angerthosenear

[ATTACH]10817[/ATTACH]

Ok since I managed to have eGPU run in Windows 8, I'll say how I made it.

Fist thing I installed Windows 8 in MBR (don't know if it changes anything though). Once done, turned on eGPU, plugged it in laptop while logged into Windows 8. It showed in Device Manager with error 31. Nevermind, I installed the Nvidia latest drivers and turned off PC and eGPU.

Then turned eGPU on, plugged to laptop, turned on laptop and got into Setup 1.2, enabled Gen2, chainload MBR without compaction even if I received the warning message. The result is in attached.

No big improvements though in FPS BUT in Crysis 3, in Welcome to the jungle, while minimal FPS hit 15 with Windows 7, it didn't get under 27 with Windows 8, Not bad huh?

Actually, the fact you installed Win8 in MBR is very important because it is the only way you can chainload from Setup 1.x -> Win8. If you do a UEFI / GPT based install, you cannot chainload.

We have about the same procedure, except I have to also load the DSDT table with Setup 1.x.

Are you running Win8 or Win8.1 ?

I like your very well thought out computer name! ;P

I did some Mantle tests with my eGPU setup (R9 280X).

See results here:

http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/2109-diy-egpu-experiences-%5Bversion-2-0%5D-54.html#post82601

Quick result: Yes, Mantle is better and has a noticeable improvement.

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As said in other post, I will test in a desktop probably tomorrow to see how the performance difference is on both setups.

Did you test a AMD card with the BF4 patch and Catalyst 14.1? Details of using Mantle in BF4 are at Mantle renderer now available in Battlefield 4 - News - Battlelog / Battlefield 4

R9 280X with Catalyst 14.1. I have the onscreen infos showing that it is in fact using Mantle as the renderer.

I am able to switch between both DX11.1 and Mantle.

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Results (sorta kinda):

I can only use log parts of what is going on. Since Mantle is a new thing, I can't log fps and whatnot with an external program.

Little chart action::

DirectX 11.1

Mantle

The CPU usage has dropped some while using Mantle. And yes, it is noticeable. The framerate (unloggable) is upwards of 10+ fps higher than DX11.1.

So yes! Mantle is a noticeable improvement from DX11.1 for those with AMD cards.

Tomorrow (perhaps), I will test the same thing, but in a desktop. I will use the same GPU, but of course the CPU would be different. We are more concerned about the change in performance rather than exact numbers.

Whelp. My top notch quality internet is out. So a minor update for now.

Any good external fps loggers and whatnot? Much better than me just mentally logging (and forgetting) the fps.

Testing will be done in the "Test Range" for now.

From the 30 seconds I was able to play, It seemed to have better frame rate with DX11.1 rather than Mantle. Of course 30 seconds of playtime isn't worth much.

Hopefully I will regain Internet, but I doubt it. So assume testing will be done tomorrow, which also means I can test DX11.1 vs Mantle both as an eGPU and on a desktop (my last part comes in tomorrow).

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SIDE NOTE:::

You CAN disable the iGPU in Win8. I had to due this due to horrendous bugs in BF4.

I will do testing on this in benchmarks to see if that helps with eGPU performance.

For those running AMD cards, I can confirm that the new 14.1 Beta driver does work.

I plan to get BF4 soon-ish to test Mantle vs DX performance. I will report back on this eventually ;D

Hello, Sorry for not knowing so much about this topic. I have tried searching, but I couldn't figure it out.

I have bought myself a R9 280X from ASUS, together with a good power supply and a kit including: PE4H PM3N and the cable connecting them: PCIEMM-060A.

I connected this to the port where the WLAN adapter was inside my notebook. It is a MiniPCIe, which I connected the PM3N to, and then connected that to the PE4H with the connector cable. I also connected the PE4H to a molex plug.

I have not connected any monitor to the videocard, but that is because I am not going to use the Video Card for gaming. I am going to use it for Mining crpytocurrency(which means I only need it to communicate with the rest of the PC)

I have not installed any drivers or anything for the PM3N or PE4H, but I have installed the Radeon drivers for my R9 280x.It was so difficult to find anything about these drivers on Ubuntu!

I could install windows again, but i prefer to keep Ubuntu if it is in any way possible.

Could someone please help me determine why I can't find the video card on Ubuntu?

Thanks very, very much.

What model laptop do you have? This will be the most important factor in determining what is wrong.

For the laptop I used here:

http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/5622-%5Bblog%5D-crossfire-testing.html

It was pretty straight forward. However I could not use the internal display, external only.

Are you using the proprietary AMD fglrx drivers?

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It is possible. And I have mined with my eGPU from within Windows, haven't tried within Ubuntu however.

@StamatisX get bf4 so you can test mantle.

Sent from my Yellow Nokia 1520 (RM-937)

can you message me that link again with the online offer?

I got the 14.1 drivers working with my eGPU setup with R9 280X.

I might be interested in testing with BF4 as well. I can revert to 13.11/13.12 to test with and without Mantle to see if there is a significant performance gain. Would be interesting how much of a gain (if any) there is while running PCIe 2.0 1x

For this experiment, I'm using my boss's Dell Latitude E6420 that he has let me borrow in the past here:

http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/2109-diy-egpu-experiences-%5Bversion-2-0%5D-52.html#post80638

i7-2620M

8GB RAM

I have Ubuntu 13.10 installed on my Samsung 840 Evo 120GB drive for this experiment (the mega-fast booting was great for the countless number of reboots I had ;D )

As you saw (if you checked it out), the mPCIe slot has a slight edge on performance for whatever reason, this also might be an indication of an lower # PCIe slot (or w/e you want to call it - earlier in PCIe chain). Only the card plugged into the mPCIe slot (vs ExpressCard) was able to be the primary card.

I have my friend's R9 280X and another's 7970 for testing. The 7970 is hooked up via mPCIe to @jacobsson 's PE4L-PM060A (thanks for letting me borrow your adapter!), and the R9 280X hooked up via my PE4L-EC060A.

NOTE: The ports are operating at a Gen1 link (PCIe 1.0), this certainly hurts performance. But since we are concerned about the performance change / if there is one, this isn't an overly pressing matter.

Hardware pics here:

Initial single card setup:

Closeup of both cards hooked up:

Both cards running Unigine:

Software

As I stated just a moment ago, I'm using Ubuntu 13.10 for testing since this is the only way (for now hopefully) that it is possible to forcibly enable Crossfire on unsupported systems with something under the minimum 4x link per card. Laptops (that are concerned about eGPUs) don't have Crossfire support and certainly don't have 8x worth of spare PCIe lanes to give 4x link per card.

After nearly pulling my hair out fiddling with driver installs (Ubuntu + me + driver installs = bad day), I got the correct fglrx drivers installed and actually working.

I then followed the steps @sskillz used here:

http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/5622-%5Bblog%5D-crossfire-testing.html#post80974

NOTE: you must use 'aticonfig' using 'amdconfig' might get the Crossfire option to show up in Catalyst Control Center (CCC), but it will drop Cfire upon reboot. Using 'aticonfig' will (after much fiddling) persist between reboots.

I had the same issue as @sskillz with Unigine Heaven crashing when running in windowed mode. So tests are run by selecting 'Basic' (to change to those presets), the selecting 'Custom' and then 'Full Screen' option so it runs fullscreen. Same for the 'Extreme' preset.

Single card (R9 280X) performance:

Basic:

Extreme:

Here are some random terminal pictures and whatnot. This will also show that some commands will show Crossfire enabled while others do not. Also that CCC shows no Cfire while it may be enabled. Honestly, no idea what is exactly going on here - much hair pulling probably.

Crossfire results (what you are actually curious about ;D ):

Basic:

Extreme:

As you can see, there is a significant enough gain in the basic preset to show that the Crossfire is working. The performance gain in the extreme preset is pretty lackluster. This might be due to the PCIe 1.0 based link on the cards (2.5GB/s instead of 5GB/s a Gen2 port would provide).

I cannot get the ports to run at a Gen2 port since I cannot chainload without blackscreening and many issues from going to Setup 1.x -> Ubuntu. Ubuntu seemed to have installed itself in an odd fashion (becomes a boot device separate from the drive).

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Crossfire, it can work via eGPU (in Ubuntu for now), but as for my opinion on the matter. You might as well instead of buying two cards+adapters, buy one very nice card and a single adapter. They performance (and setup) would be much better.

So, all-in-all, it is doable. Certainly not worth it.

--

If you are hardware manufacturer for eGPU components, contact me if you attempt to make a SLI/Crossfire unit. I would be very interested and glad to test (if possible).

Setting the master card to x2 should give a boost. If you can figure out your read/write access then the rest is easy.

I also was only able to run the cards at PCIe 1.0. I can't get Setup 1.x to chainload to Ubuntu. Ubuntu isn't using UEFI that I know of, it just refuses to chainload. Not sure what that's about.

I'm sure PCIe 2.0 would've had a much more significant boost to performance.

Yeah multi-card setups add PCI-E strain. I remember someone with tri-sli 680s posting big gains in some games when moving from pci-e 2.0 to pci-e 3.0, and that was on x16 links.

Have you looked into setting up x2 links on your laptop?

Can't with my laptop, could with my boss's laptop, but not enough for dual x2 link (got 3 PCI-E slots, 4th slot I think is USB based).

Would be neat to see however.

LAPTOP eGPU CROSSFIRE SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pictures and full writeup coming soon (few hours from now).

Note, the performance gain,,,, well, isn't really worth all the extra money for the setup. Got a 35% increase (Unigine Heaven Basic preset) from a single card setup -> Crossfire. Might as well just get a nicer card. Almost no increase for Unigine Heaven Extreme preset.

I followed the same steps as @sskillz used on his desktop setup here:

http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/5622-%5Bblog%5D-crossfire-testing.html#post80974

Not sure about Windows Crossfire external. But the setup steps would be the same if @sskillz can figure it out. I sadly have to return all the hardware, so I cannot do any future tests.

Wow nice find. It's the updated model and probably has lower response time than the original.

Oh, your right. The original has 8ms -> 6ms response time. So this is a bit of an improvement.

'R' for Response Time I guess.

Been lurking in this thread for a bit.

Newegg.com - LG 27EA83R-D Ocean Black 27" 5ms WQHD HDMI Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor IPS pivot&height adjustable 350 cd/m2 5,000,000:1

27EA83R-D for $499 until Feb. 6. Pretty solid deal for those looking for this display and have been holding off.

Still no idea what the 'R' means in the model number, I don't see any changes.

I've got a question.

And while there are currently in the German forum two people who have a problem with their TOLUD. One is a Lenovo T530 and a HP Probook 6570b, both with Win 8.1 64bit, and both have the problem that show their GPU's error 12.

So one knows if it's a Problem of Win 8.1 64bit?

I'm running Win 8.1 64bit with no issue. I have to perform a DSDT override and PCI compation for it to work, but it does. I have a Fujitsu T901, I'm not sure about other units since it can vary from unit to unit - some are very finicky.

Hello!

Hp Probook 4530s

4gb

i5-2430m

Win7 64bit

Pe4l 2.1b + GTX560

old 300w atx psu

I use my egpu setup since 2 or 3 moths, everything is worked fine. But nowadays, i get blue screen death after 10-15 minutes playing.

I run a crash dump analysis with "whocrahsed", and it says:

crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp

This was probably caused by the following module: Unknown (0x00000000)

Bugcheck code: 0x113 (0x6, 0xFFFFFA80087C6000, 0x0, 0x0)

Error: VIDEO_DXGKRNL_FATAL_ERROR

Bug check description: This indicates that the dxg kernel has detected a violation.

A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error.

Google query: VIDEO_DXGKRNL_FATAL_ERROR

Other Test

crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\010614-11528-01.dmp

This was probably caused by the following module: nvlddmkm.sys (0xFFFFF8800ABDEDA8)

Bugcheck code: 0x117 (0xFFFFFA80069C04E0, 0xFFFFF8800ABDEDA8, 0x0, 0x0)

Error: VIDEO_TDR_TIMEOUT_DETECTED

file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\nvlddmkm.sys

product: NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 332.21

company: NVIDIA Corporation

description: NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 332.21

Bug check description: This indicates that the display driver failed to respond in a timely fashion.

A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: nvlddmkm.sys (NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 332.21 , NVIDIA Corporation).

Google query: NVIDIA Corporation VIDEO_TDR_TIMEOUT_DETECTED

I reinstalled the driver, but the problem is still there... Please help!

I'm running driver 327.02 and rarely get driver crashes (only when messing around with mining LTC). And no DirectX crashes. Perhaps reinstall DirectX and install driver 327.02. I know I have a lot of issues with certain driver versions.

Crossfire seems to be working under linux!

SWEET!!!!!!!!!

I'll attempt to meetup with my friend so I can borrow his card so I can attempt Cfire externally. I'll have a spare drive so I'll use an installed version of Ubuntu for testing.

I guess if I can get that working properly, we just gotta figure out how to force enable Cfire in Windows. There doesn't so happen to be a commandline based setup similar to aticonfig in Windows is there?

Can I pick your brain for a second?

I don't know much about whitelists, but I know that the HP I have wouldn't accept a new Intel WiFi card, so I installed a non-whitelist BIOS, and now the WiFi card works.

My laptop doesn't boot with the eGPU in either. Would you think that this is a problem with the whitelist still?

My computer does boot with the SW1 switch set to anything other than 1. Is that equivalent to having it plugged in before switching the laptop on? (Needless to say, I have never yet seen my eGPU in the OS)

From my readings on PCI, this whole system should be hot-pluggable. Just flip the laptop over while running, yank out the WiFi card and stick in the eGPU. Does that work for anybody? (Hotplugging my wifi card alone works)

I'd rather keep my brain securely located within my skull.

You may have a whitelist issue. But if you are using a custom BIOS to remove the whitelist, then the issue is something else. Not exactly sure on how to fix.

What laptop do you have? There might be someone else with the same model as you that got an eGPU setup working.

Quick test to see if there is any difference between the PE4L-EC060 and the PE4L-PM060

Essentially. ExpressCard vs mPCIe

I7-2620M

2x 8,192 MB G.Skill DDR3 @ 667 MHz

dGPU disabled

AMD Radeon R9 280X

Windows 8.1 Enterprise

Fan mod (full fan speed) active to reduce throttling (due to poor Fujitsu design)

Running 3DMark11

EC:

AMD Radeon R9 280X video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2620M Processor,FUJITSU FJNB231

P7018

9474/3962/3929

mPCIe:

(testing now after I post and pull laptop apart)

//////// And of course. It's just not plug and play happiness. Fujitsu claims there is no whitelist. But computer won't boot with it plugged in. Not sure what's going on.

Attempted on a Dell Studio 1737, got BSODs after driver installs. It didn't even work with hotplugging. Oh well.

Now testing on a Dell Latitude E6420 (thanks boss for letting borrow your personal laptop for testing!):

i7-2620M

8GB RAM

R9 280X

Windows 8

EC:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7842335

P6444

8121/3981/3977

EC (Re-ran with back panel off):

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7842928

P6452

8147/3972/3977

mPCIe (note, back panel off, not sure if there would be a difference due to thermal / airflow):

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7842830

P7026

9468/3967/3954

Side note: the Dell Latitude E6420 is a very nice laptop. Has two true mPCIe slots and 1 USB-based mPCIe slot. Easily upgradable. Single HDD bay however, no mSATA that I see. Nice fan. Thin and light, yet solid. *hides in bag*

Not sure if an issue with the first test or something, but the mPCIe test is significantly better. But yet only matches the EC test on my laptop. So perhaps... "It depends" would be the best we can say.

Conclusion:

It more than likely doesn't make a difference what interface is used. Just variables when testing gave some varying results. Not really a surprise here since both are PCIe 1x connections.

@angerthosenear

Are you talking about using the SATA cables for data transfer? This is interesting, and goes away from the HDMI completely, which I am not sure bplus would be keen to do,

seeing as they have devoted the last however many years on improving it. Also It would seem like a semi back step with technology like tb out there now.

Two interesting links I found about the next sata revision SATA 3.2/SATA Express.

SATA Express - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SATA-IO announces 16Gb/s SATA 3.2 specification | bit-tech.net

It seems as though PCI-express is continuing to become the most popular bus.

SATA cables are used for data transfer already, I see no reason why they cannot be used for PCIe based signals as well. We know from SATA3 they can support 6GB/s and with PCIe Gen2 @ 1x only using 5GB/s, this is more than adequate. Not really a step back if it works while being socketed.

SATA 3.2 seems like something to combat M.2 which is (can be) PCIe 4x based. So.... hm. Guess we'll see how that plays out.

Wow. Uhm...

How about using a SATA cable? Shielded lanes. We know it can support 6 GB/s soooo that should be good enough. I think that is suitable for a socketed system.

Can't believe we all forgot about it.

@bjorm I get a GPU usage bump whenever anything changes. So when I refresh the page or other graphical changes (page loading or loading), there is some GPU usage. If it is on internal only then that is a different story. If I monitor GPU usage / GPU memory usage. I can have over 500MB GPU mem usage while NOT gaming. Just with a bunch of stuff on my screen at once (plus 4 monitors hooked up to GPU).

This seems rather promising:

AORUS Gaming Laptop X7

Brief:

Very thin and light system featuring a Haswell i7 and SLI GTX 765M. 0.9in. and 6.39lbs

Thermal design looks very nice with it's dual fan and 5 heatpipe design.

Also has 4 RAM slots and 2x mSATA + 2.5" HDD bays for solid memory and storage options.

Can output to 3 displays and allows for Nvidia Vision Surround.

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Only complaint being the fact it uses the older mSATA instead of the newer/faster PCIe base M.2.

Don't know the price on it, but I'll be watching it.

I'm not familiar with Ubuntu, but my guess is that any common distribution will work just fine.

Although I don't know how to run setup 1.x and boot from there to a linux disk/usb but there is some mention of it in setup 1.x thread.

Maybe @Tech Inferno Fan can help.

I'm curious if it will work on linux, it won't give us much real gain other then knowing for sure that it is the driver that's limiting it.

I still have to wait for the the snails working at the post office / customs for the adapter to arrive. I haven't tried Ubuntu with the single card yet. Might not need the DSDT override. I'll test and report back.

Hopefully I got the persistent USB thinger working. I've never been able to get it to work

Couldn't get Ubuntu to work live at all..

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What about something like this:

https://www.xgamingstudio.com/forum/showthread.php?10-RELEASE-ATI-CrossFire-Xtension-A-way-to-force-crossfire-w-profiles

Internal speakers.

I'll try a different VGA cable. The one I'm using at the moment does have a ferrite about 2" away from the plug on both ends. Might just be a shoddy cable regardless. It is rather old.

This is something that's been bugging me for quite a while.

Laptop only (no monitor hooked up via VGA): all well and fine

Laptop OFF:

Plug in VGA cable

Speakers slightly pop and make a "sssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" noise - never ends.

Stops when laptop is powered on.

Laptop ON:

Plug in VGA cable

All is well

Turn off laptop

"sssssshhhhhhhhh" noise starts. It never stops.

It's not particularly loud, I can only hear it when everything else is off.

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I have no idea if it is my monitor, cable, or something else. It's an older monitor, that get's an image burned in in about 30min - it is rather dated.

IIRC it happens on my other display as well. The one I hookup to at work I cannot tell if there is an issue due to the ambient volume.

Regardless, something doesn't seem right. Any ideas?

Thanks.