ermac318

ASUS GTX970 STRIX replaced the PNY.

Updated benchmark numbers

Non-Optimus:

3dMark '11 Graphics - 12876 (P8435 overall)

3dMark '13 FireStrike Graphics - 10285 (6995 overall)

Updated Optimus results:

3dMark '11 Graphics - 11188 (P7883 overall)

3dMark '13 FireStrike Graphics - 7150 (5694 overall)

Whomever edited the thread title, please note my OS is Win8.1, not Win7. I can change my post title but thread title isn't changing.

Also - does anyone know how to confirm that PCI-e compression is enabled? I'd like to test it somehow but I haven't seen anything in the FAQ on how to identify that it's working.

Hey guys,

After seeing Krazyazy's results with Thunderbolt on the same laptop, I decided to forgo the extra cost and complexity of a Thunderbolt implementation and stick with tried-and-true ExpressCard. Went with the PE4C v2.1 adapter along with the Dell DA2 220W Brick per recommendations from various folks. Extremely happy with the adapter! It's easy to setup, straightforward connections, and fits almost anything.

Currently testing with a PNY GTX970 with blower cooler that I borrowed from a friend, bought an ASUS STRIX 970 for myself but first card was defective, waiting for replacement.

All these results are with Optimus enabled (not direct attached to video output on card).

I will redo those benchmarks after I get the ASUS card, but here are preliminary results:

3dMark '11 Graphics - 11074 (P7817 overall)

3dMark '13 FireStrike Graphics - 7059 (5643 overall)

Unigine Valley 1.0 @ 1920x1080 Ultra - 1728

Some notes:

Hot-plug does not work, must fully shut down system, insert EC adapter, power on system twice (first time it turns on then immediately shuts off, second time boots correctly). Unplug while system is on results in a bad time, unplug while system in standby results in no video output. Any advice on how to fix these would be very appreciated.

Good news is no eGPU Setup, DSDT compaction, or any of that kind of stuff necessary, even with 12GB of RAM in system.

Will redo more benchmarks when final card comes in, without using Optimus (direct feed to monitor).

Crazy, I bought a T430s with Thunderbolt almost two years ago waiting for a cheaper TB eGPU solution (which never materialized after the TH05 was recalled), and was just checking in to see how things were going, and looks like you just built what I was looking for. Downside is, looks like it's worse than the ExpressCard option! Please keep us all posted if you are able to troubleshoot your issue. Are you using with Optimus or without? Very interested to hear any future findings.

Just a quick update.

To make sure everything else was working fine, I was able to borrow a mid-2013 MBA from work, setup Win8.1, and test my setup above. Everything looks to be working well when I use the MBA; 3dmark score below shows it in line with my PE4L on the T430s. I ran this test to mainly figure out if the Akitio was good or not. From this test, it seems like the problem resides within the T430s when using Thunderbolt.

3dmark11 (Akitio/MBA) - 6429 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-4250U,Apple Inc. Mac-7DF21CB3ED6977E5

I was also able to determine a difference in Thunderbolt chips, but not sure how much it affects the setup. The T430s has an Intel DSL3310 while the MBA has the DSL3510L.

Sorry I realized the Dell power brick is essentially a PCI-e aux connector on the end. Let me know how it goes, and whether or not you have the stability problems that ha1o2surfer had with the power supplied via the slot itself. He had to resort to a 4x->16x riser with a molex connector...

I just tested a small fanless r4550 card without a modified riser and it didn't work. I'm thinking it's a pin 8 problem, and that would mean having to add a reset into the circuit.

But this might be because I'm running in MBR, and not EFI.

Can anyone corroborate this?

Would this work with a win8.1 EFI installation?

Does it physically fit in the system and power on? Sounds like the circuit stuff is something else...

Agreed it has enough power, the question is how do you get that power into the PCI-e aux connector, as the power adapter in the Thundertek board doesn't give you any aux power connectors like the EXP GDC.

Very interested in your results with regards to power - would love to see if your Dell power brick provides enough juice and whether you have to use extra external PSUs

Is this specifically the enclosure? The link on the first post only leads to their front page:

ThunderTek/PX: PCIe Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis for Macintosh

Then I'd add this:

PCI Express PCI-e 4X TO 16X Riser Card Extender Ribbon Cable with w/ Molex Connector, View PCI-e card, ulanson Product Details from Shenzhen Ulanson Electronic Co., Ltd. on Alibaba.com

and just need an external PSU to run it.

If one were to replace the power adapter included with the ThunderTek with something like this:

https://www.fasttech.com/products/1288100

Would you be able to avoid needing the riser? Or did you attempt something like that and were still unsuccessful?

Take a look at the main stickied thread here, your questions are answered for the most part. But for the record:

If you're using an nVidia card externally, then the native Optimus technology in the driver will allow you to drive the internal screen from an external GPU. However, the compression technology only kicks in with a 1x link (meaning ExpressCard, not Thunderbolt).

With AMD you need to use the Virtu MVP software to do this.

If you have a newer system with ExpressCard and PCI-Express 2.0 (sandy bridge or newer laptops) then you want to make sure your adapter has a soldered cable not a modular one. That means don't use the PE4H 2.4, you need to use PE4L v2.1 or the PE4H v3.2 (which has an enclosure).

There's no good Thunderbolt solution yet since the TH05 was recalled. I know, I'm waiting for one

Again read the first few posts on the main stickied thread for a good summary.

Nando,

I was about to pull the trigger on the PE4H 3.2 enclosure when I saw your recommendation after zsph's difficulties. I looked at the picture on their site and it looks like the board in the 3.2 has a soldered cable, not a modular one. Does this mean it should be compatible with PCI-e 2.0? Or do i need to forgo the enclosure to be safe? :-(

PE4H V3.2 (PCIe x16 Adapter)

This is good news - I was about to buy one when they disappeared

So it looks like I waited too long before moving ahead on the TH05 since it's gone now. I'll wait around for a bit to see if a new product comes along that will work - otherwise I'll look at going the PE4L route.

I note implementations that come with benchmarks. There have been sprinklings of discussion about Lenovo S430 and T430s having successful DIY eGPU implementations but details have been scarce. Perhaps you can fill in the blanks for others to duplicate your findings? AFAIK, TOLUD issues have been resolved with the latest Lenovo bios which incorporates a dynamic TOLUD. Upon detecting a eGPU on bootup the bios will decrease TOLUD to accomodate it.

Thanks, nando. Is there the possibility that this will be plug and play? Do installs exist where you don't have to reboot/etc to get the eGPU to function?

Hey folks,

I apologize in advance for the inexperience that should be evident in this post. I've been trying to follow the various eGPU threads in this forum and NBR, and information is just so spread out and there's a lot of questions that aren't answered in FAQs, so I wanted to just make a brief post before I put down a bunch of money to make sure that my understanding of everything is correct. I posted these questions in a separate thread but I think that may have been the wrong place for them.

My overall goal is to get rid of my desktop computer (Shuttle XPC w/ Core i7 880) and my laptop (13" MBA 2011) and have a single system that I can use for work (I'm in IT technical sales) and play (I do a lot of PC gaming at home). After lots of research, I think I've figured out that unless I wait for Haswell the best machine I can get is the Lenovo Thinkpad T430s. It's less than 4 pounds, has an optical drive, has good docking station options, and has both ExpressCard and Thunderbolt for eGPU capability. It's also "business appropriate" so I can bring it to customer presentations and such without raising suspicion.

My plan is to take my AMD Radeon 6850 out of my desktop, connect it to a TH05 (still not sure what to do around enclosure/PSU stuff but I'll hopefully get that all figured out), and use that for my eGPU with the Thunderbolt port. Then I can come home, plop the laptop in the dock, connect the Thunderbolt cable, and be off to the races.

I just have a couple questions regarding the TH05 that I'm not sure have been answered. I've read the threads about doing this on a Mac, and I've also read threads about using ExpressCard in older Thinkpads, but here's what I'm wondering:

1. Will the solution be plug-and-play? Can I bring the laptop home, put it in the dock, bring it out of Standby, and suddenly the eGPU works? Or will I need to reboot? There was some mention of it being like this on Macs with EFI Windows 8, but what about BIOS Windows7 or 8?
   
2. Since it's Thunderbolt, will I encounter any TOLUD/DSDT issues? I've seen some other folks mention that the T430s has a lower TOLUD, and I'd like to avoid the reboots and such associated with Setup 1.1x as much as possible.
   
3. Has anyone had any success with the T430s? There was one gentlemen on here who said he got it working but I haven't seen any benchmarks or details.
   

Appreciate the clarifications on any of this. I'm hoping that if everything looks good I'll move forward with getting the various parts in January and I'll be sure to keep everyone posted.

Thanks Khenglish. I'll try posting the other questions on the long DIY thread, as maybe it'll get more attention there.

Hey folks,

I apologize in advance for the inexperience that should be evident in this post. I've been trying to follow the various eGPU threads in this forum and NBR, and information is just so spread out and there's a lot of questions that aren't answered in FAQs, so I wanted to just make a brief post before I put down a bunch of money to make sure that my understanding of everything is correct.

My overall goal is to get rid of my desktop computer (Shuttle XPC w/ Core i7 880) and my laptop (13" MBA 2011) and have a single system that I can use for work (I'm in IT technical sales) and play (I do a lot of PC gaming at home). After lots of research, I think I've figured out that unless I wait for Haswell the best machine I can get is the Lenovo Thinkpad T430s. It's less than 4 pounds, has an optical drive, has good docking station options, and has both ExpressCard and Thunderbolt for eGPU capability. It's also "business appropriate" so I can bring it to customer presentations and such without raising suspicion.

My plan is to take my AMD Radeon 6850 out of my desktop, connect it to a TH05 (still not sure what to do around enclosure/PSU stuff but I'll hopefully get that all figured out), and use that for my eGPU with the Thunderbolt port. Then I can come home, plop the laptop in the dock, connect the Thunderbolt cable, and be off to the races.

I just have a couple questions regarding the TH05 that I'm not sure have been answered. I've read the threads about doing this on a Mac, and I've also read threads about using ExpressCard in older Thinkpads, but here's what I'm wondering:

1. Will the solution be plug-and-play? Can I bring the laptop home, put it in the dock, bring it out of Standby, and suddenly the eGPU works? Or will I need to reboot? There was some mention of it being like this on Macs with EFI Windows 8, but what about BIOS Windows7 or 8?
   
2. Since it's Thunderbolt, will I encounter any TOLUD/DSDT issues? I've seen some other folks mention that the T430s has a lower TOLUD, and I'd like to avoid the reboots and such associated with Setup 1.1x as much as possible.
   
3. I know the TH05 is only 2x 2.0 lanes, but since its higher bandwidth does that means the AMD cards will perform similarly to NVidia cards with 1.2Opt?
   

Appreciate the clarifications on any of this. I'm hoping that if everything looks good I'll move forward with getting the various parts in January and I'll be sure to keep everyone posted.