samiam

Hi nando, I thought I got my setup working but I spoke too soon. Right now it only works on less than half of reboots. More than half the time, Windows 8 bluescreens when I chainload into it from Setup 1.x, after having done the PCI compaction. The error is VIDEO_TDR_ERROR or something similar, and it mentions atikmdag.sys. It looks like it's trying to send a signal to the external monitor, which comes out of standby mode but shortly after goes back into standby, then the internal LCD turns back on and bluescreens. But sometimes it works perfectly, and keeps working until I reboot or shutdown. I don't want to leave the eGPU running all the time (wastes power and the fan's very loud) and sleeping causes a bluescreen so I'm wondering how to make this work reliably. Also, if I start with the external monitor disconnected from the eGPU but do the compaction normally, it usually boots fine but then bluescreens when I connect the monitor. Any suggestions? Could it be a bad PE4L or PCIe cable? What's strange is it keeps working as long as the bootup works. I am using the ATI legacy 12.6 drivers for Windows 8 since my graphics card is a 4830. I tried the 12.11 beta modded for legacy GPUs from the guru3d forums, but that just caused me to be stuck at a black screen at bootup whether I had the egpu connected or not, so I had to do a system restore. Is my setup more likely to work if I get a newer ATI card? Or an Nvidia card?

I finally got my X230 setup working well enough, thanks to a comment by Zak9909. Previously the eGPU was only working when not using the mSATA SSD at the same time. I booted Setup 1.x from a flash drive, but found that it could not chainload to my SSD which was on a GPT partition table. I tried the uefi chainload mode but Tianocore's UEFI-DUET got stuck and there's little information on it. So I reinstalled Windows 8 on my SSD this time using an MBR partition table. Then in Setup 1.x I did PCI compaction with the 32-bitA method (iGPU and eGPU only), and chainloaded with mbr mode. This is with everything plugged in at the beginning, and it worked. The only issue I still have is sleeping sometimes results in a blue screen or black screen. Also, initially I didn't realize I needed the patch to Setup 1.x that adds Series-7 chipset support, it's on the stickied thread here but not on DIY eGPU Setup 1.x Help. Setup 1.x even seems to fix the error with my BIOS not detecting the SSD after a forced shutdown, I run it without the eGPU and compact everything including the SSD - it shows up as Ricoh because I guess Lenovo meant for it to be used for a media card reader.

This sounds similar to the problem I'm having (see here and here), I have an X230 and an mSATA drive. However I don't even get a code 12 error, just a blue screen. Haven't tried Setup 1.1x yet. I hope you get it working, I'll be interested in the solution.

So I had some success since my last post. Apparently the combination of having Windows on the mSATA SSD and the eGPU doesn't work for some reason, it results in a blue screen and the computer not detecting the SSD for a period of time. But I copied my Windows partition to the 2.5 inch hard drive, and the eGPU worked fine when booting from that. I turned on the GPU, plugged it into the expresscard slot, and turned on the laptop. Then I installed AMD's legacy drivers for older graphics cards and Windows 8 64-bit, found on their website. Below are some 3Dmark Vantage results, with comparisons to the integrated graphics and the GPU on my old desktop. laptop with eGPU: ATI Radeon 4830 eGPU, Intel Core i5-3320M SCORE P4824 3DMarks GRAPHICS SCORE 4088 CPU SCORE 10490 laptop with iGPU: Intel HD Graphics 4000 Mobile, Intel Core i5-3320M SCORE P3015 3DMarks GRAPHICS SCORE 2452 CPU SCORE 9675 same GPU on desktop: ATI Radeon 4830, Intel E5200 overclocked to 3.0 GHz SCORE P5695 3DMarks GRAPHICS SCORE 5912 CPU SCORE 5130 So now I have some questions: 1) Has anyone gotten eGPU to work at the same time as running Windows on an mSATA SSD? 2) GPU-Z reports that the eGPU is running at x1.1, even while running it's built in render test. Is this normal for this graphics card? 3) It works when using only an external monitor, but it blue screens if I try to use the laptop monitor with integrated graphics at the same time as an external monitor with eGPU. Has anyone gotten this to work?

Hi all, another new user here. I would like to thank Tech Inferno Fan for all his hard work, this egpu project is what led me to finally register at techinferno. I have the PE4L v2.1b (expresscard version) and my Lenovo X230 with the following specs: Windows 8 64-bit Intel Core i5-3320M Intel HD Graphics 4000 4GB RAM Now I am planning to eventually buy a better graphics card (maybe Nvidia for Optimus) but before that I just wanted to make sure it works with the card I took from my old desktop, a Radeon HD 4830, which should still be a lot better than Intel's integrated graphics. I'm also using the desktop's Antec EA-500 power supply. I have a problem getting it to work though. First I tried booting with the graphics card connected and powered on, it bluescreened with "0x116: VIDEO_TDR_ERROR". Then I tried booting with it connected but not powered on, and Windows boots to a black screen with a very slow mouse cursor and nothing else. Then I tried booting with it disconnected, going into standby, powering on the graphics card and connecting it, and resuming. Windows autodetects it and installs drivers and the graphics card is shown in Device Manager, but it's device status is "no drivers are installed". Monitors connected to the graphics card aren't detected (the internal display running on integrated graphics still works). Then I tried installing AMD's Windows 8 driver (the one for older Radeon HD cards including 4000 series), but the install just gets stuck on a progress bar. I tried extracting only the display driver from the exe and using Device Manager to install it, but that got stuck too. Any suggestions on what to do? I'm not concerned with trying to get the internal display to work with the external graphics, I just want the graphics card to output to a monitor. Any help is much appreciated. On a side note, I'm using a 256GB mSATA SSD that I installed myself as my main Windows and programs drive, and the standard 2.5" HDD for extra storage. The BIOS occasionally has problems detecting the SSD ("2101 detection error on HDD2"), so far this seems to happen right after I do a forced shutdown (happened once in the process of trying to get e-gpu working). From what I've read, reseating the SSD, even if it was already seated correctly, fixes the problem. But this is too time-consuming because I have to remove the keyboard and palm rest to reach the mSATA slot. What I do instead is reboot a few times, fiddle with the boot order in BIOS, and just let the laptop sit for a while (not sure which of these steps actually helps), and in a short time it fixes itself. But this is a somewhat worrisome problem. By the way, it looks like hwtools just started selling PE4H v3.2 right after I got my PE4L. They say it's PCIE 2.0 compatible, and there's the option of an enclosure. Still looks like you need an ATX power supply if your graphics card need 6-pins though, and I'm not sure if there's room in the enclosure for the ATX power supply.