DIY eGPU experiences

[m2003]

Hello everyone,
I have an Nvidia Nvs160m internal graphics card and a Gtx 460 connected through express card.Is there any way that I could achieve the Optimus performance? If so which could you provide the link for the correct version of Optimus drivers?
The default Nvidia drivers give me the option of choosing between 160Nvs or Gtx460 as the default processor is this enough to get the Optimus boost?
Thank you!

[Khenglish]

Hello everyone,
I have an Nvidia Nvs160m internal graphics card and a Gtx 460 connected through express card.Is there any way that I could achieve the Optimus performance? If so which could you provide the link for the correct version of Optimus drivers?
The default Nvidia drivers give me the option of choosing between 160Nvs or Gtx460 as the default processor is this enough to get the Optimus boost?
Thank you!

You can't do optimus unless nvidia updates the driver to remove the intel integrated internal graphics requirement. Yeah that's right, optimus works with intel but not nvidia.

[Khenglish]

So i now got DIY ViDock setup 1.2 working on Bootup. In the menu i get: PCI_ALLOC_VALID:YES*
from there is says all i need to do is a bridges relocate, but when i run it it gives 0 solutions.
Ive tried all the different combos of settings and nothing is working for me

The setup fails to see my HD5770 card when i connect it and refresh...

I'm sorry that I don't know how to help you, but how did solve the problem with getting windows to boot after running the setup program? I've never gotten it to chainload but luckily I don't need it to reallocate resources.

[Chesniak]

i seem to be stuck there too now. after PM'ing nando4 for some advice i can get the setup to allowcate the resources and give me PCI_ALLOC_VALID:YES... but when i try to chainload it just goes right back to the boot menu select screen. if i go to DIY SETUP again and go to run startup.bat it just goes back to boot menu screen.

TL: DR - relocate works, chainload not working

[Khenglish]

I did a comprehensive performance scaling analysis! You can tell I had a busy Friday night!

_______|CPU/PCI-E stock_|CPU +20%/PCI-E stock__|CPU+20%/PCI-E+20%_|Vcore+26.6%/Vmem+18.3%/CPU+20%/PCI-E+20%
Vantage|P9684 graphics__|P9844 graphics_________|P10163 graphics_____|P12003 graphics
3DM06_|8639___________|9480_________________|10037______________|10342
DMC4S4|98.92__________|106.34________________|115.24_____________|123.61
RE5____|74.8___________|88.5__________________|89.6_______________|93.0
FF14___|2327_high______|2550_high_____________|2545_high___________|2848 high quality

Performance gain from 20% PCI-E increase:
Vantage| 3.24%
3DM06_| 5.88%
DMC4S4| 8.37%
RE5____| 1.24%
FF14___| nothing

CPU is a 6MB C2D on a 1066 bus with a stock speed of 2.53GHz. Graphics card is a GTX 1GB with 715/900 as stock clocks. Video driver is 260.99, which is quite a bit better than the 258 driver used for optimus.

FF14 results surprised me. When the benchmark was running, the pauses of when the PCI-E connection got bogged down with loading new textures were definitely noticeable, but apparently the 20% extra bandwidth wasn't enough of a performance increase to get beyond the random variation of each run. Vantage, 3DMark06, and DMC4S4 would have the same somewhat frequent slowdowns due to needing new textures, however, they had significant performance increases with more PCI-E bandwidth. RE5 looks smooth the whole time and hardly benefited from more bandwidth.

Other games:
Crysis runs amazingly. The benchmark runs poorly due to the fast movement from place to place, but the game itself is completely GPU limited. SC2 is the same case as crysis. LFD2 runs like butter even with the GPU at stock. WoW is the only game I play that has problems with the bandwidth. The 4.0 patch doubled performance in PCI-E limited scenarios so that in worst case scenarios its in the low 30s fps. It's hard to tell what is and isn't PCI-E limitations though because the game is so CPU limited even on a 3ghz C2D ans sometimes can't get out of the high 20s.

Experimentation with hijacking PCI-E lanes:

Basically you're not going to be able to make a good enough signal if you want to steal a PCI-E lane off of an internal component in your laptop. I played around with cutting mini HDMI cables and soldering them back together to see if I could make the cable faster. To make a good enough reconnection, I had to twist nearly an inch of wire together and crush the wires together with pliers. You are not going to be able to do this off of a tiny aluminum contacts on the motherboard.

I highly doubt this will be useful info for anyone, but I found out what the 4 data wires are in the mini HDMI cables.
Pink aluminum sleeve, white wire inside it.
Pink aluminum sleeve, pink wire inside it.
Gold aluminum sleeve, white wire inside it.
Gold aluminum sleeve, pink wire inside it.
Pins 2,3,5,and 6 are used on the connector for these wires.

SUICIDE VANTAGE RUNS!
3.08GHz CPU, 910MHz Vcore, 1070MHz Vmem
P12228 graphics

[questioning]

is anyone aware of a script/program for mac, which can disable the output to a specific display, or several, specific displays?

example: whilst watching a film on the middle screen, i'd like the others to be turned off to save power consumption (crt's) and reduce glare (lcd's).

here are the options i am aware of:
1, pressing 'shift+ctrl+eject' will turn all screens off. it's not ideal, but could that shortcut be hacked?
2, disconnecting each display. a real nuisance since the gpu lives under the desk
3, reduce brightness on each display to zero. internal screen: yes. crt's: not easily
4, remove power to applicable displays. doesn't work for internal screen
5, enable 'spaces' and set secondary desktop images to black. works, but wastes power/gpu

any recommendations? the third/fourth options probably looks like the best, but that doesn't stop the gpu from calculating the output, so full-screen video/games are much slower/choppier than they would otherwise be.

if there is a solution, then 'phase 2' will be to enable mirroring on the two crt displays (left/right), whilst the central lcd's are off. that will allow the left/right crt's to show the same video, diagonally across the room, so each sofa get's it's own screen!

[Rizzett]

Got news from Gerry regarding PE4H v2.4:

Dear Carlos Jurado,
PE4H v2.4 is available. I will add v.24 info to my web-site on Monday.
Also anyone can buy it on Monday.

Let me know if you have any suggestion
Thank you.

Best regards
Gerry Chen

Hope this helps to anyone trying to buy one, I for one will be getting it as fast as i can next week

[Chesniak]

ok now getting:
PCI_ALLOC_VALID:YES
PCI_WRITTEN:YES
free 256MB

but still get error 12 when i plug the card in

Can anyone make sense of the errors im getting in this pic? trying bridges reallocation...
http://yfrog.com/6zdsc04723ptj

[User Retired 2]

@all, I followed up khenglish's comment that versions of Setup 1.x since 1.0e2 didn't work. I identified that the pci write wasn't actually being done in the Setup 1.x GUI. I've deleted the affected version 1.0e3 and 1.0e4 from the archives, rolled out 1.0e5 with the corrective fix. x2 users will also love the new hot pci reset feature.

@Chesniak, please try this new version OR ensure you manually run the \config\pci.bat output file before chainloading. You are likely affected.

1.0e5 (2010-11-22)

  setup:    Correctly refresh Status bar after "Apply Config.Using startup.bat"
            NEW! x2, x4/x2E link menuitems now send a hot reset to initiate
              link renegotiation. No longer have to delay video card powerup.
            Showstopper fix - now actually doing the PCI write in setup.
            Save dump (Win) now saves to a text file so can review in Windows.

  Created setup-disk-image.bat and bundled contig.exe for automated image install.
  Fixed some typos and minor menu bugs.

[Chesniak]

Thanks for the update nando4, but still having some trouble. no longer getting error 12, but now device manager says its just not using any resources... will try a few more times