Shelltoe

So you're able to boot EFI mode but receive error 12 with "mm 0001013E 1 ;PCI :8"? This command fixed all error 12 and error 43 problems in my case. Did you delay EGPU's initialisation? It's not recommanded in EFI mode while it's needed for MBR. It's just a suggestion but it might be your 2013 model using another bridge for thunderbolt. You could try to find out using "pci -i -b" in efi shell (post some screens if you cant figure it out). Was actually successful using my EGPU with MBR but is not really enjoyable to setup so I won't post instructions for now.

Actually I think you were pretty close on your first try. The bluescreen is most likely caused by the buildin Intel HD. Try to disable it in device manager or (if you're unable to boot into windows without bluescreen) delete igdkmd64.sys from your "C:\windows\system32\drivers" Directory (using Paragon NTFS for MAC OS or Windows recovery tools). I still think EFI Mode is the way to go for 15'' MBP's... though I recently installed Win7 BIOS mode on an additional partition. I'll try to make it work with my EGPU and report back how to do so (just in case you don't want to install WIN8 EFI again).

startup.nsh is basically the last step. You should wipe your MacBook. Your BCD error indicates something is messed.

I'd recommend installing Windows in EFI Mode so you don't have to use eGPU Setup. Take a look at my thread and Nando's post on BIOS Mode if you want to give it a try.

I'm actually using the same build without problems.

Short answer: No

yeah but most of these xeons and opterons were released 2 or more years earlier. also many of these CPUs are designed for servers, with stability and energy consumtion in mind. Most games don't even fully support these CPUs in terms of multithreading. As far as I know these PCmark results aren't really reliable. Take a look. maybe you can find some more Sandra or Aida benchmarks. There should be some Creative Suite 5 / 6 and rendering benchmarks around too. again: you shouldn't care about it.

IMHO you shouldn't care about this stuff. If there are differences in performance they should be really negligible. Most workstations I've seen use Intel Xeon CPUs (just like the 12 core one I use in the office), a handfull use AMD opterons ... so even my MBP's i7 is just consumerware and nowhere close to highend CPUs. You should get a CPU with as many cores as you can or want to effort. From there on every $ will give you a tiny bit of extra performance.

I'm not that much into AMD CPUs. The last one I had was an Athlon XP 1800+ ... they even faked back then So it has 3 physical and 6 logical cores? That's not so great but still it's improvement compared to his i5 2520M EDIT: davide he's talking about the words they use. Intel counts physical cores. AMD counts logical cores / threads.

Yeah well it's all about time. Guess there's nothing you can't do with your Laptop / eGPU setup in terms of av-editing. A 6-core desktop will be 2 - 3 times faster though. I'm not sure how well your Laptop will handle crysis 3. Im currently using a GTX660 TI via Thunderbolt (TH05) and have a pretty neat selfmade enclosure including PSU. Actually I'll add some pics to my thread later or at weekend.

Well comparing a dualcore with a 6-core seems a bit odd. In general: everything you have to render for hires output (3D, Video, Audio) relies on your CPU. everything that gives you a livepreview / renders in realtime (eg. CAD editor view, Cyrsis 3) relies on your GPU (except things like Nvidias PhysX). I'm a graphics designer myself and use the egpu while I'm not in the office. Video and 3D rendering works pretty well on my quadcore rMBP. 4 or even 6 cores is a huge improvement compared to a dualcore. especially for rendering tasks. I don't know how serious you are about this but if you don't have to be mobile and want better performance go with the desktop solution. It's still not even close to a professional one though.

Well I removed drivers before installing the new ones but as far as I can tell they can't be removed completely. So it's more like an update. Sure there are differences between single GPU and dual GPU Macbooks. Though setting the PCI registars disables the dGPU and Intel HD 4000 becomes the primary one. So it's more or less the same again. As far as I know most single GPU / 13'' Macbooks should be able to install Intel drivers in BIOS Mode but that's no option for 15'' Macbook Pro's.

As far as I can tell updated BootCamp Drivers won't help at all. The PCI registars you were talking about are supposed to switch between Nvidia 650m and Intel HD 4000 so it can be used as primary GPU device (which actually works, but for now it will only save some battery power using Basic Display Drivers). If we had functional drivers we could enable Nvidias Optimus. Both audio and HD 4000 problems persist.

Well the new BootCamp HD4000 drivers work as good Intels drivers which means still igdkmd64 crash.

OSX 10.8.3 is out with BootCamp Support for Windows 8. I'll give it a try this evening.

check your partitions in terminal using "diskutil list". disk0s1 should be of type EFI and its size should be around 200MB /dev/disk0 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *251.0 GB disk0 1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 250.1 GB disk0s2 3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

I'm not to sure it's your GPU bottlenecking. How many RAM do you have? BF3 eats lots of RAM. 4GB and more are recommanded especially with Add-On's. Actually I can run BF3 pretty smoothly with my internal GT 650m at medium settings.

was busy at work. yeah nando is the guy you should talk to. if its really a GTX690 thing and there's no fix in the near future you might want to give EFI another try. you were pretty close

Just create it. Its a textfile. You might have to change some hardware id's though. I never used BIOS Mode so far.

Well all you have to do is remove the file. It should take less then a minute using Paragon in Mac OS. If you want to uninstall everything just remove all created partitions. If you can't remove a partition in Mac OS boot your Windows disk/stick to remove them.

Your LAN and WLAN should work plug and play. Didn't had and haven't heard of any problems. Even without BootCamp drivers. Maybe you could try to connect your MacBook by LAN and update the broadcom drivers via Device Manager or download the current version on their website.

Yeah sure you want to install your drivers at some point. Especially the Apple ones ... internal sound wont work though due to those bugged Intel Chipset Drivers. Only HDMI and USB audio works. EFI Boot is your windows partition so everythings fine. You can try to boot with your eGPU connected and powered on. Some GPU don't need the EFI-Shell fix. If it doesn't work create a startup.nsh as described in the OP. Regarding your blackscreen: It's probalbly because of intel drivers. Boot windows into DOS Prompt or get a demo of Paragon NTFS so you can remove the following intel driver -> "c:\windows\system32\drivers\igkmd64.sys"

Doesn't really matter.

This should be your Mac OS Recovery disk This. Windows will create all needed Partitions

No. Merge all Partitions in DiskUtility and resize it using the terminal command. you'll receive problems otherwise. just do whats written. The rEFIt parts should be done after installing windows. It doesn't really matter anyways.