Dear Nando4 et-al, first of all let me express my admiration, thanks and appreciation for all this terrific information on setting up a DIY eGPU, and the massive amount of work that's gone into it. I'm coming late to the DIY eGPU party but would like to announce my arrival and say I'm sure I couldn't have done it without you. I've got my eGPU working first time with the PE4H and a PCIe 1.0 1x connection via the expresscard port of my Dell Studio 1747 (Win 7 64-bit, 4GB RAM). I had a some fun and games with the AMD drivers at first: having an AMD dGPU already in my system (venerable HD 4650) I went for an AMD eGPU in the form of a Sapphire HD 7750 thinking this would be more compatible than an NVidea... The initial process of putting the computer to sleep, powering up the card and plugging in the expresscard connector, then waking up worked like a dream! The default VGA drivers installed and the new hardware was listed in device manager. However, then installing the AMD driver for the eGPU seemed to uninstall/stuff the driver for the dGPU leaving me only with the default VGA monitor driver and no way to connect the the external monitor. I'm using my Samsung PS51D550 TV as the external monitor but no other monitors appeared initially after installing the eGPU driver (from the CD-ROM that came with the Sapphire card). I managed to roll back the driver for the dGPU and then on a reboot hey-presto! my desktop came back on the connected TV via the eGPU at 1080p resolution - success! No problems with memory allocation etc. My Dell has 4GB RAM and following the advice on the summary of the thread my TOLUD checked out OK which gave me the confidence to pull the trigger on the BPlus adapter and additional equipment. Since the HD 7750 has a low power demand I'm just using a laptop power adapter (16V 72W) connected to the DC jack of the PE4H and this seems to be providing the required juice, though I haven't stressed the card much yet. With this being a low spec/power card I'm not sure benchmarks would be of much interest to the community. Not being a big gamer (at the moment at least!) my goal initially is to convert my laptop to an HTPC capable of playing 3D blu-rays, which the original onboard dGPU and HDMI 1.2 can't do. Unfortunately I can't test this yet as oddly Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre 5.3 refuses to run at all when the HD 7750 is active - I'll have to get on to Arcsoft about this.... In addition, when I power up the eGPU and plug the HDMI lead into the TV a dreadfull high-pitched whistling commences - it seems to emanate from the ferrite cores on the power lead for the TV which seems totally weird to me. The whistling alters in pitch and intensity depending on what is going on on the display - I'd be grateful if any formum contributers have any ideas on this and/or the TMT 5 issue. Teething problems are to be expected no doubt and hopefully I'll overrcome them shortly. However this doesn't detract from the fact that the eGPU is definately working. When connected I now have the option for 23Hz refresh rate (missing with the HD 4650) and conventional 2D blu-rays play very smoothly with no missed frames/stutters (with the 24P mode of the display engaged) which is a great improvement. And with headphones connected I can't hear that dratted whistle! So Kudos and many thanks to you Nando4!
