DIY eGPU experiences

[SimoxTav]

Yes, I meant other than these

[sklsy]

I'm having a weird issue with my eGPU setup.

Here's my config:

Thinkpad X220 (bios set to gen 1) - Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
PE4H + EC2C
Power supply
eVGA GTX460 768MB
Verde 295.73 + kizwan's nvam.inf (32/64-bit) - Optimus

The eGPU works fine when going through the internal LCD display AND when I connect my external LCD monitor to the LAPTOP VGA port.

However, when I connect the external LCD monitor to the back of the video card (using VGA -> DVI dongle that came with the card), I get nothing. When the computer starts up in this configuration, the LCD is blank. If I take the DVI connection off the video card, my internal LCD display will show up. If I plug in the connection to the video card after I've booted and then attempt to detect the monitor, I get nothing. If I plug the connection into my laptop VGA port, it's fine so the monitor isn't bad. I've tried different DVI/VGA dongles with no success.

Would I even get a performance benefit if I ran the display out of the back of the graphics card as opposed to the laptop VGA port? If not, I'm not going to even bother with this.

The DVI-VGA adapter is possibly the problem. Try to plug a native DVI or HDMI monitor. If it works, then you can switch back to your VGA monitor and install older drivers.(The 175.33? works on my VGA monitor while the latest driver fails.)

[e_townbeatdown]

Hello All,

Long time reader, first time poster. I am not very computer savy so this project was very difficult for me. My current set up includes:

hp pavillion dv6t quad edition
PE4H (express card>mhdmi>pcie thing>card>monitor)
GTX 560ti
external monitor

I have it working and all, that is, the external monitor is working fine, but I feel like I am not getting anywhere near the performace I should be getting from that card.

I have read about this bottle neck deal, but thats where my understanding stops. Is it possible to get around this bottleneck with my equipment? What would I need to buy to get around it? How would I go abvout doing this?

Help!

Thanks in advance. Anxiously awaiting any info. Cheers.

[DrizzitT]

Plays Diablo 3 at 1080P pretty well (everything maxed), was getting some stuttering but I believe that was due to a ethernet driver. There are some slowdowns/low FPS areas though. I'll report back after I try it out with the current setup.

So reporting back, x220 with GTX 560 Ti does drop to low frame rates in some of the outdoor areas on Diablo 3. Has anyone else seen this issue? It seems to drop from 59/60 (Vsynced), to low teens. Still very playable (max settings).

[nefx]

Guys please check the difference PC/EGPU P4EL/P4EH GTX 560/GTX 670.
GTX 560 at P4EH lose 20% EGPU between desktop. P4EL lose 10%. GTX670 lose 50% between 3Ghz DualCore i5?

[Kuro-D]

Guys please check the difference PC/EGPU P4EL/P4EH GTX 560/GTX 670.
GTX 560 at P4EH lose 20% EGPU between desktop. P4EL lose 10%. GTX670 lose 50% between 3Ghz DualCore i5?

I'm confused what you are asking specifically..

the front page has lots of links to comparisons, and what kind of performance you might expect from various configurations.

[jacob_s]

Diablo 3 seems to be working well with eGPU. There are still some micro lags at 1080p maxed out, but some of that is just latency from Blizzard's servers, which still seems to be a problem occasionally. Has anyone found any good configurations for optimal performance? I set the Max foreground FPS to like 60, and have everything else turned up to high with AA on, but I'm curious if there are settings in some ini file to tweak somewhere.

I am still having some trouble with chain loading the MBR in Setup 1.x - it seems I have to have my secondary HDD removed in order for it to boot to the correct primary drive (though it appears configured correctly in the BIOS). I then have to quickly reinsert the drive immediately after I start the chain load since that drive has all of my games and stuff.

Also, what kind of benchmarks would be beneficial for me to run for posting here? I'm wondering if I have enough bandwidth to run FRAPS in the background and get some stats that way.

[nefx]

I'm confused what you are asking specifically..

the front page has lots of links to comparisons, and what kind of performance you might expect from various configurations.

I asked whats % of desktop perfomance i can achive from P4EH/P4EL at GTX560/670. I have 560 and suppose that i2520/P4EL is bootle neck for GTX670.

[blizzard2012]

Does anyone know where can i get at least 3ft flat hdmi cables for egpu.
Any types or brands i should look out for?
The ones provided are a little too short for my set-up.

Thanks

Anyone? Any online stores that sells them?

[Kuro-D]

I asked whats % of desktop perfomance i can achive from P4EH/P4EL at GTX560/670. I have 560 and suppose that i2520/P4EL is bootle neck for GTX670.

the PE4L even running at x1.2opt is going to bottle neck any performace card, probably the same 10-25% less than equivilant desktop performance depending on application (my guess)

now as for is the 670 worth the upgrade from a 560?.. thats up to you

there will be a performance increase in certain apps... when comparing my gtx680 to similasr systems with a 560, to me it looks like a nice increase.

And since I was gonna lose speed via the pcie connection, I wanted all the "extra speed" I could get to kinda make up for it..

but is it worth the money??, probably not to most people.

and to me the 670 is a great card (I have two in sli on the desktop), comes within just mere % of the 680 once you over clock it. (definitly better bang for buck between the two)

So to me... if you want a comparison between the 560 and 670, google has lots of review sites with numbers.. and for whichever you decide on just assume that it will be worse case, 25% less than those review speeds on average (due to pcie bottleneck.. your cpu is more than fast enough to not bottle neck performance much, if at all)

you are going to have to make some judgements and infer from other sources, because nobody is going to have a perfect compare on those two cards over an egpu connection with a laptop similar to yours.. hence why I stated refer to front page in my previous comment