angerthosenear

I also use IMDisk for certain games where rapid loading of textures helps immensely. I have 16GB of RAM (I only have two slots). So I allocate half of it to a RAM disk when needed. Mainly when I play Skyrim. I have all of the (high-res) textures and a few miscellaneous other things loaded to my ramdisk. I have a junction link setup for the related files (the 'textures' folder references the R:\textures essentially). And yes, it helps immensely. Only really helps with games that need to load a bunch of stuff at once.

Ouch, that is horrible. Hopefully you will get it resolved in a remotely timely manner. Side note: Isn't it bad that we have a dedicated Dell Issues section?

@MikjoA For your FPS cap testing, I cannot seem to find a game that has decently stable menu activity. For Skyrim, depending on the number of little clouds in the bottom, that determined what was the stable fps. It was either ~65, ~75, or upwards of ~110 fps. Can you think of anything that would be rather uniform? --- Saints Row:The Third :: Has a stable main menu, however I cannot determine if it is a video in the background or something actually rendered. I get ~110 fps. --- Borderlands 2 :: Pretty intensive game. I get a measly 12 fps at the main menu (since it is all rendered). Changing the video options doesn't change this. Essentially - low video settings fps = high video settings fps. I just think this game has a lot going on GPU wise no matter. Not sure. Maybe it is trying to do everything with the iGPU instead? At least with Skyrim I was able to select the GPU (launcher video options).

I meant the external GPU of choice (in your case the GTX 660 Ti ). From the spec sheet, it appears you do not have a onboard video chip/card. This as well. Without optimus you will be hurting performance wise. Your dv6 isn't really a good system for an eGPU project. http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/4109-egpu-candidate-system-list-%5Bthin-light%5D.html This would be a good place to start.

Your link failed there @Suoah http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/2109-diy-egpu-experiences-%5Bversion-2-0%5D.html You will want to read through that carefully (a few times). I'm running with a GTX 660Ti as well. Mine is connected over ExpressCard with the PE4L. You will need: video card of choice adapter that works with your system a PSU for the video card (desktop psu or a xbox 360 psu seems to be popular) case is optional, MikjoA doesn't use one. You would only need to take apart your laptop if you don't have a ExpressCard or TB slot/port, which it appears you do not have. You would have to connect your eGPU over an internal mPCIe IF you can. This is sometimes hard to do if there is a hardware whitelist in the BIOS. @MikjoA has his connected this way. http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/2158-diy-egpu-guide-sony-vaio-vpc-z2-svz13.html Would have do something similar to that. You do not have to reinstall windows 7 (in most cases). the Setup 1.x is installed afterward, and you can remove it if need be (I had to do this multiple times in order to get some random bugs on my end).

Wow, that is very nice. I thought mine turned out really nice, but you got me beat by a longshot lol. How did you mount the card / psu in there? I can't really tell from the pictures. I used some steel pipe hangar and rubber stoppers to hold mine. Same with the PSU. Lucky for you, you managed to get a TH05. I envy that removable cable (plus the bandwidth). Very clean build.

Redid test, this time with all updated stuffs , and as a bonus, nothing else running in background. [ATTACH=CONFIG]9162[/ATTACH] 364 MB/s Perfect! I guess we can confirm cable length makes no difference on bandwidth speed.

5.55 GB of RAM and 3.25 GB of VRAM ._. ? Yeah, I notice when I approach my cap of 2GB VRAM usage performance starts degrading rapidly. Kindof makes sense though: PCIe 3.0 x16 being about 15x better than PCIe 2.0 x1 (bandwidth wise). Glad to see we aren't only getting 1/15th of the performance though

Hmm, not sure. All I can say is fiddle with it for a while and hope something magical happens. That's how I got it working. Sorry I can't really help more.

I'm not at home atm, but decided to see the bandwidth on my dGPU. 5.37 GB/s lol. I'll run it again when I get home (since there are new driver versions / sandra was updated). --- @MikjoA when you measured the fps for skyrim, did you have external monitor on or off? Or was your internal set as the main display (so it loaded on that screen), but your external display was still on. Seems so. Good to hear ! - - - Updated - - - Are you able to add the QWord stuff then just save the DSDT file? Then load it? I had the same issue with having a pile of errors. I may have circumvented the issue by doing that. I can't really remember tbh

Is your SATA mode in your BIOS set to ACPI ? Good luck with the BIOS update @_@

Ah, very nice. Seeing mine was a little lower (not much though), I guess the monitor(s) used doesn't affect bandwidth that much.

With osu! it doesn't matter what is hooked up, I pretty much always get the same insane fps. eGPU not connected on internal = eGPU not connected on external = eGPU connected on internal = eGPU connected on external So seems solely CPU dependent. -- I can't think of any free games that are GPU intensive. Will try to think of something. *scratches head*

Very nice! What is your CPU? How many monitors do you have hooked up? (I have internal+1 connected to laptop and then 4 connected to eGPU) I notice some games have insane fps no matter. When I play osu! I can get 1,300 - 1,600 fps at anytime (even ingame) - eGPU disconnected even. Not GPU dependent at all it seems. Skyrim might be a good test since probably most people on the forums has it. As you said you performed the DSDT override. Did you allocate a Large Memory block (as view-able in Task Manager)? If so, are you running 36-bit compaction? Did you follow my iGPU+dGPU+eGPU guide perchance? You can pretty much follow that minus anything dGPU related as reference (unless you have a dGPU and want that working side by side as well - for PhysX or something). Go ahead and let me know your current procedure.

My max resolution on my internal monitor is 1280 x 800 ...... soo I don't have much of anything to test but at that resolution. Any particular game I should try? Rather, which did you use in your test? Also, my CPU is set to 2.7 GHz (turbo is off due to consistent heat sourced throttling causing less performance. - read: it throttles more and longer with turbo on). My CPU is a hyperthreaded dual. Any my ram is 1333 not 1600. Whoops, gotta update my HDD in my signature: 7200RPM 1TB HGST.

Could you do some bandwidth testing with SiSoft Sandra? (the lite version works) SiSoftware Zone (^ english dl page for the lite version) I have the 60cm version. I get 357MB/s bandwidth through to my eGPU.

Now I'm picturing you using your eGPU while on the train (and scaring the fellow passengers). Without any experience with it, I'd say stick with the 60cm one. 100cm is a lot of extra wire to have information pass through. Plus, if 60cm works, I'd don't see why you would go for extra cable length. I'm guessing there isn't much hope for finding your adapter again..

ooooo neato @Tenkes Guessing you are talking about the USB3380-AB EVK-RC That certainly would be awesome, run it through my hub lol. Any word on this working with an eGPU @Tech Inferno Fan ? I'd probably try it if it wasn't $162.

Does hwinfo see it? Are you able to hotswap / plug in the drive while you are inside windows? Might make windows to forcibly recognize it. Perhaps there is an elusive BIOS setting disabling your HDD?

I have a NVS 4200M that I would like to softmod to a GT 520M to regain PhysX. Apparently with the latest drivers, I can no longer use the NVS 4200M as a PhysX processor (like I have for the past year). I wasn't supposed to be able to do that anyways as seen here: Tech Specs | NVIDIA Anyways, I was hoping this guide work work (but of course the opposite direction): Tech ARP - NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-Mod Guide Rev. 4.1 But it doesn't. What else could I try? --- I've been messing with .inf files for a while now, still no luck. This seems to be the inf file determining what is installed. If it is there/untouched, I can install fine. If I change the 520M values to match those of the 4200M I get a 'Standard VGA Graphics Adapter' already has the latest driver message. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/19774443/ShareX/2013-09/NVFMn.inf.bak Just take off the .bak bit and open with editor of choice. I'll test anything.. Thx -atn

atm I'm trying to install the 327.23 driver (since it is the latest WHQL driver), which driver version are you able to run stably? With 327.23 I get error 43 on my eGPU, even though the driver apparently installed successfully. --- Huzzah! I got it finally, I'll post more in my guide thing here (seeing it is iGPU+dGPU+eGPU) issue probably:: http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/3539-guide-dsdt-override-simultaneous-igpu-dgpu-egpu.html

It's that time of year again, eGPU issues... I cannot update my driver at all. It fails during install (after the screen start flickering when it tries to install the new one). I'm currently trying to install the 327.23 driver (I'm currently on 314.22). I don't dare uninstall my current driver, that's a few hours of work in hopes of getting it reinstalled. Is there something I'm missing that I can't install any driver updates? -- I noticed the Intel HD Graphics 3000 is shown as the main GPU, is this due to compaction and whatnot? Would this be why driver updates are error'ing, since the nvidia drivers sees the nvidia eGPU but tries to install over the intel ones?

Alrighty, I'll look for a lower wattage psu, seems to be the common consensus. I have maxed out my 16GB of ram on multiple occasions, although I should probably have 24gb in the next build, I'd rather have 2 pairs instead. So 32gb.

Should I use copper or aluminum heatsinks for this? IIRC Aluminum is better at changing its temperature faster but copper is better at absorbing heat - or something along those lines.

I wonder if you could SLI with this, although with past efforts over expresscard I'm guessing not. Would be awesome though..... two Titans @_@