DIY eGPU experiences

[Khenglish]

Originally Posted by anilpalepu

Hey Nando..

it worked ... but only on to internal Laptop screen ...

ok so i removied the 'call vidinit -d 10de:1201' line from startup.bat... shut down the computer.. restarted laptop...plugged in mini hdmi to express card slot..entered into egpu setup.. selected 'automated startup using startup.bat' and then it initiated and went back to screen where i can select windows 7 and egpu setup.. booted into windows...but the display is on to internal monitor only, external monitor is not detected or something..external monitor is not shown in nvidia control panel also.. so i ran the 3dmark06 benchmark and got a score of 10680... these scores are bad when compared to others on your main page..then ran heaven with default settings on 1280x800 and got a score of 686... it seems as if the performance is hindered due to output of 560ti on to laptop screen...is optimus enabled now?? im sure scores will be greatly improved if i can get the display to work on to my external monitor only... i am not getting any BSOD anymore like before though...

Yes optimus is now working or else you would have gotten less than 6k in 3dmark06. You also would not be able to drive the internal monitor in fullscreen mode without optimus. Odd that your monitor is not detected. Did you go to the display properties via right click desktop->screen resolution, then click "detect"?

[questioning]

USB devices are very convenient, however they have extremely low bandwidth. As a result, refresh-rates are very slow & therefore are only useful for fairly static content.

If you just like to have an extra display to review e-mails or IM, then USB may be enough. If you intend to use the additional displays as you do your primary, then go for a full DIY ViDock.

[anilpalepu]

Originally Posted by Khenglish

Yes optimus is now working or else you would have gotten less than 6k in 3dmark06. You also would not be able to drive the internal monitor in fullscreen mode without optimus. Odd that your monitor is not detected. Did you go to the display properties via right click desktop->screen resolution, then click "detect"?

Hey Khenglish...

it works now !!!!
i unplugged the whole setup and plugged everything back in..guess i dint plug the hdmi cable properly into the graphics card.. will post the benchmark results soon..
thanks Khenglish

[Mavericko93]

Hi there!

I've got a HP 4525s notebook and an external HD 4830 external video card. I've connected my DIY eGPU to my HP notebook through the express card slot, but I couldn't get it to work properly, I get error 12 after installing the Catalyst driver. The eGPU works fine with my Lenovo Ideapad S9, but not with my HP. What's the problem? (If that matters, my HP has a triple core AMD Phenom P820 processor, 8GB Ram and a dedicated mobility HD 5470) Maybe the dedicated HD 5470 causes the problem? I'm really confused about this...

[nando4]

Originally Posted by anilpalepu

it works now !!!!

Congratulations Looking forward to your results. R840 implementation means an R830 implementation would be just as easy.

Originally Posted by Mavericko93

I've got a HP 4525s notebook and an external HD 4830 external video card. I've connected my DIY eGPU to my HP notebook through the express card slot, but I couldn't get it to work properly, I get error 12 after installing the Catalyst driver. The eGPU works fine with my Lenovo Ideapad S9, but not with my HP. What's the problem? (If that matters, my HP has a triple core AMD Phenom P820 processor, 8GB Ram and a dedicated mobility HD 5470)

Use Setup 1.x to do 32-bit PCI compaction on the eGPU, then chainload to Win7.

[Hollywoodbad]

Hey guys.. I have spent the last two days building a box to fit all the stuff in..I have played BF3 on high settings and ultra and can play both with a few minor adjustments to the shadow effect and AA. Not ultra high frame rates but playable..Getting like 30+ and in the low 20's sometimes but haven't noticed any bad lag..This is the way I have to do it..I turn the PC on (leaving the egpu on) I unplug the hdmi cable and plug it back in. The pc finds it and then I have to disable the igpu in device manager and All is good.O by the way.When I start the pc with everything on,I get an error 43 in DM about the GTX560.
Is there another way to do this so that I don't have to go through all those steps??

[Khenglish]

With the cold weather this weekend I took advantage on the fact that us eGPU users can stick our graphics card wherever we want. I put mine in the window to suck in the 0C air. I'll probably do this once per month as it gets colder.

960/4300
Vantage: 14072

955/4300
DMC4s4: 117.49
3dm11: 3810
Heaven: 1146
RE5: 143.5

955mhz was completely stable. 960 was not, but was needed to make 14k in vantage. I didn't run 3dm06 because it runs better on older drivers and is CPU limited anyway.

[anilpalepu]

Toshiba R840 DIY egpu Implementation

First of all i wanna thank Nando and all the members here in the thread who helped and guided me(noob) to make my egpu project successful.

SETUP:

Laptop : Toshiba Tecra R840 with express card slot ($600)
CPU : i3-2310M
RAM : 3gb DDR3
Internal GPU : IntelHD3000
OS : Windows 7 64bit

External GPU : GIGABYTE OC GTX 560 Ti 1GB GDDR5 ($250)
Interface : PE4L EC2C ($55)
Power Supply : Corsair CX430 ($40)
External Monitor : Asus VH242H ($130)





How to Proceed:

The following(noob) guide should work with Toshiba R830 & R840

1. Turn off the laptop.
2. Then assemble GTX 560 Ti into PE4L and make sure power and all the cables are connected to external monitor and one end of mini hdmi is connected to PE4L and leave the other end free which is to be plugged into express card.
3. Plug the express card into its slot and make sure mini hdmi is NOT plugged into the express card.
4. Now turn on the laptop, press F8 to get a boot menu, Now turn on the power supply to egpu and make sure green lights are lit on PE4L and then connect the mini hdmi (the free end) to the express card.
5. Now select to boot windows normally from the given boot menu.
6. The GTX 560 Ti will be detected and driver installation will follow automatically. Then download & install the newest modded driver from modded drivers section found on the front page. Do not restart, select restart later.
7. Now download & install the egpu software from setup 1.x section from front page. it will be automatically extracted to c:\egpu ... Go to the directory and open and run the following 2 files in the order :
i). c:\eGPU\setup-disk-image
ii). c:\eGPU\eGPU-Setup-mount
then a virtual V drive will be created.
Go to the V drive and run the following file : v:\devcon\mkdevcon
8. Ok here comes the MOST IMPORTANT PART. Go into V drive and then into CONFIG and then open the Startup.bat with notepad and erase everything in the Startup.bat and enter the following code and save:

set eGPU=10de:1201
call speedup lbacache
call vidwait 60 %eGPU%
echo Initializing NVidia video card (%eGPU%). . .
echo Setting G1 link speed on port2 . . .
setpci -s 0:1c.1 d9.b=40:40 70.w=1:3 50.w=10:10
setpci -s 0:1c.1 50.w=0:10
call grub4dos win7

9. Ok now everything is set. Turn off the laptop. unplug mini hdmi cable from the express card slot but make sure express card is still in its slot.
10. Now switch on the laptop and when the system boots it presents you with two options : windows 7 or egpu setup. At this time, plug back in the mini hdmi in to the express card with egpu turned on. Then, Select egpu setup on the screen, next a menu with 4 options is shown, select the first option which is 'automated startup using startup.bat'. Then egpu will be initialized and next you will be again prompted to select windows 7 or egpu setup. This time select Windows 7. And thats it, you are done. Optimus is enabled and you can check by going into Nvidia Control Panel. If both the laptop screen and external monitor is enabled, then disable laptop screen in the Nvidia Control Panel. Optimal performance can be achieved on external monitor than on internal Laptop LCD. Thats it. DONE !!! Begin Your Benchmarks and post them up.

11. If for some reason the egpu setup doesn't work from the 'automated startup using startup.bat', then mostly its cos either your gpu id has to be changed in the code or your G1 link is on a different port (its the first line in the code that has to be changed mostly). At this point consult Nando

To get most performance out of egpu :
i) disable HD Audio in Device Manager (disable 4 HD audio devices found in Sounds section)
ii) also make sure your laptop power profile is on 'High Performance'



Benchmakrs:

The following scores seem a little low, especially 3dmark06, maybe due to the i3 processor in cpu tests but 3dmark11 and Heaven seem about par with other similar implementations.

3dmark06 : 12796
3dmakr11 : 4337
3dmakr Vantage : 14629
Heaven : 1245
RE5 : 104

[Schrja]

I'm hoping for hand getting my eGPU setup going.

I'm running a lenovo T420 with Bios v. 1.15, a GTX 560 card and ViDock 4 plus. I have followed as best I can the steps other T420/X220 users have taken as posted here. Unfortunately, I can't even get off the ground as windows and the 1.x setup utility don't recognize any nvidia device.

Any suggestions?

[nando4]

Originally Posted by Schrja

I'm running a lenovo T420 with Bios v. 1.15, a GTX 560 card and ViDock 4 plus. I have followed as best I can the steps other T420/X220 users have taken as posted here. Unfortunately, I can't even get off the ground as windows and the 1.x setup utility don't recognize any nvidia device.

Have you purchased a $25 license as per the Setup 1.x page since you are using it on non-HIT hardware?

Villagetronic is a commercial product whose tech support is obtained at ViDock | Facebook .

You may be interested to note that another Lenovo X220 and T420 owner could not establish a pci-e 2.0 link as noted here. I know one user was so disappointed with the service and misleading advertising (expresscard 2.0) that he managed to get a refund only via his credit card's insurance since Villagetronic's 10days grace period expired. Buyer beware - these guys want your money and don't want to give it back!!