testedandbaked

Tried with much better cabling, it seems that the M1530 can't do x2, the laptop simply refuses to enable the 2nd lane in x2 mode.

Your 9700M GT dGPU is attached to the Northbridge at x16. We're trying to utilise the PCIe lanes of the Southbridge (ICH9M) to plug in the eGPU to. Those ports you have listed (if you got that from device manager) are the ports that are currently active and not disabled, i.e. ports 4 and 5 are disabled by the BIOS. Your WiFi card is connected to ports 1, 2, 3 or 6. You can do an x4 on the condition that Ports 1, 2, 3 and 4 are all accessible via either miniPCIe or ExpressCard. Very few notebooks are physically capable of doing this; your notebook seems to only have 1 miniPCIe slot and 1 ExpressCard slot, so you'd be limited to doing an x2 setup, but only if the mPCIe and EC are ports 1,2 or ports 3,4. If not, then you'd be limited to x1. To find out what occupies which port, do the following: Device Manager > View > Devices by Connection > ACPI xx PC > etc, until you get down into PCI bus then check the ports you gave above for any attached devices.

I've tried all of your suggestions to no avail unfortunately. Has anybody else trying for an x2 setup ever run into such a barrier before at all? If they have, then perhaps the M1530 simply isn't capable of running at x2 which would be a shame. Perhaps as a last ditch effort I'll try using SATA cable, which is properly shielded... For the record, a Dell M1530 running with an 8800GTX at x1 gets an abysmal 3DMark06 score of... 3976. Yes gentlemen, that is even lower than the paltry 8600m GT dGPU. I'm surprised nobody else has gotten a M1530 running an eGPU with more than 3GB RAM. It has a TOLUD of 3.5GB but already has the 36-bit root bridge. I got 4GB working by using Setup 1.x 36-bit PCI compaction of both dGPU and eGPU, not forcing either into 32-bit space.

A question of my own, I've soldered the x2 part of my home-made adapter, which consists of the 2 differential pairs (i.e. PET1p, PET1n, PER1p, PER1n) connected to a second blank mPCIe card. Unfortunately, when this is connected to port 3+4, the card is only ever recognised in x1 mode; i.e. when I set the x2 link (card still detected) then retrain port 3, the card is not detected. However, when switching back to x1, the card is instantly recognised again. I've made sure to triple check my connections and shield all differential pairs in this case and I am fairly certain I have not made any wiring mistakes since I have checked with a multimeter and 2 separate cards which work fine at x2 in a desktop. I've also tried all combinations of hot reset and retraining as well as the hotplug method nando mentioned earlier, yielding the same results. Curiously, the Setup 1.x instructions mention that the M1530 has whitelisting, which I can't see any evidence of as the card is detected in x1 mode on all 3 mPCIe ports (ports 2,3,4). Is there anything I'm somehow doing that's preventing x2 from engaging (e.g. I need to be connecting clkrun, #perst on the 2nd mPCIe etc.)?

The ports do not link themselves automatically unfortunately. You will need to use Setup 1.x to set the port to x4, having your 7870 plugged into the PE4H and to ports 1 and 2. Ports 3 and 4 MUST be unoccupied for this to work. Once you set x4 in Setup 1.x, it will use 2 of the 4 lanes at full speed, i.e. x2E. I don't believe that setting x2E will affect you however since the 7870 is a newer card that isn't affected by the crippling of the older intel chipsets. So you could in theory just set x2, using ports 1+2 and leaving port 3 free to plug in WiFi, etc. Port 4 would act as the 2nd lane of the x2 link if you have an older intel chipset however, so you would not be able to use that. What chipset does your laptop have or what is your laptop model? That is crucial.

Unfortunately, you will most likely have to hotplug the eGPU at least once to be able to save the port configuration with the detected eGPU. What you can possibly try without hotplugging (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is to plug in the WiFi card, boot Setup 1.x, save the port, turn off laptop, plug in the PM3N (eGPU off), boot into Setup 1.x, turn on the eGPU and restore the port. Curiously, my laptop does the exact opposite of yours, it boots up to a blank screen if the eGPU is off and boots up fine with it on.

Unless you've got an 8800 GTX and you forget to plug in the PCI-Express power cable, that thing will nearly give you a heart attack with it's built-in air raid siren...

Are both graphics cards (4500MHD and 220) listed as working correctly in Device Manager (no Code 12)?

Have you checked if your GPU is downclocking at all with a utility like GPU-z?

Nando, you're a genius! When I had a look at my adapter, guess what I found? The TX/RX and clock signal differential pairs were running together on a ribbon cable with no separation nor a guard ground wire in between. Once I separated these, it runs perfectly and it's stable. Just like that. I also saw that the CLKREQ was not pulled to ground as it should be but this seemed to have no effect on my M1530 (probably not implemented/ignored). Posted from my iPho... 8800 GTX

Ah yes, I forgot to mention in my last post that I'm currently running in x1 mode for now. I'll add a second lane when I get x1 working. Strangely, a few times, the eGPU actually did come up with the windows login screen, allowing me to login before going blank again. The computer was loading extremely slowly (20+ minutes to login screen, I never did get into the desktop) every time this occurred.

I've just purchased Setup 1.x as I need it for an x2 setup once I can get x1 working first. I've tried the hotplugging and initialize video card trick but my laptop likes to freeze whenever I try to hotplug a mPCIe card so I can't do this to fix code 43. Is there anything else I could try?

I've almost got my M1530 working in x1 mode with an (somewhat ancient, I know) 8800 GTX but the only problem is that the modded Verde drivers somehow refuse to detect a monitor connected to said eGPU. On launching Nvidia Control Panel, exact error is "You are not currently using a display attached to an NVIDIA GPU." Currently, only internal monitor works (not accelerated). It seems that the modded drivers are installed correctly in Device Manager; the dGPU 8600M GT is being disabled by code 12 and the eGPU working properly and using the modded drivers (I assume this is due to the M1530 switching dGPU to secondary and eGPU to primary despite the 3.5GB TOLUD.) AIDA64 shows: PCI-E 1.0 x1 port #4 In Use @ x1 (Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GTX Video Adapter) The system has 4GB RAM and the eGPU is attached to the WWAN port via a self-made adapter (details to come). I'm sure it's something simple I'm missing and I need to be pointed in the right direction. EDIT: Pulling out 2GB RAM gives a blank screen shortly after "starting windows" as if the eGPU is working, but the eGPU gives a code 43 instead.

As you said, the problem with ThunderBolt to MXM is that it doesn't supply the power that an MXM card requires. You'd need to lug around a PSU of some sort, whether that be a 150w power brick or an ATX power supply. Add in the fact that you'd need to mount some sort of heatsink/fan combo on that card and the desktop GPU with its onboard cooling and lower price/performance ratio seems compelling. The bulk to be carried around would be similar IMHO.

Hi all, I used to be a NBR lurker but I decided to set roots here as tech forums should be just that, straight up about the tech, not politics nor having to suck up to sponsors to the detriment of the users. My shepherds were unclewebb and Tech Inferno Fan after discovering that they moved here. I've got an old M1530 that I plan to hit the limits with (Now to see if I can actually find that elusive PLL chip) before I eventually upgrade.