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Mackan

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Posts posted by Mackan

  1. "Gigabyte hopes to get something working by Computex"... yeah, right, more waiting, and waiting, and waiting...

    "We were told that Asus is working further on enable Apple/Mac support, but there are presently no guarantees".

    No shit. I would actually bet a million dollar that Apple will never help to make an eGPU solution working on their products. It goes totally against the core of their philosophy of integrating everything and making things obsolete in less than 2 years, so you have to buy new.

    I bet we will see no eGPU solution this year either. Seems like a total deja vu from last year.

  2. From my playing with five different MacBook Pro/Air models, EFI install is a breeze on any single GPU system. e.g. 13" or below.

    Early 2011 15" MacBook Pro will not take an EFI install of Windows at all.

    Any dual GPU system will give you an IRQ NOT EQUAL blue screen error while installing.

    Late 15" or 17" 2011 MacBook Pro's will take an EFI Windows install but you need to install on a PC and then transfer the Hard Disk into the MacBook. It might take several attempts to get it to work.

    Mid 2012 15" MacBook Pro will take an EFI Windows install but will take lots of patience and repeated reboots.

    Early 2013 15" Retina MacBook Pro will take an EFI Windows install but again takes lots of patience and reboots.

    Summary: Unless you really really want the bigger laptop screen, stick with the 13" or below models.

  3. US$250 Silverstone T004 450W Thunderbolt enclosure

    The affordable gamechanger may come if Silverstone T004 is released as they say in the coming month or two. $250 for a 450W double-width, full length Thunderbolt eGPU enclosure. Awesome.

    Very exciting to see this. But if Intel, as stated in the first post, will not give a license to a Thunderbolt device aimed for external GPU usage, then how can SilverStone ever release this product?

    Ok, I saw you edited your post. Let's hope Intel will stop their nonsense, they are getting bad reputation. Would be rather pointless of SilverStone to even start work on this just to get rejected.

  4. My work T410 and my home T420 have "noisy" fans under load (as has every laptop I've ever used) - but at least they're both a fairly constant pitch (and nothing like the GTX560ti448 :-) ). It sounds like the T430 issue relates to oscillating pitch (because they ramp poorly between e.g. full-on and half-on). I'm guessing better software control would be enough to appease most users. I'm surprised Lenovo still haven't offered this.

    Yeah, there is a big thread about it: T430 Fan speed - Lenovo Community

    I get flashbacks about this, since I think some recent previous ThinkPad models suffered from the similar problem. One problem is the physical characteristics/pitch of the fan. Another one is the fan profile. If it is not smooth enough, it's going to be annoying. I currently use a MacBook, which has always had an excellent fan profile. It idles at 2000 rpm (inaudible), and ramps up smoothly up to 6000 rpm. It doesn't have 'discrete' modes, where it just goes from 2000 to 5000 based on a temperature reading.

    This T430 seems to have a minimum fan speed of around 3200-3400, which is simply too much.

    The Lenovo engineers, together with others (I recall Alienware as well), do not seem to know how, or care, to implement a good PID control for the fan. I bet they need to use more expensive parts as well.

    Wasn't entirely related to eGPU, but what the heck, why is there never a perfect laptop out there. ;) There's always something.

  5. I would expect that a T430 copes better with a quad core on the assumption that an ivy-bridge quad core is lower power (on sandy-bridge: the dual core is 35W and quad cores all 45W. On ivy-bridge, you can get a 35W quad core i7-3632QM).

    I had no issues with TOLUD. My T420 was a late model and already had a new enough BIOS for there to be no problem. It seems Lenovo have a habit of releasing TOLUD problematic BIOSes at launch and then fixing them up after enough complaints on their forums. All indications are that the problems are fixed in current Tx30 bioses, as long as you limit to 8GB RAM: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/X230-expresscard-adressing-eGPU/td-p/792909/page/3

    Thanks for the information. I will do more research. Still a bugger about only 8 GB of RAM. Sadly, I just saw reports about noisy fan with the T430, which doesn't seem resolved, possibly due to design/fan used. I am very sensitive to fan noise, (though when gaming I don't care).

  6. I have a T420 as my main machine and throw the egpu in via the expresscard slot when I'm at a desk (for gaming driving a 21" monitor). Everything else (keyboard/mouse/sound) is plugged in by a single USB cable. So I think that matches your laptop-as-desktop criteria.

    I replaced an ageing Q6600 + 8800GTX setup with an i5 2520m + GTX560ti448 and am very happy with the result. Light enough laptop for using in the lounge but powerful enough for gaming when I want to (I'm currently looking at getting a PE4L-EC200A for gaming in the lounge :) ).

    Really cheap from the lenovo outlet (~600USD for the laptop plus other bits).

    It's possible to put a quad core in the T420, but everything I've read says the power and heat is too high (it throttles massively). A high spec dual core i5 seems to be the way to go in a 12-14" system.

    The 650 ti boost definitely looks to be the card to get right now. Close to 660 performance for a chunk less cash.

    I was actually considering a T430 + eGPU, since it could fit a quad core CPU in there. But maybe it will also have thermal problems, then. Anyone tried? Also, did you ever had problem with TOLUD? I've heard conflicting reports about this, that Lenovo fixed this in recent BIOS updates, but then I've heard they didn't. Anyone know if there is a TOLUD problem with a T430?

  7. There would also be a problem with the audio driver under EFI mode, right? So even if booting via EFI, and using external monitor, we would still have no sound?

    Given that the eGPU has drivers in OSX, would the eGPU solution work to play games under OSX? I've heard it's not working at all, but maybe progress has been made someone.

    Well, I guess I can answer myself regarding the first point. The eGPU itself should work as a pass thru device for the audio, not needing the integrated sound card at all. So as long as there is a working driver for the eGPU, things should be fine.

  8. This tutorial is for Windows 7 BIOS (not windows 8, and not EFI). Although I was able to get Windows 8 EFI working with little to no effort, Internal LCD mode wasn't working likely because of immature drivers. Windows 8 BIOS also had a host of problems (see Notes section below for more details).

    There would also be a problem with the audio driver under EFI mode, right? So even if booting via EFI, and using external monitor, we would still have no sound?

    Given that the eGPU has drivers in OSX, would the eGPU solution work to play games under OSX? I've heard it's not working at all, but maybe progress has been made someone.

  9. I think people have got both Nvidia and AMD cards to work under EFI mode on Macs, after updated drivers were out. Could maybe indicate that the Intel drivers need to be updated to work with Apple's EFI. However, I think the Nvidia and AMD card were discrete. I haven't seen successful drivers for integrated ones yet, such as my own Nvidia 320M and the Intel HD 4000.

    Just speculating... would be fun with some break through in this.

  10. I remember I read something somewhere, probably this forum, about someone getting the Intel HD4000 to be recognized in EFI mode. Don't know if it was a driver problem still, in the end. I might try this EFI boot myself, soon.

    Unfortunately, I think Apple with the latest Boot Camp 5 still assumes people to boot/install in BIOS mode. Can't rely too much on Apple, they only provide bare minimum support.

  11. Even after enabling ASPMs as described here the best I could get a 2012 MBP Pro to idle at was 7.2-7.6W. Meaning, this USB suspend issue is causing 1.5-2W more instantaneous power consumption than a similarly equipped 12.5" HP 2570P or Dell E6230. They can both idle at 5.6-5.8W.

    The root cause of the problem?

    The root cause appears to be due to the keyboard and mouse being attached to a USB hub as shown below. A HP 2570P or Dell E6230 do not use a USB hub for these. They have the keyboard using a keyboard port and mouse using PS2 port.

    Apple must have optimized their drivers to lower USB power consumption under MacOS but haven't done the same for Windows. Unfortunately then a Macbook Pro is a poor choice if wanting maximum battery life. I dare say the same issue applies to the Macbook Air.

    Good find. I might do another try of installing Windows again now when they have a new Boot Camp out (I guess they didn't care to optimize the drivers though, but hell might freeze over once per millennium).

  12. The eGPU adoption has always been held back by the hardware companies in this industry. Laptop manufacturers don't want people to extend the lifespan of their laptop, or prevent them from selling models with better GPUs inside them. The GPU makers such as Nvidia probably are very uncertain about this business as well. It's a damn shame. It would have been standard long time ago to plug in more powerful devices replacing the weaker ones inside the laptop, but that's not good business for the laptop makers.

    Not saying that this is related to the disappearance of this BPlus company, but it's kind of typical. As pointed out, could be Intel pulling the strings here. But hearing about Thunderbolt years ago, then sitting and waiting for it, then they give Apple 1 year exclusive head start, and then it still takes 2 years before we see it from PC makers... and then another before any support for it, and... yeah.

    I bet the years will continue to pass by, and we'll see little to no support for mainstream eGPU solutions. Or very expensive, or subpar, ones.

  13. Yeah, it should definitely be possible, but it all comes down to Apple's BIOS emulation and drivers.

    While I don't have Windows 7 boot camped at the moment, I remember when I did look into the power consumption about a year ago that I was able to idle around 7 W after optimizations. This was with a 2010 MacBook Pro 13'' though. It has the Nvidia 320M and a Core 2 Duo. Under OS X I believe I was closer to 5 W though. So there's definitely something non-optimal with Apple's drivers or BIOS emulation. I remember the Nvidia driver giving too many wake up interruptions, being one problem. Apple's keyboard driver was also one culprit, guilty of the same crime. But they surprisingly fixed it.

    In the end, it would be nice to go fully EFI on a Windows install, and have everything working. No more relying on old shoddy BIOS emulation.

  14. Not sure what you mean by separate install, but running Windows 7 through Boot Camp means a separate install. Boot Camp is nothing more than Apple assisting you to create the Windows 7 partition (run Boot Camp Assistant in OS X to get started), and providing you with drivers for their hardware.

    A lot of people are dual booting for gaming, and now a days it's all working fine. Trouble has been some of Apple's drivers for Windows, they can be rather low quality sometimes, and Apple rarely updates them. The trackpad driver is maybe the most famous. It's rather bad compared to the OS X driver. There is a third party driver called TrackPad++, being better. You might have to download the newest video drivers from Nvidia as well, to get best performance. It's recommended you download newer drivers from the hardware vendors, whenever possible. I remember one time the Boot Camp audio driver didn't work for some MacBook Pro model, and people had to sit and wait for Apple to provide a fixed one, which they eventually did. Rather frustrating...

    There's been other not so well known issues with running Windows on Apple hardware. I specifically recall that hard drives only run in IDE mode when booted via BIOS emulation under Boot Camp, and not AHCI. This slows down the performance of the hard drive. But I think that Apple maybe fixed that in their latest Boot Camp revision. Another problem was low transfer speeds for USB.

    Maybe someone with a 15'' 2012 model can chime in and tell if he had some specific problem (such as throttling of the video card which may affect you directly). Or you might want to visit Apple's own forums to confirm.

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