So I have a 750 TI eGPU running (clean dsdt on *2540p and 2570p), using nando's setup 1.3 - no issues - but I wanted to upgrade to 670 and took a shot at a cheapo generic 670 card (OEM specs, no brand on it). I thought that these cards were plug and play and didn't need an override, so I plugged it into my bplus 2.1a adapter.. and nothing. I have it running off a 12v rail through a 400w ATX. I wasn't sure whether or not to mess with the other power settings but I did it anyway, and eventually I got it going. I had it boot up windows, recognize the monitor, then the monitor would flicker if I extended to it. I'm not sure how I did this as I couldn't replicate it before work. Basically - I'm sort of confused about what to plug where - I thought the 12v would be enough, should I hook up the Y splitter from the adapter to the top of the card too or how does that work? And should I redo the entire dsdt override/try to run this without setup 1.3? I tried doing it without the external monitor and setup would recognize the card using the 12v rail sometimes and sometimes it wouldn't - but when I would boot, the system just hangs. Main reason I bought this thing is I thought it would be plug and play but google isn't showing much in terms of what to plug where aside from 12v into your adapter and into your express slot (I have pe4L) and you're good to go. Any help would be great. Ahh dammit - after hours of messing with it I think I either broke the card or the card was already broken because now the fan doesn't even spin. I've tried all the methods out there and nothing works. Back to my 750 TI and I guess. At least it's portable I guess. Maybe I'll buy another egpu adapter and a brand-name card this time. Maybe I wasn't/am not getting enough power or something - not sure how that's possible with a 350W atx that's powering up my 750 right now but I guess 750 TI barely takes anything to run by comparison. Oh well, was really looking forward to today ><

So I'm contemplating on upgrading my 750 TI for my 2570p (then I could use the 750 with my 2540p or something) and have been reading a lot of various tests - another 2570p member has been recommending 680 gtx (one of the reasons is that it can be used with the dell block - but it's not clear whether this is plug and play like the 670 and below listed in the 2570 owner thread) but I didn't find any conclusive real life tests with this card vs the gtx 770 and 970 aside from this post http://forum.techinferno.com/implementation-guides-pc/8099-12-hp-2570p-gtx970@4gbps-c-ec2-pe4l-2-1b-win7-%5Bunclejam%5D.html And here it looks like nando achieved very similar scores using 770 than 970 after all the recommended optimizations - so I guess my question is - which of these 3 should I be shooting for/would you guys recommend? Bench-wise, every site shows that 770 is very similar to 680, and I can find a 680 around where I live for fairly cheap (100-150), no 970s and 770s are 200+; online it's generally the same as well (680 costing generally less and 970 is incredibly high).

Aye, the 8 hrs was with it doing nothing. Just opened cmd and ran the powercfg. Max dim, max savings, (didn't have TS with powersavings on, not sure how much that'd help, will try later - atm I don't have the quad in yet, so the cpu is only 35w as well if that matters). Taking forever - was supposed to arrive today >< I'm hoping to buy a 680 and perhaps run witcher 3 at a reasonable fps. Sucks that Shogun 2 has never been optimized =/ I love that game and it still sucks due to the whole 1 core thing.

Sorry just going by the first post in this thread - "100Wh 9-cell battery (15hrs)" - sort of assumed that since you're listing it as one of the top features it was based on experience or something. My apologies I guess, but 8 hrs vs 15? Tweaks or not, that seems kind of weak. Oh well. At least I got a backup door stopper.

Can anyone explain how the heck nando got 15 hours off a 9 cell? With max. savings my high capacity is barely hitting 8 with wifi off etc. I imagine I got a dud but perhaps I'm wrong and was hoping someone could stir me in the right direction. I ran powercfg -energy and it showed the max capacity and max charge to be the same (a hair below 71k), but not sure how to interpret that.

So in case anyone runs into a similar problem as I have... I fixed my override issue by doing a fresh win7 install (it was already up to date and everything so I shot the moon and downloaded the 800 meg driver package then went through everything in DM one by one and updated it afterwards). I received the same exact errors/remarks/etc. only this time I decided to just fix the errors and now I can see the large memory block. So here comes step 2.. (and then I'll have to redo it all over because I want to move my 2540p SSD into it but that's fine I suppose). Still can't figure out why my SATA III drive is downgrading to II though and my 3.0 port is only 100 mb/s.. oh wells ><

Well - finally got mine. After an arduous process with my 2540p where I finally managed to clean dsdt, this one did not present any issues except one that google doesn't want to reveal - my dsdt override is clean (this is before anything is plugged in) - no warnings/errors a few remarks about a useless reference or something but the large memory allocation still won't show up under resources. Has this ever happened to you guys - I'm finding nothing on google. p.s. After numerous attempts, I did plug the card in, error 12 as expected (I have 750 ti so it's a pain), ran setup 1.3 as before, but that did nothing as expected (nando told me I had to do both, clean dsdt first, then setup for this card, which is what I had done with 2540p but that's neither here nor there - why won't my large memory block show with a clean override? Any ideas?

Thanks Nando, I think I misunderstood. I remember reading elsewhere that AMD quad cores are 4 cores and intel 'quad' is actually 2 cores hyperthreaded (not sure what that means exactly) that makes them a quad. But I guess you're talking about an actual quad core intel chip with 8 cores after HT? I see, so you simply buy a cheap i5 and then the chip itself separately. Like I'm looking at a 500 dollar 3610qm 2570 or as you mention I can simply buy a chip (I'm seeing one on ebay for like 140 bucks) and a cheap i5 (I'm seeing them as low as 100 in good condition). And according to that page a 3160qm i7 is 7500. I see - wow. I'll have to read through this thread some more to see what kind of issues people run in overriding DSDT with this as all this hardware swapping seems like it'd give some issues especially with my 750 Thanks! edit: Wow for like the same price I could've gotten a gigantic boost in comparison. Damn. This is a hidden gem indeed.

Sorry if this has been posted - was unable to find a clear answer but now that I got my 2540p to work, I'm kind of itching to go higher as the CPU seems to really bottleneck. How big of a jump would this model be over the 2570 quad i7 (I have the 620 version) if I buy it with an I7 3520m? Kind of hoping to get a little more out of my 750 TI (most everything runs beautifully but things like witcher 2 dip into 20s if I'm above mediumish).

Hehe, paid off in money or just pure sastisfaction - who knows - either way wow.. it did.. 8 gb is in Curious thing is that cities skylines ran on 2 gb ( would shut down if I had couple things open) but with 4 in, it said 2.5 used or so, and now with 8, says 3.5. Either way - can't express my joy if only because I know jack shit about coding and bang, knocked this out. My gf.. not so impressed.. whatever. Ordering caddy and bigger hdd next. Just learned I don't have essata on this model which is meh... but okay. I'm still consider 2570 as I've mentioned in another thread - seems like a great machine. But for now.. having win7 and 8 gb and 1080p on highest settings.. and it's on a workbook? Man.... Awesome - Was about to drop 1500 for a sager! edit: and yes I will write up a guide - not sure how useful it will be but I found many random comments useful when doing this. Just totally random really... Some guy saying he change blah to blah and it wasn't for my system and didn't worked but if I added extra variable for reasons I know not, it did work - well - it'll be in my 'guide'. cheers! p.s. no hdmi audio though

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.

Hey guys, so I'm thinking of getting this one after running into all kinds of dsdt issues with my 2540p and being unable to make it compile (was trying to sync it with my 750 TI but couldn't get there.. just dsdt problems everywhere) - would the 2570p be a good alternative or could I run into similar problems, especially since I'd be getting it used and all that (I was getting hundreds of errors, acpi non compliance even when errors cleared and so on with my other)?

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

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 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!

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?

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.

Hi guys - would any of you gents be able to help me with a somewhat pre-eGPU setup issue as I'm striking out left and right trying to get this going. I'm particularly asking fellas who got the 2540p running with a clear dsdt (the GPU is not important as I'm not at that step yet). I have done the override for dsdt and received hundreds of errors, someone at hackintosh forums has helped me compile it down to 0 by adjusting the memory code. It compiles with 0 errors both with the fixed code and with the override but once I load the tables and restart I receive a blue screen http://i.imgur.com/3ulJiCB.jpg (linked - not sure how to thumbnail) but ONLY if I have 4 gb+ of ram. Soon as I go back down to 2, no problem. I'm thinking either the person who has suggested (not sure if rules allow me to link their forums) their code took this into account or what, but I think they probably would have since this happens even without the override on a freshly installed win7 64 enterprise. 0 errors on compile http://i.imgur.com/KIa41CE.png just some warnings/remarks and still.. 4 gb = bsod. I've been searching and searching and so far.. not much aside from random high-level comments regarding acpi issues with older bios (mine is newest and according to hp's driver's site, cannot be downgraded), and similar things - but the bsod happens only when the windows is about to load. On a fresh install, I have only installed the wifi driver, nothing else - even igpu still says standard vga display. But the old install gave me the same problem. So, if anyone with a 2540p could help, I'd really appreciate it. A clean dsdt or ways you worked yours out or anything of the sort. I've only made 2 changes to mine to go from hundreds to 0 and they were - deleting the following on line 3142 due to syntax error: If (CondRefOf (FPED)) { FPED () } and adjusting the memory length on next to last entry from 0's to 0xFEE00000 (otherwise it compiles and says min/max mismatch). I can get my 750 to run games at 1080p with 2 gigs of ram and they look beautiful but seeing the bottleneck makes me cry I would really love it if I could get this going but before I can get to that step, I have to compile the dsdt so that it boots with more than 2 gigs and I'm not sure what the issue is.. so if you have a 2540p and got it to override - would love to know how - and if you have any other advice - would love that too. This little pc is really quite a beast, I love it and I'm hoping I can keep it ><

Hi Nando4 - I didn't quote your name fully so not sure if you saw my post as I had a similar question - I fixed my dsdt override issue but now I receive bsod (without egpu plugged in) if I have more than 2 gb installed - will your setup fix this? I tried setting a fixed memory range like endy to no avail. Google only found issues with boot manager (that may possible be an issue - I've used MS instructions to revert mine to its original form - no changes). As a last resort I'll try a fresh win7 enterprise install tomorrow if setup doesn't address this followed by win 8.1 if the former doesn't do it. If setup cannot work for me right now - will installing 8.1 fix it and since I'm not entirely sure how it works - what happens when I run laptop w/o egpu plugged in - will I still receive bsod or is this setup thing pretty much good to go after?

Hi Nando, I'm back with some updates and questions - if you recall I posted about asking whether setup 1.x would help me if I couldn't fix dsdt override - well the nice guys on the mac forum helped me out and dsdt override now compiles with 0 errors and my large memory is shown (I did not try the code I pasted here yet but went with the one in the original guide btw so in DM everything is as it is on others' screenshots). That being said.. I ran into yet another strange problem and am wondering if setup 1.x is meant to address it. The problem is - if I have 2 gb of ram in the computer, no problem as before in terms of just booting up and at least getting the 750 TI recognized and working (only 1.1 bus - not sure what this means but I'll work on optimization later - I notice everyone is showing 2.0 - and I do have the 2.1b pe4l.. Anyway. Soon as I stick 4 gb into the computer - shut down/start - (without eGPU being connected) BSOD when windows logo shows up (after about 2s or so as it used to do when I messed up my dsdt file - only this time, I simply take out the extra 2 gb and boot just fine). So - is this what setup 1.x will fix or is this something else? I'm not seeing anything on google about it. Thanks again as always.

Hi, sorry this part is kind of going over my head. I've been up for 24 hrs and 12 of those spent on this so that's part of it.. but in the quoted text he simply says he will not go into more details - I'm not sure what you mean by pre-allocate the eGPU into large memory (what memory? sorry again - not a pro at this stuff, learning as I read) - if so - can I do this with 8 gb or 4? If I put in a 4 gb + 2, for some reason my main pc (current one), only sees 4 - haven't tried doing it with the HP because as edynator can attest.. the 2nd memory slot is a REAL pain in the arse to get to. But hey on the plus side - I did have enough test before I have to go to take out the sticks and I'm up from 3.3 to 7.7 With 7.6 disk transfer rate and 6.5 processor score that's not bad! Memory calculations though 5.5 I don't want to spam so I'll quickly respond to eddy - hey man - didn't know you were still around - I'm too new to PM but noticed you only had 2 posts and yet here you are Yes, I know you couldn't get win8 to work but I've read several posts where 2450p people did get win8 to work. I'll be happy to find links when I return if needed - but they never said how or I would've bookmarked them. But do you mind pointing me in the direction of how you went about figuring out override issue? You said you have done a lot of reading - do you happen to know where/what? I'd be more than happy to do the same and post a guide after... do you think it has something to do with you having win7 enterprise and only 6 gigs of ram vs my 8? Any clue at all? I mean brand new install and even though it's used, the laptop is a rock (I was waiting for a deal for ages and finally lucked into one), so what do all these errors mean - faulty hardware/poor combinations or? I couldn't figure out what the errors fundamentally mean during my research as I was tunnel visioned on simply finding ways to fix them. Thanks for your guide - and I hope I can replicate your success without needing to mess with win8 (I have it on my other laptop and god I hate it.. and it just wouldn't work well for work). Okay I guess I'm gonna be late again.. have to teach my student something about confidence intervals and t scores... I don't know lol. - - - Updated - - - Hiya, Thanks for your report - I have read quite a bit of successful ones with your setup but I guess I went with the wrong laptop - I'm really happy with it for work purposes but yeah =/ If I do most of the steps you mention, I get issues (usually just doesn't start). Maybe I'll just buy the x230 lol. That's part of the reason I love this setup - I can have backup laptops.. and it's flexible.. etc. edit/update Hi again Nando - regarding what you said about needing windows 8 to disable igpu "Another method that could work is to use Win8.x and disable the iGPU. The idea there is to allow the eGPU to hijaak the iGPU config space" I have managed to do this in windows 7, albeit with 2 gb of ram - it's kind of rough to do (sometimes it works some times it doesn't and I have to disable/enable/restart couple times). Would the setup help me in this instance or is it simply working due to only having 2 gb of ram? (the internal and external will not work together even on 2 gb). And I'm still receiving hundreds of dsdt errors.. still no luck finding a working explanation anywhere. My next step is to try and setup win8 if all else fails and dual boot it. I'm downloading the trial right now. Will I need setup for win8 or did you mean I will simply be able to disable internal gpu with win8 and have this thing work with 8 gb of ram w/o the dsdt override needing to be fixed? Speaking of Thinkpads.. I'm not sure if is relevant but the code I found on some other page had a fixed number for memory length - is this what you also meant and what I should try?: QWordMemory (ResourceProducer, PosDecode, MinFixed, MaxFixed, Cacheable, ReadWrite, 0x0000000000000000, // Granularity 0x0000000C20000000, // Range Minimum, set it to 48.5GB 0x0000000E0FFFFFFF, // Range Maximum, set it to 56.25GB 0x0000000000000000, // Translation Offset 0x00000001F0000000, // Length calculated by Range Max - Range Min. ,, , AddressRangeMemory, TypeStatic) the 56.25 sounds familiar to what eddy seem to have been saying. I'm going to try that later tonight after jerry rigging a 2nd hdd into the hp (just don't feel like doing the entire restore/reinstall again (for some reason my restore points would not work). edit: Oops I take that back - I can have both laptop IGPU and egpu going at once.. just never checked to extend. But I can still disable igpu from DM and it shows 'no resources allocated' to it. Hm. I wonder if there's some way I can do the same with more ram. Each time I tried this in the past I'd just get black screens on both.