prosetheus

Hey. Thunderbolt 3 egpu's have officially been allowed by intel and partners and the race is on to provide enclosures and laptops by major manufacturers such as MSI etc. MSI is including a 'superport' in some new models that will allow you to add external gpus much more smoothly than possible now. Also, Lenovo is coming out with amazing new models with full thunderbolt 3 support. [h=1]https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-IFA-2015/ThinkPad-P50-amp-P70-Hands-On/td-p/2164261[/h]

Hi, I've been eying the Zbook 17 G2 as a replacement for my lenovo w520 but the cost is a deterrent for me. The zbook 17 g1 is available at much better prices. Can I get an estimate of how much it might cost to retrofit the g1 with TB2? And how complex would the procedure be along with the possibility of success? thanks.

Just wanted to make sure, ideally, for the W520, the egpu should run at x1.2 opt right? With over 12gb of ram and win 8.1, that does not seem to be possible? Asking because I am about to upgrade from 8 (4 x 4) gb of ram to 24 gb (4 x 4 x 8 x 8).

My friend will be bringing the gpu from the US in the first week of december so there is still some time till I can get it up and running. In case you or anyone else gets the time to pull this off before I do, here are the basic requirements for Limelight (Game streaming to other Android devices or P… | Nvidia Shield | XDA Forums) General requirements for current APK: SoC capable of decoding H.264 High Profile in hardware (Snapdragon, Exynos, Tegra 3 or higher, Rockchip, and more) OR an SoC powerful enough to decode in software (4 x Cortex-A9 at 1.5 GHz or similar) Android 4.1 or higher GeForce Experience with a GTX 600/700/800 GPU (GTX 600M/700M/800M supported with GeForce Experience 2.0) Steam Xbox, PS3 (with SixAxis app), Moga (HID mode), Shield, or Ouya controller (other controllers may work too in HID mode) Mid to high-end wireless router (preferably dual-band 802.11n or better) Good wireless connection to your Android device --------------- Please do bear in mind that limelight also has PC client side version as well, i.e. it can stream games to a low powered windows netbook/laptop/tablet as well. One of the best demonstrations of the capabilities of nvidia Gamestream (on its own proprietary hardware, NOT Limelight) I found so far was: I really hope this works well with egpu solutions or I'm screwed because I chose the 970 or the r9 290x Lightning which is for $321 now on newegg (after rebate). Let me know if you or anyone else gets the chance to try it out before I do.

Thank you for the suggestions guys. I ended up getting a MSI 970 to pair up with my W520. Hopefully I should be able to have a decent experience. One more thing, and this is somewhat important to me. Can anyone confirm whether nvidia Gamestreaming works over pe4l expresscard connections? That is basically a feature which allows nvidia cards to stream games to their Shield controller/tablet. I will be using Limelight, which is basically a hacked version of nvidias software that allows it to stream to any android device or even PC. Limelight is free and open source. It would be very helpful for me if someone could let me know what I can expect with that by testing it out on their end. relevant links: What is nvidia gamestream? Stream PC Games from your GeForce GTX Rig | NVIDIA SHIELD What is Limelight? Limelight Game Streaming Where to get it from? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.limelight&hl=en

Hey guys, need some help here. A friend is coming over from the US by end of november so I can order parts at good prices. At the moment I am faced with building a desktop or setting up an eGPU setup over EC with a W520 (2820qm + 8gb ram) I have. I will be gaming over external display at 1080P. For a diy egpu, which would give the best performance? GTX 780 Ti ($390) r9 290x (~$340 to 370) GTX 970 (~$340 to 360) Also, I wanted to get the opinions of the forum users about reliable figures for the power consumption of these cards, both stock and with reasonable, stable OC's, so I know which PSU i can get away with for cheapest. I play all kinds of games, but important to me is performance in MP shooters (BF4 etc) and open world games (GTA 4 and upcoming 5, Assassins Creed Black Flag) and later Arkham Knight. Much thanks in advance.

A very interesting product that will be released by MSI in January. A laptop with a proper, full sized PCI express slot in its side. MSI is selling the laptop as a dockable hybrid laptop/desktop MSI demonstrates their GS30 2-in-1 desktop gaming PC/laptop | PC Gamer

I would think twice before getting the WS60. I checked the specs on the link you provided and for some reason the WS60 only has 2 ram slots, whereas quad i7's support 4 ram slots. Thus the maximum RAM supported is actually only 16gb. And if you actually intend to use it as a workstation, 16 gb can be a limiting factor.

Thank you for your analysis. I will be following your experience closely, as I was interested in an AMD egpu as well. Shame to hear that you had problems with Crysis 3. Looking forward to comparisons in other games.

Waiting anxiously for the promised Thunderbolt 2 products to start showing up. I've been holding out on setting up a expresscard solution on my W520 as I've found the Quadro 2000m to be sufficient for medium-low settings at 1080p and flys if I lower the resolution. I was hoping that TB solutions would be available by now so I could set it up. Hopefully the next few months will bring good news. Looking forward to seeing you succeed with this. AMD already have the ability to crossfire between APU and dGPU, and if there could be a way to make this work with external gpu's, it would be hopefully lead to better performance at lower prices. Do you have the AMD dockport in mind when thinking of AMD egpu? AnandTech Portal | AMD

Just saw this guys (this forum is linked in the post as well) Review External Graphics Cards for Laptops - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

As far as I know, the diy egpu solution is for Intel processor equipped notebooks only. But on the topic of AMD, I also wanted to bring to the attention of forum experts this news: AnandTech Portal | AMD 2014 Mobile APU Update: Beema and Mullins Of importance in the above article is this:

You could use a can of compressed air to clean your heatsink without having to repaste. Just remember not to let the fan spin in the opposite direction whilst cleaning. You could also raise the back of the laptop whilst gaming, as in prop it up with something to increase airflow. A powerful laptop cooler might also help. On the software side, use throttlestop to manage processor speed. Most games are very poorly optimized and try to get the most out of turboboost, raising temps a lot for no good reason as they only utilize 2 or 3 cores at most. I even disable turboboost for older games.

Hope that TB2 egpu solutions become feasible/affordable soon, as next gen gaming is just around the corner. My dream machine would be a Surface Pro 2-like tablet/hybrid laptop with a TB2 port. However, that seems unlikely till atleast the next generation. Is there no way the egpu community can approach AMD for an alternative solution? They are both cornered and wishing to fight back tooth and nail against intel/nvidia at this point. I know they had an alternative to TB, I think they called it Lightpeak or something. Anyways, I think AMD would be far more open to considering eGPU as a viable product as they do not really have any hold in the mobile gaming marking (AMD's laptop CPU's being mostly useless for gaming, and nvidia also massively outsell them in mobile gpu market). Hey Nando, if you could get in touch with someone at AMD, I am sure the community here would definitely rally and show their support for such a cause.

How about running Throttlestop and disabling turboboost and adjusting multiplier to make the CPU run at speeds between stock and Max turbo. That is what i have to do in most games. This alone changes temps from 97 degrees to 88-90 degrees max on my 2820QM in the laptop in my sig. The W520 has very poor cooling whilst the GPU is running. What I would like to know is whether I should stick to what I am doing (its a one click solution really) or try undervolting like you did. Sorry if I am hijacking the thread but I felt this was better than starting a newer one as there are already people posting here.

Funny you should mention Battlefield 4, an upcoming major title HEAVILY optimized for AMD (mantle and multi threading). I think its necessary building a new PC to always look upto a year in advance than to consider the past or present. Unless one is running SLI'd or Crossfired multi gpu setups, the GPU will become a bottleneck much earlier than the CPU. What you are saying is also correct by the way. I only wanted to help the thread starter with very specific, simplified information to get him started without much trouble.

Thanks for the response b1te. Atleast now I can be sure that its the GPU dying thats the problem. I got the laptop from the US (newegg) back in dec 08, and not in the US at the moment, so will just try getting the GPU reballed locally if someone can do it for cheap otherwise just scrap it keep for parts.

Since you are new to the gaming world, I am going to assume that you will be playing a wide variety of games, and will likely prefer newer releases coming out before digging back into the classics in search of better games. AMD is the base for both PS4 and the Xbox One, and most major titles will be on both systems. Thus, just about all upcoming games will be optimized for AMD hardware. This is good for you, as AMD hardware is cheaper and offers more tweaking margin than Intel's mainstream CPU's. I would strongly recommend getting an AMD 8150 or 8350 processor and combining it with a ~$300 7970 GPU for future proof desktop gaming. For laptops, you should definitely go for Intel, as they are more expensive but better than AMDs lackluster CPU's. But again, with newer drivers, AMD GPU's will be helpful as they are much more cheaper than Nvidias severely over priced mobile (laptop) GPUs. So, in conclusion, AMD CPU + GPU for desktop Intel CPU + AMD GPU for laptop,

Thanks for the replies again guys. In case it is the cable or the GPU dying, I would be very grateful if you guys could suggest the where I can purchase both from? Since the GPU is a part of the motherboard (soldered instead of MXM), or if the cable is messed up, I would like to know a good online retailer to buy from. Is it even possible to buy just the motherboard of the MSI GX600? I will need the whole motherboard if the gpu is done.

Thank you for the response. I was hoping for a way to identify the problem. This occurredd before a couple of years ago and was fixed by a repair shop. It worked well for about a year again and I even played Mass Effect 3 on it for days. Then I didn't turn it on for a few months but when I did, the problem cropped up within an hour. I'd also like to add that this is a rebadged MSI GX600. could this be a problem with a cable that connects to the display?

I was unsure of which section to post this on, but I think this is where it might get the most visibility so here it goes. I really need help with this. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x15dhnr_laptop-problems_tech" target="_blank">Laptop Problems by http://www.dailymotion.com/jfp555" target="_blank">jfp555 If it does not embed properly, here is the link: Laptop Problems - Video Dailymotion Is there a solution to this problem? The laptop seems to be working just fine and boots into windows and I can even make out the display, use the mouse, shutdown, but obviously it is unusable. Specs are: C2D T5850 4 gb ram 8600m GT Win 7 The fault seems to be hardware based. not software. Much thanks in advance.

I was wondering, has anyone tried out the nvidia Shield handheld with a diy egpu setup yet? Would be an interesting experiment.

Not sure if this warranted a thread of its own as USB 3 has been discounted as a suitable solution for eGPU but still... USB 3.1 spec finalized, horns in on Thunderbolt’s turf with 10Gbps speeds | Ars Technica

The most powerful card you can plug in right now into that is the 780. Due to memory bandwidth limitations dual gpu cards are not and probably will not be supported through expresscard solutions. For that people are waiting for 2014 Falcon Ridge Thunderbolt update. A user named carage (on nbr forums I think) got a Titan running with his W520, but the difference was very small compared to his 670 4gb. So it is possible, but the card will be held back by memory bandwidth, and I think even more so in 3d applications.

I see where the misunderstanding is. This is for Adobe Photoshop. Unfortunately, what I am working with is Adobe Premiere. This link is what the Mercury Playback Engine is: Mercury Playback Engine | Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 - Adobe.com And in the list of cards under 'Accelerated Rendering', you'll see a huge amount of NVidia cards and only 2 AMD mobile cards, and that too only those that are in the macbook pros and work ONLY with Mac OS X, and NOTHING for even desktop AMD cards. As much as I hate Crapple, I have to admit that they were powerful enough to twist Adobe's arm after a huge amount of mac fans were horrified at the beatings their macbooks with equal specs and many times the cost got at the hands of much cheaper windows machines. And since Apple put in AMD gpu's into all macbooks, they had to work this out with Adobe. The fiasco was quite entertaining, but the result remains the same. AMD is suffering due to nVidia and Adobe's deal. But thats the way it is. On a side note, NVidia is now more scared of Intel and its iGPU's getting closer to mainstream user acceptability limits, and they allowed AMD to power ALL next gen consoles, hopefully giving AMD a fighting stance against Intel, also buying Nvidia some time to put out project shield.