Xaularis

On 12/16/2015 at 4:55 PM, Flinch said:

Hi All,

 

I just wanted to share my experiences with setting up a Gigabyte GTX 750 TI eGPU powered only by the PCI slot in the Akitio. 

 

My setup:

 

- 2014 Macbook Pro 13", 8GB RAM, 500GB SSD, running OS X 10.10 with Win 8.1 installed via boot camp (EFI)

- Gigabyte GTX 750 TI - the slim one with the single fan

- Akitio Thunder 2

- 120W Power brick from Trust

- external monitor

This looked like a really attractive solution to me, since it's as close to plug-and-play as it gets with a cool running GPU which fits tidily in the case and can be closed.

 

I don't recommend that power brick though, it says "automatic voltage selection" on it which is a bit bogus. The thing has a shunt regulator in it, so "automatically selecting" the voltage means choosing the correct plug (which has a built-in resistor) to fit on the end which regulates the voltage, and the correct plug for 12v was NOT included in the packaging (for me at least). So I cut the barrel plug off the Akitio and soldered that along with a 400k potentiometer which I used to regulate the voltage down from 19v to 12.3v (note, this is not the same as simply wiring in a resistor in series, a shunt regulator has a feedback line and the resistor goes between V+ and the feedback).

 

First off, there seemed to be some lack of clarity as to whether simply adding a 120W power brick and powering the whole thing through the barrel plug actually worked in practice. Turns out it works. I was playing the Witcher 3 on high settings at 1080p all evening yesterday.

 

Initially I tried to get it running on my newer 2015 13" MBP 16GB RAM + 1TB SSD running Win 8.1/El Capitan, and I couldn't get it to boot reliably (had to do the hot-plug-after-chime rain dance, and racing a fast SSD was really hit and miss), and most of the time I'd get a black screen or get to watch the pretty spinning dots for hours.

 

I noticed, though, that rebooting worked more frequently than a cold start, so I disconnected the Akitio fan as I suspected that the torque when it starts up might cause a voltage drop which puts the card in a funny state.

 

I then switched to my older 2014 MBP13"  (the one on which this all works now), and installed Win 8.1 via boot camp. I also installed the Optimus EFI goodies from here which may have had the effect of inserting a tiny delay via the chain loading from GRUB and could have helped (the theory being that the card needs power a little BEFORE the PCI scan at boot time, but only gets power when the thunderbolt signal comes up, and that there's a race).

 

Once I had it booting reliably without any weird rituals, I had stability issues the first few days, where I couldn't run a game for more than a minute without the card crashing in various interesting ways.  I noticed using GPU-Z that the power consumption was spiking as high as 115% TDP and was getting a lot of "PerfCap Reason" "Pwr" notices, so I underclocked it so that it doesn't go over ~98% TDP. And that was the key to getting it stable. After some experimentation, I ended up with both the core and memory clock speeds reduced by 150mhz (I used MSI AfterBurner). Did that, and now it works like a charm

 

Summary:

- get a 120W power brick and a GTX 750TI without additional power connectors

- disable the Akitio built-in fan by unplugging it from the board (the GPU runs very cool anyway, haven't gotten it over 62 deg. C yet)

- install Win 8.1 via boot camp

- write the OPTIMUS.dmg to the EFI partition (speculative)

- install latest NVIDIA web drivers

- underclock the card until stable

 

Thanks for all your advice and discussions. Couldn't have done it without y'all.

I got exact the same issue.

What the frequency of the clock have you reduced to ?

Many thanks.

Sorry, I forgot to quote.

On April 12, 2559 BE at 5:56 PM, Dschijn said:

Could be multiple things, so we need to test

Oops, so sorry. I was confused with the quote system.

I've tried flashing the new bios, lower the freq down to 1020 core and 1080 boost, which is around the oem clock, still get the kernel panic.

Do you have any idea ?

Btw, I tried firestrike 2 times, and got no restart.

35 minutes ago, goalque said:

@Xaularis and @Jojo2805

 

Please discuss hardware related issues preferably here:

 

https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/6224-diy-egpu-macbook-experiences/

 

@Xaularis

 

From your post history I can see that you have chosen a GTX 750Ti without the 6-pin connector. If you do a search, you will realize that you are not alone with this issue. AKiTiO is not stable with cards without auxiliary power connector.

Heh, is that so.

I've searched a lot of the thread, and I can't find the solution.

Btw, thanks for your suggestion.

I tried to change the driver to the old version (around 343.01.02) which cannot be used due to the version changed.

But, I cannot try lower the frequency because I don't have the windows for lowering the gpu freq.

14 hours ago, Jojo2805 said:

Hi,

 

I am currently trying a setup of MBP 13" 2015, Akitio, KFA2 GTX960 ITX & thermaltake Munich 430W. Basically the setup is more or less working - It is recognized and I am getting screen output under mac os and Win10.

 

But it's not lasting long. Soon as I put load to card - e.g. with Cities Skylines my mac is freezing and I am getting the following kernel report. Unter Win10 it's the same, mac crashes after a few minutes.

 

Any ideas what that could be? Is eventually PSU to weak? 

Sun Apr 17 22:32:28 2016

*** Panic Report ***
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff7f8dbbedfb): NVRM[0/193:0:0]: Read Error 0x0014440c: CFG 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0xffffffff, BAR0 0xc2000000 0xffffff91fc556000 0x126010a1, D0, P3/4
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff92202f3ab0 : 0xffffff800cedab12 
0xffffff92202f3b30 : 0xffffff7f8dbbedfb 
0xffffff92202f3bf0 : 0xffffff7f8dc9a61e 
0xffffff92202f3c50 : 0xffffff7f8df08d7a 
0xffffff92202f3c70 : 0xffffff7f8defe03a 
0xffffff92202f3cf0 : 0xffffff7f8defb5b4 
0xffffff92202f3d30 : 0xffffff7f8df0bb1b 
0xffffff92202f3d70 : 0xffffff7f8defb425 
0xffffff92202f3db0 : 0xffffff7f8df5c8dd 
0xffffff92202f3e20 : 0xffffff7f8dcc7e53 
0xffffff92202f3e40 : 0xffffff7f8dbc531e 
0xffffff92202f3ef0 : 0xffffff800d4b4956 
0xffffff92202f3f40 : 0xffffff800d4b27c1 
0xffffff92202f3f80 : 0xffffff800d4b28b6 
0xffffff92202f3fb0 : 0xffffff800cfc8e27 
      Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
         com.nvidia.web.NVDAResmanWeb(10.1.1)[2D472A69-A58D-376E-B257-4F0CDF2F2A87]@0xffffff7f8db58000->0xffffff7f8de37fff
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.9)[4FE41F9B-2849-322A-BBF8-A94816C003D6]@0xffffff7f8d72c000
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.4.1)[1114B99F-E439-329E-876D-1FEC4CF45DF6]@0xffffff7f8db41000
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.4.1)[172C2960-EDF5-382D-80A5-C13E97D74880]@0xffffff7f8dafa000
            dependency: com.apple.AppleGraphicsDeviceControl(3.12.6)[F211EB28-182A-34BB-A610-87667618F925]@0xffffff7f8db51000
         com.nvidia.web.NVDAGM100HalWeb(10.1.1)[0D4944A5-08A6-379C-9D47-E2C7E43F01A1]@0xffffff7f8de47000->0xffffff7f8e043fff
            dependency: com.nvidia.web.NVDAResmanWeb(10.1.1)[2D472A69-A58D-376E-B257-4F0CDF2F2A87]@0xffffff7f8db58000
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.9)[4FE41F9B-2849-322A-BBF8-A94816C003D6]@0xffffff7f8d72c000

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task
Boot args: nvda_drv=1

Mac OS version:
15E65

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 15.4.0: Fri Feb 26 22:08:05 PST 2016; root:xnu-3248.40.184~3/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: 4E7B4496-0B81-34E9-97AF-F316103B0839
Kernel slide:     0x000000000cc00000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff800ce00000
__HIB  text base: 0xffffff800cd00000
System model name: MacBookPro12,1 (Mac-E43C1C25D4880AD6)

System uptime in nanoseconds: 144205838644
last loaded kext at 6725989944: com.apple.filesystems.autofs	3.0 (addr 0xffffff7f8f51d000, size 45056)
last unloaded kext at 117576475113: com.apple.driver.AppleIntelLpssI2C	2.0.60 (addr 0xffffff7f8f9e6000, size 40960)
loaded kexts:
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com.nvidia.web.NVDAGM100HalWeb	10.1.1
com.nvidia.web.NVDAResmanWeb	10.1.1
at.obdev.nke.LittleSnitch	4356
com.apple.filesystems.autofs	3.0
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com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCardReader	3.7.1
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com.apple.AppleFSCompression.AppleFSCompressionTypeZlib	1.0.0
com.apple.BootCache	38
com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIBlockStorage	2.8.5
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Model: MacBookPro12,1, BootROM MBP121.0167.B16, 2 processors, Intel Core i7, 3,1 GHz, 16 GB, SMC 2.28f7
Graphics: Intel Iris Graphics 6100, Intel Iris Graphics 6100, Built-In
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960, PCIe, 4095 MB
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AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x133), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (7.21.95.175.1a6)
Bluetooth: Version 4.4.4f4 17685, 3 services, 27 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: Wi-Fi, AirPort, en0
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USB Device: USB 3. Bus
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller
USB Device: USB Receiver
Thunderbolt Bus: MacBook Pro, Apple Inc., 27.1
Thunderbolt Device: AKiTiO Thunder 2 Box, inXtron, 1, 24.1

 

I got exact the same problem.

Thanks for your sharing, I will try changing the driver.

I'll try.

BTW, thanks for your advice.

And can it be the cable issue ?

10 minutes ago, Dschijn said:

Try and lower the power limit clock speed in Windows with EVGA Precision X or MSI Afterburner.

Maybe even the 120W PSU is at its limit with the 750Ti. The card doesn't have any 6-Pin PCIe power plugs on it, right?!

No, there is no 6 pin power plug there.

Is there solution for OSX ?

I got a akitio thunder 2 attached to the MBP using included thunderbolt cable. 750ti is used with the akitio thunder 2. Everything works fine until... it restart itself randomly. Sometimes while I was playing a game. sometimes while I using Xcode or other things.

Both of the os x and Windows 10 got almost the same symptom. Windows 10 give the driver stop working and has recovered, but the osx give the double restart every time.

I used 120 watt psu which can connect to the akitio thunder 2 directly.

Anyone got any idea ?

Many thanks.