DIY eGPU experiences

[Collaris112]

My PE4L with PM3N arrived today - super fast shipping only 4 days from Taiwan (HWTools) to little Denmark!

Within half an hour the whole setup was running perfectly:
Lenovo Table x61
L7300 CPU @ 1.4Ghz
2GB DDR2 - 667 Mhz
GMA 965 GPU (I think) + external HD4870 1GB

Just had to start up the pc with the wifi-card and whitelist the port. Then swap the wifi-card with the PM3N and install drivers.

A few minor issues however:
-only one mini pci-express slot but space and soldering points for a second so I will try to add another one for the wifi-card
-the ATI and Intel video drivers does not seem able to co-exist. Each time I swap I will have to reinstall drivers.
-internal screen goes blank when using the external gpu (is that normal?)

But that is just minor issues because now I can game on my laptop! L4D and WoW were both very playable. 3DMark rating is here: ORB - World of Performance

I am considering a low wattage HD5750 with a 80w/12v adapter as described before in this thread. But I really want the OC Vapor-X version of the HD5750. But will I be able to run it without melting the PE4L if I can find a 100W or 120W adapter? And will I gain something in performance switching to the HD5750?

Thanks for all the information and wonderfull guides

[AggieTallBoy]

After seeing this on Engadget, I got very excited, as this is something I'd been wanting for a while.

Today I received my PE4H card (1.0 instead of 2.0... I knew I should have written a note in there) to accompany the Sapphire 5750 2GB card I got in on Friday.

I had initially planned to put it all into a Silverstone SUGO SG-05 Case/Power Supply combo however it's just a tiny bit too small to hold the 5750, so I ended up ordering the SG02 Combo instead.

For now, I'm trying it out with a regular power supply I had hanging around, while I wait on the case.

The two notebooks I'll be trying it with:
Gateway P-6825
and
Dell Latitude e6400

Will probably have a lot of questions as I try to get it running

[User Retired 2]

And will I gain something in performance switching to the HD5750?

HD5xxx series has more efficient pci-e bandwidth usage than HD4xxx series. If you can do a x1E or x2 link then it's worth going faster HD57xx cards (HD5770 is great bang-per-buck). At Intel-crippled x1 1.0 speed there won't be a lot of real-life improvement of a HD57xx over a HD5670.

If your second mPCIe socket allows a port1+port2, port3+port4, port5+port6 setup, then I'd suggest a PE4H+PM3N+PM3N to do x2. Ensure you can do anti-whitelisting without having to bootup with wifi in the mPCIe slot using the DIY ViDock Setup's save/restore port before trying through.

[ruhtraeel]

AggieTallBoy, there are no 57xx 2GB cards in existence right now. You linked to a 2GB 5850.

[Oddious]

been looking at the usb boot and trying to get X1E mode working. the pic attached seems to show that it is ? for some reason i can not get a screen shot of the DX 10 benches. its just a black screen. DX9 SS's work fine though.

[User Retired 2]

been looking at the usb boot and trying to get X1E mode working. the pic attached seems to show that it is ? for some reason i can not get a screen shot of the DX 10 benches. its just a black screen. DX9 SS's work fine though.

Yes. You have x1E working (x2 link width on an odd port with only the single lane). Use FRAPS to do benchmark screen caps. Ie: Run benchmark, hit ALT-TAB, run FRAPS, ALT-TAB back to game, hit F10 to take screenshot, ALT-TAB back to desktop, close FRAPS. I close FRAPS from being in the background as it otherwise has a detrimental affect on performance. Screenshots saved in c:\fraps\screenshots in BMP format. I convert them to JPG before uploading.

You should be seeing a noticable improvement in performance. Please provide x1E benchmarks here + 3dmark vantage. Very interested to see how much more performance NVidia gives with that extra bandwidth. Techpowerup rate a 9800GT as delivering 68% of a HD5770 or 78% of a HD5750 or 110% of a HD5670 on a x16 2.0 link.

[Oddious]

added the new benches to the post i made before. not much better really. will play around and see what else i can see.

and thanks for all the hard work you and all the other folks have put into making this work for every body.

[User Retired 2]

added the new benches to the post i made before. not much better really. will play around and see what else i can see.

and thanks for all the hard work you and all the other folks have put into making this work for every body.

It's not possible to draw performance comparison of x1 versus x1E on NVidia since you have RE5/dmcv4 dx9 @x1 results versus RE5/dmcv4 dx10 @x1E results. Any gains from x1E will be offset by the higher bandwidth requirements of DX10.

Can you produce a set of benchmarks for @x1 and another set @x1E for direct comparison? Likely you will find RE5/dx9 and dmcv4.dx9 have had measurable and visible improvements when running x1E, at least it does using ATI cards. Based on the results posted:

variable RE5-DX10 show NVidia does well in RE5. Probably optimised for it:
- P9600-2.66+HD5770 (at x1E-equivalent) = 51.0 here.
- P7350-2.0+9800GT@x1E = 49.0
- T6600-2.2+HD5750@x1E = 45.3 (my testing - unpublished)
- T6600-2.2+HD5750@x1 = 39.3 (my testing - unpublished)

dvmc4 scene4 has ATI showing better performance
- P7350-2.0+9800GT@x1, dx9 = 35.7
- T6600-2.2+HD5750@x1, dx9 = 44.7
- T6600-2.2+HD5750@x1E, dx9= 66.7
- P7350-2.0+9800GT@x1E, dx10 = 37.8
- T6600-2.2+HD5750@x1E, dx10 = 42.1

[Oddious]

x1 vs x1E on toshiba first 2 are x1 and x1E are the others.

[chung_gun]

Huh... I said I don't have any ExpressCard slot on my Dell laptop. But I've got many MINI PCI-EXPRESS (mPCI-e) slots. I've got two mPCIe cards (for WLAN and WWAN), I can check the mPCI-e slots numbers with those ones...

And..
Ok for the ATI 5750 !

Sure i got it U said.

for furthermore advance..
U need
1) check it out all the pci-e port numbers with their corresponding PCI-E types, & shots to upload if possible...
2) use BarEdit for checking registry,
for download, CLICK
for usage, refer to front page of this forum.

3) make a DIY_ViDock USB Bootdisk ,
refer to : http://forum.notebookreview.com/gami...ml#post6295529