DIY eGPU experiences

[SmellyGeekBoy]

Hi all, I've been following this for a few weeks now and decided to take the plunge. My new graphics card arrived today and all is running perfectly! I can't believe how well this all works!

I'm running an ASUS Radeon 4670 1GB DDR3 in a PE4H connected via the ExpressCard slot to my Acer Aspire 5720. I'm very lucky because the ExpressCard is actually on slot1, and slot2 is empty, so I've disabled slot2 and set 2x on slot1 for the X1E performance boost.

I'm currently running Win7 64-bit chainloaded from a USB stick running DIY ViDOCK Setup v1.0e2.

Benchmarks (Integrated Intel X3100 vs external Radeon 4670):

Before:
3DMark Score 665
SM 2.0 Score 216
SM 3.0 Score 257

After:
3DMark Score 4825 (625% improvement)
SM 2.0 Score 2393 (872% improvement)
SM 3.0 Score 2696 (949% improvement)

Resident Evil 5 Benchmark Edition (All settings on HIGH):
Before: 3.0 FPS
After: 26.9 FPS (796% improvement)

Windows Experience Index (Win7 64-bit):
Before: 3.1
After: 5.3
With graphics going from lowest (3.1) to highest (6.7).

All for under £150... I'd say that's a result

Thanks for all the help and advice everyone - I couldn't have done it without you. Apologies for the crappy pic, but I'm sure you all know what one of these looks like by now...

[antichamp]

Hey, that acer looks a lot like mine.
Would you mind posting a screenshot of your pcie config from everest?

and also, what do you mean by improving performance by disabling another slot?

[PanzerHauptmann]

Hi all, I've been following this for a few weeks now and decided to take the plunge. My new graphics card arrived today and all is running perfectly! I can't believe how well this all works!

I'm running an ASUS Radeon 4670 1GB DDR3 in a PE4H connected via the ExpressCard slot to my Acer Aspire 5720. I'm very lucky because the ExpressCard is actually on slot1, and slot2 is empty, so I've disabled slot2 and set 2x on slot1 for the X1E performance boost.

I'm currently running Win7 64-bit chainloaded from a USB stick running DIY ViDOCK Setup v1.0e2.

Benchmarks (Integrated Intel X3100 vs external Radeon 4670):

Before:
3DMark Score 665
SM 2.0 Score 216
SM 3.0 Score 257

After:
3DMark Score 4825 (625% improvement)
SM 2.0 Score 2393 (872% improvement)
SM 3.0 Score 2696 (949% improvement)

Resident Evil 5 Benchmark Edition (All settings on HIGH):
Before: 3.0 FPS
After: 26.9 FPS (796% improvement)

Windows Experience Index (Win7 64-bit):
Before: 3.1
After: 5.3
With graphics going from lowest (3.1) to highest (6.7).

All for under £150... I'd say that's a result

Thanks for all the help and advice everyone - I couldn't have done it without you. Apologies for the crappy pic, but I'm sure you all know what one of these looks like by now...

yeah for some reason Radeons score amazingly well with all 3dmarks, along with Windows Index scores, etc... nVidia scores like crap... ironically, nvidia performs much better in real-world gameplay for some reason. I've experienced this personally..

[SmellyGeekBoy]

Hey, that acer looks a lot like mine.
Would you mind posting a screenshot of your pcie config from everest?

and also, what do you mean by improving performance by disabling another slot?

Have a look at Nando4's post here. It's one of the options on the DIY ViDOCK Setup bootdisk.

Here are screenshots of my PCIE config before and after running the bootdisk... As you can see, slot 2 is missing and slot 1 is running in "x2" mode (although it's not really true x2, as explained in Nando4's post).

yeah for some reason Radeons score amazingly well with all 3dmarks, along with Windows Index scores, etc... nVidia scores like crap... ironically, nvidia performs much better in real-world gameplay for some reason. I've experienced this personally..

Really? I'd heard the opposite, but I'm no expert and there certainly is a lot of conflicting advice out there. I think the nVidia cards would definitely perform better in games that support PhysX, although I read in this thread somewhere that the Radeons are less affected by the lower bandwidth available in a ViDock setup.

I actually went with the 4670 because it's extremely cheap (mine was under £50) and because it's the model that Villagetronic offered in the original ViDock, so I guess they knew what they were doing. In the end my boss expressed an interest in the project and bought the card for me anyway so I can always upgrade later on if I'm not happy with it.

I'm not really a serious gamer, I just wanted to play Portal at higher than the 10fps or so I got before!

[SmellyGeekBoy]

Hi.
I've been trying to read through all of this, but there's just hundreds of pages through these threads and I was wondering if someone would help me.

I know from opening up my laptop (acer 5920g) that there is an unused pcie, and it also has an expresscard slot...

Does anyone know how to figure out which port is which?

That x16 port intrigues me... Is that the MXM slot? Some Googling tells me that your laptop has an 8600M GT. Perhaps the MXM slot uses all the resources that ports 1-3 would usually be using.

The 5720 doesn't have a "gaming" GPU, in fact there is physical space in the casing and solder pads on the motherboard for an MXM slot, but the physical connector isn't actually there.

Like I said in my previous post, I got very lucky with my port configuration. I guess you could beg / steal / borrow an Expresscard from somewhere to test it out and work out which port is which?

[PanzerHauptmann]

Really? I'd heard the opposite, but I'm no expert and there certainly is a lot of conflicting advice out there. I think the nVidia cards would definitely perform better in games that support PhysX, although I read in this thread somewhere that the Radeons are less affected by the lower bandwidth available in a ViDock setup.

I actually went with the 4670 because it's extremely cheap (mine was under £50) and because it's the model that Villagetronic offered in the original ViDock, so I guess they knew what they were doing. In the end my boss expressed an interest in the project and bought the card for me anyway so I can always upgrade later on if I'm not happy with it.

I'm not really a serious gamer, I just wanted to play Portal at higher than the 10fps or so I got before!

Your setup is great compared to the performance u used to get for sure, but trust me, I have 1st hand experience. I've gone thru 3 cards already, all tested on the same system/interface.

1st card was a Radeon 5750. Scored nearly 10000 on 3dmark06, compared to 5000 with onboard GT130M GPU. Scored a 7.1 on 3d gaming on windows experience index. All "tests" were outstanding, I was thrilled....

Then I tried to play a few games with some moderate-to-high settings (nothing crazy, 1920 x 1200, no AA, some bells and whistles here and there) My FPS were worse than my ONBOARD GPU!!! Dirt2 for instance, was utterly un-playable with the 5750, getting around 10-15 FPS. Same went to Modern warfare 2, MW1, BF:BC2, Batman, CoD4, etc.. Teens FPS all around.

Then I got a GTX460. It's renowned for it's insane overclock-ability, and it performs as such... I ran 3dmark06, scored 5000, less than what my internal GPU scored. Windows experience index? 6.1. LOL.

I wanted to max things out so I decided to return the 460 and get the 470... All benchmark data was the same. crappy crappy crappy. Until I fired up Gears of War... Dirt 2, BFBC, L4D2, and Batman once again. It was quite pleasant to max out all settings and get a buttery smooth 30-40 FPS average with all of them.. Dirt 2 I can max out and get around 30 FPS constant.

DX10 rendered games tend to really excel with the nVidia cards & Vidock setup.. DX11 even better.. Batman looks amazing at 32xAA, as does Mafia II with the GTX470. Ill admit it, newer, "sandbox" style 3D games (Mafia II, Just Cause 2, etc) will have troubles at time, with FPS dropping in the 15-20's, which is playable, but not very much enjoyable..

Good luck thou and congrats on ur achievements...!

[antichamp]

Yeah, the x16 is (at least i think) the MXM, it sits on the northbridge.

My main concern was to why I have an open mpcie slot and an open expresscard slot while only one open slot shows up on everest.

[bennyg]

(edited)
1st card was a Radeon 5750. Scored nearly 10000 on 3dmark06, compared to 5000 with onboard GT130M GPU ... All "tests" were outstanding, I was thrilled.... Then I tried to play a few games with some moderate-to-high settings ... My FPS were worse than my ONBOARD GPU!!! ... Then I got a GTX460 ... I ran 3dmark06, scored 5000 ... I decided to return the 460 and get the 470... All benchmark data was the same. crappy crappy crappy. Until I fired up Gears of War... Dirt 2, BFBC, L4D2, and Batman once again. It was quite pleasant to max out all settings and get a buttery smooth 30-40 FPS average with all of them..

Let that be a warning to all who place emphasis on benchmarks alone

[antichamp]

Is it safe to assume that port 1 is my expresscard slot, and that I can do 2x with ports 1 & 2?

I don't have any cards handy to plug in to test with.

Original:


After WiFi card switch:

[ithildin]

Is it safe to assume that port 1 is my expresscard slot, and that I can do 2x with ports 1 & 2?

No, sorry. I don't want to sound discouraging but PCIe port 1 seems to always be left enabled even in laptops where the pins on the Southbridge are not connected - i.e. my own laptop's port 1 is not wired even though it shows up on Everest... frustrating, I know. Other than plugging stuff to the expresscard slot, we can figure out to which port it's connected to get your hands on your mainboard schematics. Try looking for them on the web.- I managed to find one for my laptop.