DIY eGPU experiences

[User Retired 2]

You said to do a "selective compaction not including the 9800GTX in the selection". Is there a special switch for compact I should use? ..

See test1-test4 examples here for an idea of how to do selective compaction. In adddition I'd suggest do 32-bit compaction without the HD5670 attached, boot Win7, then standby, poweron DIY ViDock, resume, hopefully with a working HD5670. That is how andeelym got a working 9300M+HD5770 setup working.

You 9800M's vid:did is 10de:0617
Your HD5670's vid:did is 1002:68d8 1002:aa60. That is the gpu+audio controller.

I used DIY Setup boot disk and it says "Starting up Windows 98" then DOS command line comes in (there is no menu choice). What shall I do then? Which file shall I start to have the DIY SETUP menu started?
I did everything exactly as it is writen...

Did you copy the files from the image across to the USB drive? If so, booting it up and running 'dir' will list core, setup, bin, dos directories as well as a contents.txt file. If those files are missing then you did not copy the disk image contents across successfully. Please re-apply steps 1-3 here.

It started to do it today, even before I could achieve the additional performance, while I was trying. Could I get anything wrong permanently?

Do a cold shutdown, pull the battery for 10 seconds. This will ensure with 100% confidence the PCI Config space is cleared back to defaults. Upon your next boot your pci-e ports will be back to their crippled x1 1.0 speed.

[Fardavid]

Dear Nando,

Yes, I did copy all the files from the iso and I can check them with DIR command. I just don't know what start there as nothing starts automaticaly.

As for the shutdown, the laptop was off for the whole night and in the morning when I tried it it did the same, black screen on the laptop, no signal to the extended monitor and nothing worked. I read it in some of the posts that the mini HDMI cable that is coming from HWTOOLS is not very good quality, do you think it can cause this? It really looks like there is some kind of contact error somewhere...

[ithildin]

Radeon HD 5750 1GB vs. Geforce GTX 460 1GB - Performance Comparison

Ok I finally managed to complete a set of tests with a Geforce card without burning anything

Setup
Graphics cards:

• Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 5750 1GB
• Gainward Geforce GTX 460 1GB GS

Adapter: PE4H v1.0 + EC2C
Connection: PCI-e 1.0 x1E (see notes here)
Power supply: 550W EZ Cool single rail ATX PSU, 400W Corsair 400CX single rail ATX PSU
Drivers: Catalyst 10.6, Forceware 258.96

Results

GPU	Score		Average FPS
	3dmark06	3dmark Vantage (GPU only)	DMC4 (scene 4)		RE5 (variable)		WiC		DiRT 2		BF:Bad Company 2
			DX9	DX10	DX9	DX10	DX9	DX10	DX9	DX11	DX9	DX10	DX11
HD5750 x1E	10392	5442	67.61	43.84	65.5	44.9	29	19	41.59	31.59
GTX 460 x1E	5249	7225	57.75	69.58	70.4	64.5	22	24	58.51	58.18	33.36	31.57	31.99
GTX 460 x1	5221	7200	53.4	70.33	68.2	62.6	21	25	58.99	58.56	32.86	33.39	31.59

Observations

• DirectX 9: the HD 5750 is generally the best performer but the gap is not as wide as the 3dmark06 scores would suggest. In the case of DiRT 2 and RE5, the GTX 460 even ends up being the fastest card.
• DirectX 10: The GTX 460 is the clear winner here with consistently better perfomance than the Radeon HD 5750.
• DirectX 11: Coming soon...
• x1 vs x1E: There is no significant difference in GTX 460 performance, confirming Nando's earlier results

Noise & Power consumption

The GTX 460 is a reasonably quiet card that still draws considerable power compared to the HD 5750 although nothing like the GTX 465 I previously tested. If noise and power consumption are high on your regards then a Radeon H57xx is still your best bet but for all round performance the GTX 460 seems like a great option for DIY Vidockers.

At first I've powered the card with a 550W EZ cool single rail PSU to ensure ample supply. Unfortunately, only recently I realized that this PSU has pretty poor reviews and is known for its unrealiability. I've now replaced it with a Corsair 400W 400CX single rail PSU that is 80 Plus certified - the difference in build quality and performance is palpable and well worth the extra money (around 30-40 quid). This PSU barely hums at all under load while the EZ Cool popped and whined under any sort strain.

I used a Wattage meter to measure the total power consumption of PE4H + GPU + PSU:

• Idle power consumption (laptop off): 20-25W
• Windows 7 Desktop (Aero): 25-32W
• Various gaming benchmarks: 88-125W
• Peak power consumption: 139W

I haven't stressed the GPU too hard yet (Furmark tests are next). The peak test was accomplished in DiRT 2 in one of the map screens - it's a basic 2D in 3D scene that is rendered at full speed (344 FPS) and uses low polygon shapes and limited textures. The GPU burns another 14W in this setting alone and generally draws more power when the framerate climbs to 60+ FPS. Perhaps enforcing VSYNC on all games is a way to limit power consumption so that a smaller PSU can be used to power the GTX 460 - I'll investigate this further.

Coming soon...

• Completing BC2 tests
• Furmark tests for peak power consumption
• Fixing the 3dmark links

[Fardavid]

Just one idea, Nando4. Perhaps there should be a chapter on page 1 for some troubleshooting with links where people write down what problems they had and attach a link where they write down how they solved it. I think that would help to many... including me. But it's just an idea...

[jamesbond007]

wow those are some very good results by the gtx 460. I wonder how well they will perform under x2 connections. Might consider changing my 5770 to a gtx 460 if it is much better than than the 5770 at x2

[Scrat9876]

Andeelym,

I am glad you have had success
Below you state;

DIY ViDock Implementation:
Using the bootdisk, I compact everything 32bit without my desktop gfx card (Ati 5770). That cleared a nice 256mb of space. I chainloaded to Windows 7 and then connect the Ati 5770 which is detected without problems.

What was the compact command you used to compact everything to 32bit space without the desktop card on?

Thanks,

Scrat9876

[Scrat9876]

Hello NANDO4,

Well I did not have the luck that Andeelym had.

I made the four files for compact which are attached below.

Every one indicated that there was multiple Nvidia/ATI cards detected and it could not determine which were external or internal and then failed to map or change the IO space. This occurred even when I had the desktop ATI card turned off and out of the picture entirely. It also occured when I tried a straight 32bit space compaction. My internal NVidia 9800M chip set creates two 256M windows at D0000000 and E0000000. This appears to be confusing compact. I then tried;

pciend 310000000 ignore 10de:0617 useonly 1002:68d8 1002:aa60 force32 1002:68d8 1002:aa60 import devcon.txt makebatch pci.bat verbose

Which I thought should tell compact to ignore the NVidia chip set. Still got the error.

Until I can get compact to not error out with this error, I don't think any other compaction / mapping will succeed.

One thought, Maybe if I can force 10de:0617 (9800M card) to the C0000000 and D000000 space instead of D0000000 and E0000000 that it takes up now, Win7 will find the space at E0000000 for the ATI card? Do you know the command to do this?

Any other Ideas are appreciated.

Thanks,

Scrat9876

[Fardavid]

So, I went up to my friend's place to check my system. Right now although nor Windows or Everest shows no error at port 3 nothing happens when I plug the card to the laptop. My friend has the same laptop, and everything works fine with that. Also I tried his video card with his PE4L in my laptop and still nothing happened. When I plug the express card the fan on the video card slows down so I guess it communicates with the laptop, but port 3 is empty in Everest. What shall I do? Does it help if I reinstall the whole windows again? Are you sure I couldn't adjust anything permanently with BAREDIT, even if I clicked on save?

[andeelym]

Andeelym,

I am glad you have had success
Below you state;

DIY ViDock Implementation:
Using the bootdisk, I compact everything 32bit without my desktop gfx card (Ati 5770). That cleared a nice 256mb of space. I chainloaded to Windows 7 and then connect the Ati 5770 which is detected without problems.

What was the compact command you used to compact everything to 32bit space without the desktop card on?

Thanks,

Scrat9876

Hi Scrat9876,

This is the command used:

pciend 100000000 import \core\devcon.txt makebatch %DRV%:\core\pci.bat

I am using menu-based and basically choosing 32bit compacting of all devices without the DIY ViDock connected. After compacting is done, I chainload to w7 and in windows, I then connect the card and it got up and working.

[Fardavid]

Guys, I reinstall win7 and plug again the card and received this information:

Imageshack - kp01491.jpg - Uploaded by fardavid

What shall I do?