DIY eGPU experiences

[mattlach]

Wow,

This is really interesting, I had no idea you could do this!

Two questions:

1.) If the desktop graphics card is fully bus powered, and thus does not require a 4 or 6pin plug, do you still need a power supply, or will this provide sufficient bus power directly from the laptop?

2.) Is there any way to make this work with an AGP card? I only play very light games, and don't want to spend lots of money on another desktop video card. (Already have a GTX470 in my desktop rig) Civilization IV runs on my laptop as it is with the integrated Intel HD graphics, but despite its age, I think my old AGP 6800GT I have laying around would be faster (by at least double)

Much appreciated!

--Matt

[shioshikari]

Cool Thanks nando4, So just to make sure I follow this guide when I obtain all the parts. http://forum.notebookreview.com/gami...iy-vidock.html
Another thing is I run Linuxmint 9 Isadora and would it be compatibility(I am dual booting Vista so I could do it there just curious if it would work).

[flaunt]

-deleted-

sorry its working now..

[flaunt]

So i am having difficulties getting my setup to work.

I have everything connected - I am using a corsair 400W supply; geforce GTX 460 MSI; and PE4L;

My system specs are:
Dell XPS M1330 T8400 (2.4GHZ)
4GB ram
NVIDIA geforce 8400M GS
Win 7 64-bit

When I power everything on while asleep and turn the system back on - Immediately, my USB input devices stop working and it detects the card. It "fails" installation and list the device as standard VGA device with no drivers.

At one time I got a code 10 - cannot start device or something like that.

Another oddity, if I try to re-enable USB or disable the external graphics card or anythign like that - my computer will blue screen and restart - with a BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER error or something like that.

Also - I have the latest nvidia drivers installed on my laptop graphics card - and when i try to install again, it will not recognize the external card - or sometimes it will try to install and HD AUDIO driver...


Any help?

Update: I can see the device in everest as a standard VGA adapter/audio adapter in port 4 -
and also the system device manager has the device in 36-bit space under port 4 - however the nvidia drivers will not recognize it - AND The USB devices on my system do not work. If i mess around with device manager I will blue screen.

[User Retired 2]

Any help?

Set system to have only 2GB of RAM installed to achieve first milestone of a working setup, complete with drivers installed and no USB issues. Then work from that point to get 4GB working.

[flaunt]

Set system to have only 2GB of RAM installed to achieve first milestone of a working setup, complete with drivers installed and no USB issues. Then work from that point to get 4GB working.

OK I got it working - the problem was that i was trying to get my NOTEBOOK graphics drivers to recognize the card - I have it all working now... the only problem is that I cannot get my USB ports to work anymore when I have the card plugged in... they both just dont work =/

Also - it seems that my sound will not function either.

[User Retired 2]

OK I got it working - the problem was that i was trying to get my NOTEBOOK graphics drivers to recognize the card - I have it all working now... the only problem is that I cannot get my USB ports to work anymore when I have the card plugged in... they both just dont work =/

Also - it seems that my sound will not function either.

Can you post a screenshot of the memory resources used by your GTX460 in Device Manager as assigned by Win7? Specifically I want to see if it's assigned to a 32 or 36-bit address.

You are losing the sound/usb because Win7 is doing PCI allocation (reshuffling) to find space for the GTX460. This will be solvable by using DIY ViDock Setup 1.x instead to pre-allocate PCI space for the GTX460 so no shuffling by Win7 will be necessary.

[flaunt]

Can you post a screenshot of the memory resources used by your GTX460 in Device Manager as assigned by Win7? Specifically I want to see if it's assigned to a 32 or 36-bit address.

You are losing the sound/usb because Win7 is doing PCI allocation (reshuffling) to find space for the GTX460. This will be solvable by using DIY ViDock Setup 1.x instead to pre-allocate PCI space for the GTX460 so no shuffling by Win7 will be necessary.

Here you go nando -

Also - how do accomplish this shuffling?

[User Retired 2]

Also - how do accomplish this shuffling?

Great - the first confirmation of a 965PM chipset using 36-bit allocation so will have no problems with a 4/6/8GB DIY ViDock setup. As to your USB/sound issue use Setup 1.x to pre-allocate your PCI space by:

1. Installing DIY ViDock Setup 1.0e1 (beta version).
2. Apply Recipe for hotplugging GTX4xx in Setup 1.x but in your case do a 36-bit PCI compaction in step 4.

[flaunt]

So I tried following the steps in DIY vidock 1.0e

when i boot to USB it says loading up windows 98... and then gives me a c:\

so I type in cd\setup
and then setup and it brings up the menu (after listing a whole bunch of "bad file....")
Once im in the menu - no matter what option I select it goes back to the dos prompt and says

"DIY vidock setup %ver%
unable to open file"

Even if I try chainloading - it sends me to the same message above.. Anyone know what Im doing wrong?

instead of cd\setup i did cd\core
and then I ran compact - it goes through some lines and then says max <4GB is 64MB - then it gives the c:\core prompt again - if i type anything in here, it hangs without doing anything.