Airat

960 is not just "double" of the 5200. You have to look at the "Graphics score" field: 960 has almost exactly 3 times more points than 5200. I believe using EXP GDC there is no way to increase your egpu performance other than overclocking it.. My 960 is overclocked by default (by manufacturer) and it scores a little bit more graphic points than yours - http://www.3dmark.com/fs/6430010, even on e6220 with i5. However OC can be dangerous, so read manuals and be careful and blah-blah-blah.

I would advice you to go with 750ti. I myself have tried 750ti and 960gtx with both e6220 (i5-2520m) and e6430 (i7-3720qm), and I can say that there is no significant difference in ingame performance when you compare 750 and 960. Because pcie gen1 x1 connection doesn't allow powerful cards to show their full potential. Most definitely you will face fps drops in some games even if you buy 980ti (e.g. when the new piece of location is loaded into card's memory). In my case 960 shows much better benchark results, than 750. But concerning games I personally would say that paying 2 times more and buying 960 wasn't worth it. Now about pci-e gen. When I first bought both my laptops (6220 and 6430) they both were able to maintain stable gen2 connection. Suddenly 6220 started working with egpu on gen2 speeds only if I was using very powerful powerbrick (120W, before that i used 60W and everything was okay). However maybe it wasn't wattage but the voltage quality that caused this problem, because without power-cable gen2 was also working. Later 6430 also started expiriencing problems with gen2 speeds, but I still cannot figure out how to fix that and have to use 6430+960 on gen1 speed. The bottom line is I wouldn's seriously count on gen2 speed with your expresscard slot/ And you'll probably have to force EC work at gen1 speed via EFI shell.

Finally did it =) So here is the guide of how to flash bios on Dell Latitude, if laptop doesn't boot (eg previous bios update failed). First you fill have to use python script (see comment above) and unpack .hdr file from bios .exe. Then you'll have to rename it. I don't know the exact correct name, so i created multiple copies: PSF.hdr, 1APTJ021.hdr, E643018.hdr and E6430A18.hdr (exe file name was E6430A18.hdr. I also created 1APTJ021.hdr because there was "1APTJ021.rom" text in .hdr file, when I opened it with hex-editor). Put these files to flash-drive formatted to FAT (not FAT32, must have less that 4gb memory) and plug it in your laptop's usb port. Then pull out power cord and battery. After that hold END and powerbutton and plug in power cord back. Laptop will go into bios flashing mode (battery icon blinks) and reboot after some time. That's it. However in my case bios settings (the ones I wrote about 3 comments above) didn't reset, when I flashed A18 bios (the same which motherboard already had) - my internal screen still didn't work. But i was able to boot into windows and even open device manager (with help of windows narrator). Turned out there was only nvs5200 connected (and enabled). I disables it via device manager and tried connecting eGPU - still no effect. Then i tried flashing A03 bios from .exe but the installing failed! Then in tried flashing A03 from hdr-file, two times: first failed and secon was successful. Again the display didn't work (somehow variables still didn´t reset to default). So i fugured I'll boot to EFI shell and blindly change variables. After changing variables I sent my laptop to reboot ("reboot" command in efi shell). But laptop didn't boot again (couldn't pass POST check?). Then I flashed A18 again from hdr, and this time after flashing bios laptop went to diagnostic mode and the screen was finally working! update: turned out that after last procedure (flashing A18 from .hdr) bios version is A09. However, I don't remember downloading E6430A09.exe. Maybe A09 is the version which was flashed my manufacturer and motherboard somehow reset it's bios to default version?

Finally found old GF 7600GT and tried using it. Didn't work. Now I'll try to flash bios using that method - http://eddiejackson.net/wp/?p=3730 I've unpacked .hdr file with that script - http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/44785-I-present-you-a-tool-to-decompress-Dell-UEFI-BIOS However, i don't know the correct name for the .hdr file. Anyway so far i haven't found a single report about successful bios flashing with this method on Dell Latitude E6xxx. Probably, I'll have to have my motherboard's BIOS flashed in a service center. Or will just buy a replacement.

Using HDMI port didn't work - nothing changes if i connect the monitor via hdmi. The same with DVI port in dock station. Thanks, I'll try pcie 1.0 card and report the results. By the way, what do PCI_Bus (0x2) and PEG (0x1) option for Primary Dispay setting mean, what's the difference between them?

All the changes in EFI var-s I've made: I have dGPU model. When I press the power button, the battery charging indicator turnes on and the hdd indicator blinks one time. Also the CAPSLOCK indicator blinks one time. Fan doesn't start. The laptop screen doesn't turn on. Connecting external monitor to VGA-port doesn't help. If I connect eGPU (and the external monitor via eGPU) the monitor also doesn't start (because PCIe was set to gen2). After some time (~ 10 sec, but that time varies) the laptop reboots with silent (not too loud) beep-sound. If i press power button while the laptop is still on, the fan starts working and after 1-2 seconds it shuts down. I tried blindly changing the variables, but it seems that i couldn't enter the EFI Shell, because sometimes the laptop reboots while I'm still spaming the F12 button on trying to blindly navigate through boot options. By "old pci-e card" do you mean some old graphic card (something like GeForce 7600)? Will it even be recognized by laptop (because PCIe Speed is set to gen2)?

I left the charger and both the batteries unplugged for the whole night and have pressed the power button for 10-15 secs before putting batteries back (as it is recommended by some manuals, in order to discharge all the capacitors inside the laptop). Unfortunately it didn't have any effect, and I still cannot boot the laptop. I also found a comment here - http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/how-to-reset-bios-cmos-on-latitude-e6400.394528/ As far as I understood him, the guy says that Dell E-series use some kind of memory which doesn't depend on energy to store bios settings and there is no way to reset them by pulling out the batteries. Are you sure that you tested this method for dell e6430 and not some other laptop?

Seems like I totally fucked up today... I changed the EFI variables and disabled the igpu. But I didn't took into account that my EC was set to gen2 with which my egpu doesn't work. So now simply cannot boot even into BIOS. Is there any solution to my problem? Is it possible to somehow 'hardwarely' reset the EFI variables, or have I bricked my laptop?

You compare overclocked desktop i5 and laptop i5, of course laptop i5 will suck. Graphic points are probably suffering because of mPCIe speed.

Guy with Dell e6220 (i5 2520m, 6GB ram 667mhz), EXP GDC Beast and KFA2 GTX 960 EXOC reporting again =) In this post i'd like to summarize all my expirience with egpu, I hope it will help somebody. Recently I've complained about:1) x1.2 support and 2) exp gdc stability 1) x1.2 support was reached by downgrading bios. It turns out that in new versions of BIOSes of some Dell laptops ExpressCard slot is set to PCI-e gen1, while older versions allow gen2 (for my laptop it's A01 and A02 versions). 2) For two days the system was working pefectly and then suddenly I started getting nvidia driver crashed, reboots and sometimes windows even could't boot. At first I was thinking (and as Tech Inferno Fan suggested) that this problem was because exp gdc wasn't fully compatible with gen2. But when i upgraded bios and set EC to gen1 the problem remained - i still was getting nvidia driver crashes. Then I tried running laptop without power adapter plugged in and noticed that crashes disappeared. And then i remembered that for the first two days I was using heavy original DELL 120W power adapter and then changed it to 90W cheap-looking adapter. Now i changed it back and the system works without crashes. Maybe the 90W adapter couldn't provide stable 19.5V. So if you have stability problems on EXP GDC you should consider trying another power adapter for your laptop (especially if you are using non-original one).

I haven't tried all these things I wrote yet, but it seems that you are right since other people from exp gdc thread expirience the same problem. The exp gdc can't handle gen2. The only thing that makes me wondering - why did it worked so well (on gen2) for two days?..

Guy with Dell e6220 reporting again. Finally bought gtx960. I also managed to run it on express card gen2 - I had to downgrade my bios, a02 and a01 are compatible with gen2. It worked pretty well for a couple of days: 5300 on fire strike bench, smooth 60 gps with max settings in new Unreal tournament, no crashes etc. But yesterday I decided to test skyrim, and after a couple of seconds the driver crashed, then again and again, finally the laptop went to reboot. Since that moment I can't launch windows using a gen2 slot(a01 and a02 bioses). The card stops sending signals to the monitor after the loading step with black screen and blue windows logo (sorry for my english). I've tried reinstalling windows, reinstalling drivers - it didn't help. Now I installed the latest bios (gen1 ec) and the latest (358.55) drivers. It still crashes from time to time (installed by windows by default 355.58 also crashes) and works only on x1.1 speed. I'm going to try some old drivers, and then if that doesn't help maybe i'll try installing win7 or win8 (now i have win 10). If that helps i'll try to enable gen2 again... if not, i don't know what to do.

Hi guys! Dell E6220 (i5 2520m, 6Gb Ram) EXP GDC Beast (v8, I suppose. It has CTD and PTD switches) Gigabyte Geforce 750Ti (borrowed from my roommate. Looking forward to buy geforce 960) 3DMark (Fire Strike) score is 3396 (graphics 3949, physics 3973, combined 1499). Also i tested the new Unreal Tournament alpha: on highest settings, 1920x1050 it shows about 25-30fps. And Civ5 - 20fps on highest settings when camera is zoomed out. I have a few questions. maybe somebody could help. 1) How do i make my pci-express work on full speed (5gb/s instead of 2.5 gb/s)? I've read this and [url\http://forum.techinferno.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/9690-14-dell-latitude-e6430-performance-upgrades-system-mods.html]this thread. I tried to change the UEFI value of port3 (expresscard) to gen2, also forced my laptop to use iGPU (usually laptop disables it if egpu is connected during booting) and enabled eGPU like sangemaru http://forum.techinferno.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/9690-14-dell-latitude-e6430-performance-upgrades-system-mods-23.html#post145294'>suggested. But chanching UEFI values seems to have no effect at all. Could it be because i have e6220 and not the e6430? So far I've only managed to force iGPU and eGPU work together by doing the following: 1) unplug expresscard and hdmi-videocable, 2) power on the laptop, 3) plug expresscard and then hdmi. If i hotplug the expresscard without unpluggind the hdmi eGPU won't start. (This seems to work regardless of changing UEFI values) But the pci-e is still on 1.1. 2) How do i know if the optimus compression is working?