DIY eGPU experiences

[blizzard2012]

5ft, US$5.61-shipped, confirmed by DIY eGPU to do the job: Gold Plated 1080P HDMI Mini V1.3 M-M Connection Cable - Black (1.5M-Length) - Free Shipping - DealExtreme . Only dilemma is waiting for it to arrive.

You should have no issues with any moderate length (<7ft) 1.3/1.4 specced mHDMI cable running pci-e 1.x on your PE4L 1.5.

lovely, just what i needed.

Thanks alot, Nando.

[noric]

Thanks yeah I'll give it a go. I was hoping I could get it detected at least. I have tried to plug in and turn on the GPU before powering on the laptop already, with no luck.

I'm aware that a Fermi card is preferred but am I right in saying there should be no need for the setup 1.x program when using Sandy Bridge and ATI?

If the card has not enough power, it's possible that it isn't even detected.
With an ATI card it's true that you don't need to use setup 1.x in order to get the card detected.
But once the card will be detected by windows, it's possible that you'll get error 12 and in order to solve error 12 you'll need to use either setup 1.x or DSDT override method.

[andes83]

Hello everyone, would you recommend a good online shop for video cards I'm planing on making an external setup for my HP 4530s and I'm looking for a good card on a good price. A gtx460 or a gtx560. I've found a lot of offers from different shops on the internet but I can't decide on either of them, because I'm concerned about quality, shipping cost and etc. If you can suggest a quality online shopping service that is reliable and not very expensive I would appreciate it.Thanks in advance.

[AkeWing]

eGPU on USB 3.0 is dead ?

(Sorry for my very bad english, i'm french.)

[fatpolomanjr]

Success plus enclosure:

T420 PE4L 2.1b.

[tamirt7138]

my company has developed a wireless PCIe implementation (1x moving to 4x), we are able to show complete cable free setup for eGPU, would love to get in touch with you nando4 to get help on various code 12/HPUP issues

[User Retired 2]

my company has developed a wireless PCIe implementation (1x moving to 4x)(www.wilocity.com), we are able to show complete cable free setup for eGPU, would love to get in touch with you nando4 to get help on various code 12/HPUP issues

Wow! Thank you for your post. If you have a reliable wireless mPCIe 2.0 solution then it would be very highly desirable by users who have no expresscard slot. Pretty much ever notebook has a mPCIe slot and routing cables to it can prove challenging if there is no access door for it or the wifi slot is under the keyboard. eg: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony...gpu-setup.html . Furthermore, USB 3.0 eGPU solutions hit a wall with driver support so don't look to be happening anytime soon. Ultrabook owners too could then have an expansion option with your solution. I just hope it's affordable and runs at pci-e 2.0 speed.

As for the software required to use it, you'll encounter whitelisting issues with Lenovo/HP/Acer notebook mPCIe slots so the port need to have configured using a number of techniques by using software like DIY eGPU Setup 1.x. That software is currently distributed as restricted donationware by HIT here.

It's unusual timing as I've just implemented a F5-rescan mode in the upcoming Setup 1.11a release to do 1sec looped poll for the eGPU till it's detected or user hits ENTER to exit. A sneak peek of the new features as they stand today are in the spoiler.

Spoiler :

1.11a (2012-05-23)
-------------------

Version inc from 1.10->1.11 indicating moderate improved functionality.

NEW! Series-7 Chief River chipset support (5GT/s), hosting Ivy Bridge cpus.
NEW! DSDT override now integrated with these changes:
     PCI compaction->method[] changed to endpoint[]
     32/36/64bit endpoints listed. User matches one to their root bridge.
     Run compact menuitem issues warning if using 36/64-bit endpoint.
     Diags now capture 3.87MB and 56.25GB endpoint test compaction.
     Updated doco about DSDT override and new endpoints.
NEW! F5-rescan will now poll for the eGPU if it's not detected.
NEW! Extra boot menuitems for extended functionality:     
     'DOS prompt (clean)' - useful for bios/video flashing.
     'Setup 1.x DOS Prompt (safe mode)'. Skips scrnshot util for prob sys.
NEW! Improved Setup 1.x DOS prompt:
     eGPU/devcon 'not found' banner now matches menu-based one.
     added F1, F3, F5/F6, F10 hotkeys for banner to make sense
     Hitting F5/F6 now shows chipset+GPU+port status like menu-based.
     better names: grub4dos.bat->chainload.bat, capture.bat->scrnshot.bat
     'ifs shell' now does countdown while waiting for shell option.
NEW! Cosmetics: bootitems banner, warning msgs, iport help improved.
     Changed all anti-whitelisting references to undo-whitelisting.
NEW! Mouse now works on Dell Latitude series.
FIX! Extended wait_e command with keys_list parameter. 
FIX! Windows Diags' \devcon\mkpcidmp captures lspci config space info.
FIX! Simplified grub4dos menu.lst file replaces menu.[xp,win,lin,uef,mbr].
FIX! iport command passes up to 8 params to underlying cmds.
FIX! Countdown now reads keys using wait instead of xewc (Macbook prob). 
FIX! Prevent second menu-based Setup run (eg: setup->IFS shell->setup).
FIX! Using pciids.gz, making distrib ~200KB smaller.

compact (2012-4-22) details:

NEW! Don't close unused bridges (no devices behind them). If want the old
     behavior of closing them, pass "closeunusedbridges" as an argument.
FIX! Fixed a bug where the DEVCON resources importer was incorrectly 
     ignoring certain ranges. Earlier it was ignoring ranges bigger 
     than 80000000. The intended threshold is 0x80000000 in hex!

Update: grub4dos-0.4.5c-2012-05-22, nvflash-5.117.0.1-2012-3-2, 
        pci-ids-2012-5-7, Tianocore_UEFI_UDK_DUET_X86_64.img-2012-4-21,
        doslfn-041b-2012-2-7.

Can discuss commercial licensing with HIT or PM me (need to have 5 or more posts).

[ffejeff224]

Hi, I have just recently started reading through this thread after looking for external graphics cards solutions. I am very interested to see if I can pull this off but before I go invest money I would like to make sure that my system is compatible with an eGPU.

System Specs:

Windows XP Professional
2x Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz
4 GB RAM
NVIDIA NVS 160m GPU

TOLUD is 3.5

External Monitor Will be used.

I wasn't sure if I would be able to do this because I have Windows Xp. All the examples I see are with Windows 7 so I wasn't sure if it was possible in Xp.

I also understand that because my TOLUD is 3.5 I will have to do a DSDT workaround, but I didn't understand the instructions on how capture and edit the DSDT table.

Thank you in advance for any help.

[User Retired 2]

I am very interested to see if I can pull this off but before I go invest money I would like to make sure that my system is compatible with an eGPU.

System Specs:

Windows XP Professional
2x Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz
4 GB RAM
NVIDIA NVS 160m GPU

TOLUD is 3.5

External Monitor Will be used.

I wasn't sure if I would be able to do this because I have Windows Xp. All the examples I see are with Windows 7 so I wasn't sure if it was possible in Xp.

I also understand that because my TOLUD is 3.5 I will have to do a DSDT workaround, but I didn't understand the instructions on how capture and edit the DSDT table.

Specs look like a Dell E6400, so the Dell E4300 DSDT override examples could almost be copied straight. The E6400 should also be x2 capable which you'd want to implement for best performance since the NVS160M model isn't x1.Opt capable.

I found XP doesn't need the primary adapter working so you could consider an alternative to the DSDT override where the dGPU would be disabled using Setup 1.x, a eGPU hijaaks it's pci-e space and boot to only the active eGPU. Only issue is there would be a blind boot b/w disabling the eGPU and WinXP starting up.

Before proceeding you may want to (1) ask other E6400 users to see if someone wants to do a NVS160M to 4500MHD systemboard swap so you could get x1.Opt performance (2) consider obtaining Win7 for a better user experience and (3) consider selling up and grab a SB/IVB notebook that capable of significantly faster x1.2Opt performance .

Expect good deals on SB runout 14" models such as a Dell E6420/3450, Lenovo T420/E420, HP 8560P/4430s. Can see others in the thin-and-light link in my sig.

[tamirt7138]

nando4, any way we can discuss off forum? not sure what I have in mind would be of public interest