Kaspars

Hi guys It looks like my setting is a bit different than others because I already have a NVIDIA dGPU installed in my system: Notebook: Fujitsu Celsius H710 CPU: Intel Core i7-2720QM (4 Cores) Memory: 16 GB RAM dGPU: NVIDIA Quadro 1000M OS: Windows 7 64bit I know that this is definitely not the worst setting to work with, but of course never enough when it comes to serious gaming. And in my case I mainly wanted to play Second Life in higher settings. So I bought an EXP GDC V7.0 Beast and an ASUS GeForce GTX 750 which I connected to my Expresscard slot. Everything worked out flawlessly. I could Plug & Play the adapter and the card and everything was up and running smoothly. Windows detected both cards immediately and I can now switch between them as I like by activating/deactivating either of them. I even have the same driver for both cards (359.06). But... I forgot about this 1x, 2x, 4x, and 16x restriction thing. I guess that this is the reason, why my new GTX 750 (eGPU) is definitely much weaker than the pre-installed Quadro 1000M (dGPU). HWiNFO64 is telling me, that my dGPU (NVIDIA Quadro 1000M) is running on a PCI Express x16 Bus #1 (Version 2.0), while the GTX 750 runs on the PCI Express x1 Bus #2 (Version 2.0). When I open the detailed information about the cards, I get it confirmed that my dGPU is running @16x: NVIDIA Quadro 1000M [Fujitsu] Version: 2.0 Maximum Link Width: 16x Current Link Width: 16x Maximum Link Speed: 5.0 Gb/s Current Link Speed: 5.0 Gb/s NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 (GM107-300) Version: 3.0 Maximum Link Width: 16x Current Link Width: 1x Maximum Link Speed: 8.0 Gb/s Current Link Speed: 2.5 Gb/s So the situation is pretty much clear for me – and indeed: the GTX 750 is much weaker in all the benchmarks I tested (more than 50% lower performance) although the card itself should be much better. Can I do anything against this 1x restriction of the GTX 750 which is (I guess) because of the Expresscard slot restriction? Is there anything which I can improve there or is this the maximum I can get? Would it make sense to buy a PE4H v2.4a and try to get 2 lanes running (a second lane with the existing mPCIe slot)? Or should I try the PE4C v2.1 to get the chance for PCIe 2.0? I mean, is my setting by default so bad that I can’t get a better gaming performance on this Notebook? I guess that even a better GPU won’t help here. Thanks so much for your input