noric

@rhx123

Thanks for your benchmarks!

Would you mind looking at device manager to see what's the PCI address space required by the GTX 750 Ti? Older GTX 650 Ti card used to require a higher PCI space than all other nvidias. You will find it out in device manager > GTX 750 TI > Resources. Thanks!

@the_grinch

You want a PE4L or a PE4H. If you don't plan to change your notebook soon, older versions of PE4L or PE4H will work too, but if you plan to switch to a sandy bridge or later system you want a PE4L 2.1 or a PE4H 3.x.

Great news!

What's the PCI address space required by the GTX 750 Ti? Has nvidia increased it over previous cards?

Probably, but how would you do it? And that hot air would be blowing in the case so the temps are going up anyway.

I don't exactly understand what you are saying. If I use a blower fan (they use to call this way fans which exhaust out of the pci-express bracket) it won't blow inside the enclosure, it will blow outside.

I was wondering if it would be better to use a graphics card with a blower (single) fan (which exhausts hot air out of the rear of the vga) instead of a double fan (which cools down more effectively but doesn't exhaust air out). I was wondering this especially if I'm going to use a closed enclosure. Would it be wiser to use a blower fan vga?

amarD said:

EDIT: Okay, so it turns out Lenovo whitelists WLAN cards in the BIOS, and I can't use anything but a Lenovo-branded card ... Ugh, so it looks like I either have to buy another laptop or build a PC (I'd rather not take up a USB port with a wifi adapter as I only have two and using a hub isn't ideal as I'm often on the go). In other news, the GTX 750 Ti arrived today ...

You may want to search if a custom bios with removed whitelisting is available. https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/forum/55-lenovo/

Thanks guys, your knowledge is almost endless!

About the 5V thing, I think I'll supply extra 5V juice too, since I don't think it's a good idea to pull much current out of the express card. My notebook does stand an external hdd through a usb3 expresscard adapter, so it may work for eGPU too, but it's better not to stress it, if possible.

Another option is waiting for the new upcoming PE4L and see if they eliminate that 5V requirement. AFAIR it's one of nando's requests to the manufacturer.

Nothing wrong with using that power supply, but as you said, the 5V requirement for the adapter would need an additional circuit to dropdown the 12V to a 5V.

Would you mind showing me an example of such dropdown circuit? I'm not so expert. :-)

Would it be possible to use a 12V power supply such as theese? Or will the 5V requirement of the PE4L make this not possible?

Would be interesting to see how these new Maxwell architecture scales on our limited 5Gb/s bus. Do you think we should expect any difference versus previous Kepler/Fermi cards? It looks like GTX 670/760 are already bottlenecking our x1 PCIe interface.

Quote

@noric - I didn't run TS Bench sorry... I reviewed nando's test procedure and did the test properly this time (I hope!). Here's the full table, including temperature Max:

		x12	x23	x24	x25	x26	x27	x28	x29	x30	x31	x32	x33	x34	x35
i7-2860QM	VID	0.8206	0.9707	0.9857	1.0007	1.0308	1.0558	1.0858	1.1158	XX	XX	XX	XX	XX	XX
45W / kaladeth	TDP	14	27.8	29.4	31.1	33.5	37.6	41.2	44.2	XX	XX	XX	XX	XX	XX
	TEMP	68	73	78	80	83	86	90	93

When I try to go past x29 the power goes past 45W for a few cycles and the CPU gets throttled back down to ~x28.6.

@Nando - Do you think running with a better heat sink / without the back cover will let the 2860QM go past x29? Would you know if it can reach x32 theoretically?

@noric - Sorry for the delay! Not sure if I used the program correctly, but the voltage is around ~1.23V and ~42.3W when set to Turbo. When set to x27 multiplier, the voltage drops to ~1.06V and ~24.1W.

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Thank you very much kaladeth!

Did you get those results during the TS-bench? If that's the case, you did it right! It would be a great find for SB systems, because Tech Inferno Fan's findings here would appear to be limited to his specific system (HP 2560P).

I was hoping that maybe Win7 unparking would help matching FPS in "Welcome to the Jungle" for Win8.

There is no given reason Win8 should out perform Win7 AFAIK.

Thanks for your info!

Yes, I agree with you. This should be the test to try.

Hey Nando, do you think we can safely assume win8.1 allows 1.2 link with disabled integrated graphics? Something like xp days?

Did I answer your question?

Yup, very well. Thank you very much.

I had already been using an extensive set of 2570P tweaks as documented at http://forum.techinferno.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/2537-12-5-hp-elitebook-2570p-owners-lounge.html#post38399 . Without the ASPMs tweak, the 2570P's SD/MMC upgraded controller was consuming an addition ~1.8W idle power making it significantly worse than a 2560P.

Very interesting list of battery tweaks.

Overall, I'm happy with the performance. These numbers are without overclocking, and apparently with OC many of these TiB cards can get to within 10% of a GTX660. Maybe a future project...

About your xbox psu (very interesting ), How did you get the red cable (5V) to be detachable from the PE4L? It can't go through that 8 pin cpu cable, can it?

sskillz shows a SB i7-2760QM (ES) consumes 36W at x27 (Throttlestop bench) at http://forum.techinferno.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/2090-hp-elitebook-2560p-owners-lounge-%5Bversion-2-0%5D-2.html#post79495 . In 2570P thread we see a IVB i7-quad consumes between 22W-26W at x27, depending on individual CPU binning REF: http://forum.techinferno.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/2537-12-5-hp-elitebook-2570p-owners-lounge-37.html#post77432 . So IVB is 10-14W more efficient at x27. sskillz sees only x27 with 4-cores running, a significant drop from the "x32 on 4-cores" Intel rating. That's because of TDP throttling.

Can such a huge downclock be related only to TDP? He probably had some overheating, because from 36 to 45W there's still some headroom. Nice step up on IB, by the way.

About idle power, I read on a german forum some time ago that the Lenovo E530 was also more power hungry ad idle than the E520. It was something like 5 vs 6 hours battery life, so pretty much the same as you are finding on your hp notebooks.

Hey nando, what about idle power consumption in SB vs. IB? That's a very important factor in a mobile environment. Did you say anything about IB being more consuming at idle? This could only be tested on IB system, by pulling the IB cpu and plugging a similar specifications SB cpu...

@kaladeth: could you please try to see in throttlestop the voltage and TDP at maximum multithread performance and at x27 multiplier (such as nando is testing)? Also, what about the temps of your 2860qm? Thanks.

No, I don't have it yet. But I was wondering if it would make any sense going for a GTX670 to play at 1080p.

@bjorm: do you think there would be any advantage going from a GTX660Ti to a GTX670, with a 1080p configuration? I ask because the only difference between those cards is the memory bandwidth, which (I think) could be more than enough for a 1080p configuration even on the GTX660Ti.

For the 8 pin power cable, I cut the wires in the middle, separating the male and female 8 pin connectors to make the system a little more portable. I hooked up the male side to the power supply and the female side is on the egpu side, this way I could separate the psu from the egpu. If I didn't do this, then I would have to solder the power supply directly to all the connections, which doesn't work with my future plans to make an enclosure.

Great idea! But how did you get the red cable (5V) to be detachable from the PE4L? It can't go through that 8 pin cpu cable, can it?

The 175W is missing the two small (extra 12V and gnd) wires that the 203W had, so there's only 8 total wires (6x12V switched, 6xGnd, 1x5V always on, 1xsense for switching on 12V).

My long-term goal is to get a project box for my eGPU, so I used one of these:

StarTech EPS8EXT 8" EPS 8 Pin Power Extension Cable - Newegg.com

as a connector between the PSU and eGPU. I ran 12V and 5V using a floppy Molex connector to the PE4L, and also soldered a gpu power plug. I put a switch between the 5V and power-on sense wire, and on the sense wire side, ran the 5V to the PE4L. This way I have switched 12V and 5V.

Did you mean 3x12V and 3xGnd?

Also, what did you do with that 8 pin power extension cable?

Thanks.

phillofoc GTX650Ti Boost has a 128MB+32MB+16MB allocation same as a GTX660 or better card. *some* GTX650 cards require 256MB+16MB which would cause issues with his 2570P since there is no bios-allocated 256MB block free. Meaning he'd either need Setup 1.x or a DSDT override to be able to host one of those problematic cards. Same with AMD cards which too require 256MB+16MB.

GTX460-GTX580 cards require 128MB+64MB+16MB. Hence I suggest tread carefully with those GTX650 cards or just skip them and get a GTX560Ti or GTX660.

203W XBOX360 PSU has a 12V/16.5A rail (198W) and a 5V/1A rail (5W). It would be touch-and-go powering a GTX680. Though if you read some comments by bjorm here he suggests a GTX680 has very little performance benefit over a GTX670 on a x1.2Opt link. Something I agree with. a GTX670 has a 170W TDP, comfortably accomodated by that 203W adapter.

If you used a XBOX360 175W AC adapter instead then you'd be limited to 12V/14.2A (170.4W) + 5V/1A (5W). That would be pushing it for a GTX670 with a 170W TDP but would be fine for a GTX660Ti with 150W TDP.

Thanks Tech Inferno Fan. I was thinking that the GTX 670 weren't so appealing, because it's the same as the 660 Ti other than a higher memory bus width. Isn't such a high memory bandwidth a bit overkill for playing in 1080p? Just asking.

Edit: to accomodate the 670 with the 175W psu, would I be able to do it by undervolting the card? Or it wouldn't startup?

Thanks for the info. About the memory allocation, I think you're right. The second memory block in your screenshots is a 128MB block and the other two are even smaller, so I'd guess this vga is like ordinary nVidia ones. Infact the chip is different from the stock GTX 650 Ti, if I'm not mistaken.

Would you guys think that the XBOX 203W psu would have enough juice for a GTX 680 (rated 195W by nVidia site)? Other option would be a GTX 660 Ti (rated 150W), for which I would opt for the XBOX 175W adapter. What do you think about it? If the XBOX 203W adapter can't power the GTX 680, then I'll go for the smaller 175W psu.

Thanks.

I finally got my eGPU set up with a GTX650Ti Boost. I'm using a 175W XBOX 360 PSU. All these scores are using the internal LCD, but if anyone wants me to run the benchmarks on an external please let me know.

Thanks for the benchmarks! Could you please tell me if your GTX 650 Ti Boost needs a 256MB memory block (like ordinary GTX 650 Ti) or if it uses 128MB+64MB+32MB slots (like all other nVidias)? Thank you. You can see it in device manager.

Edit: also, could you tell me anything about your 175W XBOX psu implementation? Is it any different than the 203W psu?

It would require a ME 7.x -> 8.x firmware upgrade to support Ivy Bridge CPUs and a hack one at that. Intel do not support Intel 3rd gen CPUs on Series-6 chipsets. That means their partners like Lenovo will not either.

I'm still waiting for some brave soul, perhaps a HP 2560P owner, to try to flash ME 8.x firmware (as used on Series-7 chipset) on their system and see what happens. If it boots and CPU has turbo clocks then it would be a success and a IVB CPU test needs to be done next.

Agreed, having SB and IVB CPU upgradability on the Series-6 chipset would give more choice when shopping for a upgrade CPU. SB CPUs are otherwise likely cost more than equivalent IVB parts due to being the only CPU available for Series-6 chipsets. Series-7 can use either IVB or SB.

Well, I thought ME firmware were included in the bios. However, if you say that Intel officially doesn't support this, I doubt that Lenovo will. I wonder what microcode they have implemented, by the way...

Thanks for the info, anyway.