DIY eGPU experiences

[VillageHubertChen]

I pm'd my thoughts to Nando4, and on his encouragement, am posting these here.

Please note that these are merely personal opinion and are NOT in any way meant to hurt anyone's feelings or to judge anyone.

You wrote: But to look at the whole deal from a distance, Villagetronics gets a lot out of this deal, whereas the diy egpu community is now strong enough and well integrated to not need that kind of support. "
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Dear prosetheus,

Thanks for your post and your kind words. You speak out an interesting point of view, which is the balance of benefit from a cooperation. But it seems both of us see it very differently.

From my point of view this community is piggy backing on Village Tronic and thus today it is Win DIE eGPU and loose Village Tronic. It seems you see it is the other way around: Loose DIY eGPU and Win Village Tronic.

Could you please outline why you think this proposal is lopsided and what you think are the benefits for Village Tronic and which are the ones for this community. I am surprised you find this unbalanced and spelling it our helps me to better understand why you think this deal is lopsided.

Best Regards,

Hubert

[VillageHubertChen]

Dear Carage,

Thank you for this post. I think you inspired me on how to make this practical Win / Win, especially for Nando. I am too tiered to work it out tonight, but I was too excited about this comment to not say thank you!

Also thank you to all of you to engage so intensively and deliver many ideas on how to make this win / win for everybody.

Hubert

I doubt the top of the food chain (graphics chip companies) would ever be interested in officially supporting and facilitating the development of a niche product at the cost of angering the big fish (big box OEM/laptop manufacturers). There is some incentive for the AMD/nVidia, that they could sell more desktop parts, but I doubt our presence is large enough to convince them to do so. As of Intel, well there VGA products is crap in general, anyways.

I think we should really see that the community and product manufacturers like VillageTronic are really targeting different markets.

The community is primarily for people who don't bother to get their hands dirty and/or void the warranty on their laptop. If I was 10 years younger maybe I won't mind keeping my eGPU connection inside a shoebox.

The ViDock (and possible competing products from mainstream or niche manufacturers) offer a different solution. Yeah, the true DIYers will always laugh at the people who prefer to throw money at the situation instead of figuring out they could figure it out themselves. Well, I can't solder. Took a class in high school, forgot how to solder a long time ago. I don't have access to a machine shop/power tools either. Yeah I took shop back in junior high, and let's just say things weren't pretty so I had to switch to home ec (aka cooking). And I would prefer to keep my laptop without visible defects and/or alterations so I could still get warranty protection. I got a ViDock 4 +, and while I am not happy with the price I think it is acceptable.

Now the problem so far, is that the commercial solutions like ViDock do not offer the peace of mind because of issues that are not the fault of their own. I think we can say most of the Error 12 or not enough resources issue stems higher up in the food chain, we could probably blame M$/INTEL/NVIDIA/AMD for that. And given the slow development on the LightPeak/Thunderbolt/Lightning front, I doubt the system device manufacturers are really interested in embracing our niche.

Then the main flak that goes toward VillageTronic is the fact that Nando and folks came up with a clever solution while VillageTronic could not brew over all this time. What happened there, I really don't know. VillageTronic really dropped the ball on that.

Well...I think I might be the only VillageTronic user who decided to pay for Nando's software. But seriously, if you require a purchase to download, that is NOT and should NOT be called donation ware. It is commercial software.
So if the community wants to be fair and open, I would suggest to stay away from arguable terms.

[Groovu]

Thank you guys for answering my questions. I'm still having problems having my T420 pick up the graphics card.
My PE4L 2.1b is on SW1 - 3 and SW2 - 1. My LEDs are D1 - Green and D4 - Red.

There is no response from the computer when I plug it into Windows. In Setup it just says no eGPU is detected and to "Set 7/15s PCI Reset Delay then cold (not warm) boot past your bios. Hit F5 to rescan PCI bus." I hit F5 and the same message appears. SW1 is the PCI delay correct? If I have the eGPU running, then cold boot and then load DIY Setup, am I doing it right?

Any help is appreciated.

Anyone? I still can't figure out what I'm doing wrong and why my T420 won't detect my eGPU. Does having a Smart Card reader and a finger print scanner have anything to do with it?

[lazyboy]

The egpu community stands to gain NOTHING from a "deal" with Villagetronics, while they will get to solve their Error 12 issues and regain some of the customer satisfaction they've lost.

It's naive to think that we have the power to strong-arm a company to lower its pricing, or change its offerings.

Furthermore, the egpu and Villagetronics products are separate offerings.
One is a commercial solution and the other is a community-powered "service" (for the lack of a better word).
There's no room to mix the two.

Anyone who's ever taken business class will that you that if Villagetronics can't offer a complete, 100% working, commercial solution, they will die out just like any other company in the world which fails to deliver a quality product.
That's the reality of modern economics.


The way I see it, we (as a community) have two options:
1) Leave the status quo as is. We do our own thing and they do theirs.

2) Villagetronics signs a volume licensing agreement where they will pay a lower fixed fee (say $10 per license) but gets the software as is.
Meaning:
- When a purchase is made for one of their products, Harmonic Inversion/Nando/someone will email that customer a link to a one-time download of the current version of egpu setup.
- Villagetronics users get no support from us. They have issues - they take them up with the company who sold them the faulty product.

Obviously, the second solution is very complicated and involves legal issues as well as altering Villagetronics' payment process so that the purchase notification is sent automatically.


My vote would be option #1.

[User Retired 2]

I have a PE4H with EC2C and a GTX 550Ti, and the laptop is a Lenovo Y450 with a dGPU G210M.

I've performed a 32-bitA compaction on the eGPU only (everything else has no solutions), and taken the dumps which I've attached below. I consistently get code 10, disabling the hdmi audio and installing the desktop drivers changed nothing.

You are currently running a Verde (mobile) G210M driver and a desktop GTX550Ti driver. That is likely the cause of your error 10. Try the modded Verde drive which unifies both drivers. Ensure you select the 'clean install' option.

Anyone? I still can't figure out what I'm doing wrong and why my T420 won't detect my eGPU. Does having a Smart Card reader and a finger print scanner have anything to do with it?

Try setting SW2 to 2-3 (x16 card). Also unplug/replug the EC2C the hit F5. Also ensure the expresscard slot is enabled in the bios. Finally, try a suspend/resume in Windows followed by a Device Manager scan. If the PE4L 2.1 is OK it should pick up your eGPU.

Herbert's - I do not wish to respond to your remarks as do not wish to make this a Jerry Springer show other than let the products, software support and pricing speak for itself

I am Hubert Chen, the Founder and CEO of Village Tronic. We care very much to offer lowest priced Hardware and to make external GPU affordable and easy to use for everybody. I engaged in a private email conversation with Nando4 because I saw his passion to make external GPU more affordable. It is a passion we share. On a positive note, I agree with many of Nandos suggestions on bringing the price of our Hardware down and I will pick up his challenge as he intended it. That would be Win / Win / Win:
1) Win for Nando4, as he achieves his target of lower the cost for ViDock hardware ( or any external GPU hardware for that matter)
2) Win for the user obviously, lower cost product is always better
3) Win for us, as lower cost products is one of our primary mission goals

Sadly here ends my positive comment. Nando4 has now dragged this discussion into the open and he has made hurtful accusations, such as that we are "profiteering", "abusing his Software" and entertain "toxic profit margins". I will answer to these accusations, but I need a day to calm down. My entire family is most hurt and upset about Nando4's post. I want to write my answer in a moment of piece and calm to not pour more kerosine into this already hot burning fire.

I want to tell Nando and everybody else who might be tempted to continue posting hateful and inflammatory accusations against us, that you are talking about PEOPLE. Hard working, passionate, well mannered PEOPLE. They have feelings and we are hurt. I strongly suggest to let this post now sit. Give me time for a reply to your post. I promise I will answer to every proposal constructively and to every accusation neutrally and with facts.

In the meantime in the interest of full disclosure, here is my email to Nando4:

Dear Nando,

Daniel Fang has helped me to get in touch with you. I am Hubert Chen, the founder and CEO of Village Tronic who makes ViDock. I am very interested in searching a Win / Win relationship with you / DIY eGPU / DIY ViDock.

Daniel ( and many other customers ) told me, that you are holding a grudge against us. If we have upset you, or if you think there is a problem with our business practices I want to apologize for upsetting you and I am curious to learn how we did upset you.

I have Asperger Syndrome. That means it frequently happens that my writing is upsetting the reader, even my intention is friendly. So in case this letter is upsetting you, please accept my apologies and please stick with this communication. Let me know what is upsetting you and I will change so not to repeat it again.

I have followed DIY ViDock since its early days. Not too closely, but once in a while I spend hours reading on the forum. I enjoyed reading your posts, they were competent and there were so many of them. If i am not confused I believe you are the driving force behind the beginning of DIY ViDock and DIY eGPU?

If so, I recognized your passion to bring external GPU forward and I am very grateful for your contribution to this goal. If I am not mistaken, your key motivations are to lower the price for external GPU hardware and to solve Error 12? Let me know if this is true or let me know what is your driving force ( money ? ).

This is why I am writing to you. We at Village Tronic are very passionate about this too. How about joining forces? We are very strong on the Hardware and Production side. We manufacture our own connectors, PCIe cables, PCBs and housings. We plan to make ViDock open source and on top of it to come out with a complete PCIe expansion box development environment. We are also working since August last year on the develop of an open source connection system, that is more versatile than USB and faster than Thunderbolt.

Would you be interested in starting a dialogue on how we could work together to deliver better working and lower costs external GPU solutions? How about cross linking our forums? We are already sending customers to DIY eGPU, but I heard from many of them that in return you talk down on us. This is very confusing? We send you paying customers and you complaint about us? It also appears that DIY ViDock customers can use DIY eGPU for free, whereas it appears you consider us "piggy backing" and thus want to "punish" us by having a fee for our customers. We have no problem to pay a license fee, but we have a problem that it appears this fee exists because you think we have improper business practices. I hope this makes some sense, if not, please ask. However, please enlighten me and let me know what is going on and why.

Should we start by you letting us know why you are upset with us and I can reply to that?

I was writing on this since a few days and wanted to sleep over it some more, but Daniel send me an email saying you wonder why nothing is coming from me. I did not wanted to upset you further, so here is my email as good as I could make it. I also wanted to finish my writing on C² first, the new open source connection standard with open source PCIe expansion box development environment. I was hoping this would intrigue you but I still need a few more days. I hope this email as is is doing the trick.

In the hope of getting a reply,

Hubert

Dear Fabi3n,

thank you for your post. I like to reply to your post piece by piece:

1) I created ViDock, I decided the pricing. So when Nando talks about "profiteering" and "toxic Profits" then he talks about what I do and he passes along the judgement that I do it in a very bad manner. I think we do not need to discuss if "profiteering" or "Toxic Profits" are meant friendly or hostile. It would have been very different, if Nando4 would have written something along the line: "I personally feel that the profit margins on ViDock are unreasonably high and this makes me uncomfortable. Since Hubert offered to answer any question about what makes me uncomfortable I like him to explain why the ViDock sales price is so much above the manufacturing cost". This expresses clearly a suspicion but leaves open room for me to either give a convincing or not convincing reply. If I have a not convincing reply, then I deserve to be scolded if indeed I make profiteering. But what if the situation is totally different ?

2) These are even not comparable products. The BPlus PCIe PCB is just that, it makes a PCIe connection. This is identical to the Main PCB of ViDock. On top of it ViDock has the Power Management PCB, Housing, Power Supplies, Professional Technical Support. We also have new product development. All that BPlus PCB does not have. The obvious solution to this discussion is that we will offer the same type of PCB at a lower price than BPlus and than you can compare Apple to Apple. We will have same or better features at lower cost and then things become very transparent. If however you want to compare the same type of product: ( Completely assembled, Power Supply included, Professional Technical Support ) then please compare the price with Magma Express Box. That would be 199 for ViDock, 739 for Magma Express Box.

3) I really hope too to find a positive result and I am a strong believer in a Win / Win / Win solution. I believe a lot of the frustration and anger is caused by misunderstanding and lack of understanding and I am trying my best here to clear it up.

Let me know if this makes any sense and is helpful for both camps to come closer together.

Hubert

P.S. Can anybody tell me where to configure the signature feature?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gami...ences-981.html


Dear Simone,

Thank you for your post and your neutral language and for your inspiration! I agree with much of what you say. I also like to clarify that we (Village Tronic) are not making profit in a sense to have surplus money to buy a car or plasma TV or whatever gadget is hip. As a company we have operational costs, such as salaries, costs for electricity and water, rent, tax, etc. These costs needs to be covered by the difference between manufacturing costs and sales price. To cover operational cost is not profit and in this sense we are a true non profit organization. All money we make in the company stays in the company, to the extreme that I have no car and ride with my bicycle to work. My MP3 player, mobile phone and digital camera are all > 10 years old. I prefer to spend such kind of money to buy necessary development or production equipment and to develop new products that benefit the community. ( This also should make it clear that at one point I want to see a little bit of profit to afford a new camera for my hobby).

Village Tronic is undergoing a huge change since August last year. Our target is to remove the separation / border between company and customer and to practicly turn it into one big community. I absolutely do not care personal profit but I do care collaboration in the community and I care to make products that make people happy and that are very affordable. So I think in this regards Nandos target and our target are identical.

I think what Nando needs to see is that even a non profit company such as ours must cover their expenses, or they need to shut down and can not longer contribute to the community.

All the time we are compared to BPlus and that they are lower cost. But if you look closely to it, I believe this only appears so. If I understand your own writing correctly, BPlus did not designed the Circuit, it appears this community did. BPlus does also not do the tech support, this community does. BPlus did not developed housing and financed tooling costs. It does not exist. BPlus did not developed power supplies that are certified for external use, they do not exist. So with all these cost savings on BPlus side, sure they can offer at lower cost and still make a profit.
At least in this one Nando and me agree. If we offer a PCB only same as BPlus, no tech support from us but from this community, then we can offer a lower cost solution than BPLus and I will be delighted to do this if this community agrees to it. And the timing has to be right now. We are coming to the point of freezing features of ViDock G4. If you wish for such a ViDock version, then all of us need to come to an agreement in the next weeks. Or the window of opportunity for ViDOck G4 is missed and we all can try again 2 years later with ViDock G5. If we do this, there would be benefits for a " DIY ViDock G4 " Buyer. He can start with one PCB only and when desired, he could add power management and housing later. We will also make this product ATX power supply compatible to reduce costs further. So the customer could have the best from the currently separated worlds.

Help Desk Side:
I think here is a huge confusion. We have our own help desk. Check it out. Plase post in our ticket system and you will get a reply by a full time employee Violet ( my wife) and sometimes by me. I am positive that never ever we forwarded people to this forum in case they think they have a defective power supply, shipment went bad, burned out components or whatever can go wrong with a product. We take care about our customers ourselves in our own helpdesk. This is what they paid for and we deliver. What we did was that when a customer had an Error 12 we occasionally shared the link to what was called then DIY ViDock Setup. When I read the terms it stated that it could be used by anybody with an external GPU including ViDock users. After some time customer came back and told us this forum told them we would be misusing the terms and that this SW now costs 25 USD. So we then changed and told customers that there is tool that migtht solve their problems, here is the link and it costs 25 USD. In order to move things forward we then shared the cost with the customer, that is we paid 12.5 USD to the customer who bought the DIY ViDock Setup Software. So I hope after this we can agree:
a) We did not "Abused" this' forum's Softare
b) We did not pushed help desk work of our product to this forum
But instead we forwarded paying customer and we actually sponsored sales by lowering the entry level cost for your SW.
We are the good guys here helping this forum and helping Nando to make money, we are not the bad guys here.
If this is still not clear, please post your questions or your different point of view so that we can solve this misunderstanding once and for all in a pieceful discussion.

I think it is a good think Nando makes money of DIY eGPU
He worked hard, He made a product that is solving a problem a customer has. It is worth money. There is nothing wrong with taking money to cover expenses. Heck, after some time he will even want to make a profit to keep going and stay motivated. Making profit is not a bad thing, It is a good thing!

Offer to work in an open source project together
Simone, your writing really inspired me how to bring this discussion forward. If I understand you correctly many members of this communityhave worked here together to develope a better HW at lower cost. This is one of the things that we are doing at this moment:
a) We are developing C². It is an open source connection standard. It offers connection speed from 5 GTs .... 128 GTs and intergated Power into the same cable from 225 W ... 2800 W. On top of it we will publish open source all development tools we have developed internally, such as Trace Impedance TDR meter, ICT ( In Circuit Testing), measuring of Eye Diagram, etc. Our target is to make development and manufacturing of PCIe boxes really affordable for anybody who wants to do it, including students.
b) We are working on including other open source communities into the effort. E.g. the entire microcontroller part of C² is based on Arduino. We will also add additional board and development tools to the Arduino open source community

I hope this gives you an idea where we are heading. I was not looking on piggy backing on this community and dumping our homework onto you. The opposite. I was offering our resources for this community to share and to prosoer so that together we can develop the next external GPU generation. More powerful and lower end user price. I was looking for enthusiasts who already have accomplished one open source project together and would love to join the next one to give more power to the open source community.

I was hoping that some things we are doing could be of value to this community. E.g. we are developing a community collaboration website. My hero example is the Arduino site. In one place you have a Forum, (such as this one), but you have so much more. You have References, Libraries, Code Kitchens, etc. When you are looking for information, it is easy to find. How about joining forces to build such a commnity place. Something that makes this slew of information available in here much easier to be found and managed? These are just a few of many ideas. I hope you get an idea.

Sorry for the long post. It was a very long day and I am too tiered to make it shorter.

Best Regards,
Hubert

[Groovu]

Try setting SW2 to 2-3 (x16 card). Also unplug/replug the EC2C the hit F5. Also ensure the expresscard slot is enabled in the bios. Finally, try a suspend/resume in Windows followed by a Device Manager scan. If the PE4L 2.1 is OK it should pick up your eGPU.

Thanks nando. I ended up flipping the SW2 switches while everything was connected and running, out of frustration. To my surprise I heard the hardware sound go off.

Is a score of 16870 3DMarks on the internal screen right considering my gear?
Superclocked EVGA 560 TI Newegg.com - Refurbished: EVGA SuperClocked 01G-P3-1567-RX GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
PE4L 2.1b

I'm not sure if I'm running 1.2 or 1.1; I bought the PE4L 2.1b because I read that it meet x2 standards. (The 1.x means that you're running 1 cable and the x means you're running either PCIE 1.0 or 2.0 right?)

Is there anyway I can connect and disconnect the eGPU without restarting while using the internal screen? I tried the sleep and connect/disconnect method but it made my display stay off forcing me to restart.

Thanks for reading.

[User Retired 2]

Thank you for the responses RE: Villagetronic collabortion. Pls keep them coming.

Thanks nando. I ended up flipping the SW2 switches while everything was connected and running, out of frustration. To my surprise I heard the hardware sound go off.

Is a score of 16870 3DMarks on the internal screen right considering my gear?
Superclocked EVGA 560 TI Newegg.com - Refurbished: EVGA SuperClocked 01G-P3-1567-RX GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
PE4L 2.1b

I'm not sure if I'm running 1.2 or 1.1; I bought the PE4L 2.1b because I read that it meet x2 standards. (The 1.x means that you're running 1 cable and the x means you're running either PCIE 1.0 or 2.0 right?)

Is there anyway I can connect and disconnect the eGPU without restarting while using the internal screen? I tried the sleep and connect/disconnect method but it made my display stay off forcing me to restart.

Good to see your up and running. My i5-2540M 2.6 + GTX560Ti@x1.2Opt scored 3dmark06=15816 with the internal LCD. When running x1.1Opt it scored 9894 so yeah, you are running pci-e 2.0. I'm guessing you have an i7 since you scored quite a bit better than I did with the same eGPU.

Depending on your expresscard slot, you may see a eject VGA device in the system tray. If not, then use Device Manager to disable the eGPU. Then you can unplug it without BSODing. Though next time you boot it will be disabled so needs to be manually enable it in Device Manager.

[Groovu]

Thank you for the responses RE: Villagetronic collabortion. Pls keep them coming.

Good to see your up and running. My i5-2540M 2.6 + GTX560Ti@x1.2Opt scored 3dmark06=15816 with the internal LCD. When running x1.1Opt it scored 9894 so yeah, you are running pci-e 2.0. I'm guessing you have an i7 since you scored quite a bit better than I did with the same eGPU.

Depending on your expresscard slot, you may see a eject VGA device in the system tray. If not, then use Device Manager to disable the eGPU. Then you can unplug it without BSODing. Though next time you boot it will be disabled so needs to be manually enable it in Device Manager.

I've also got an i5 2540M.

Sounds good, thanks for every ones help, much appreciated.

Now to figure out a sturdy enclosure!

[can nabis]

ahhh i need your help....i got a very low score with my nvidia card.

i startet to test different graphic cards...
first my system:
southbridge intel hm65
i5-2410
6gb ram with dsdt override

i tested my old cheap ATI GPU 5570 and got a score of 6790 3dmarks 06
after that i installed the optimus driver (the modded nvidia driver) an testet my NVIDIA GTS 450 but i just reached a score of 5516 3dmarks...in my mind that cant be right, because the 450 should be much better than the 5570...?
what could i have done wrong?
(i think that reallyy a bad result because my Intel HD 3000 reaches 3996 yet...)

p.s.: i get an error 10 at my microsoft virtual wifi mini port adapter #2....perhaps that helps?


btw: is here any bench thread or sth like that so that i can search for similar results?

[User Retired 2]

ahhh i need your help....i got a very low score with my nvidia card.

i startet to test different graphic cards...
first my system:
southbridge intel hm65
i5-2410
6gb ram with dsdt override

an testet my NVIDIA GTS 450 but i just reached a score of 5516 3dmarks...in my mind that cant be right, because the 450 should be much better than the 5570...?
what could i have done wrong?
..
btw: is here any bench thread or sth like that so that i can search for similar results?

I found older posts indicating you have a HD3000 iGPU. GT525M dGU and now GTS450 eGPU. As your not telling us what system you have I figure it could be a Vostro 3750 or a Fujitsu AH531, both of which have expresscard slots and a GT525M option.

The low performance you are seeing is because the NVidia pci-e compression isn't engaging. That will happen if either the HD3000 isn't the active bootup video device or the GT525M is active and becomes the Optimus device instead of the GTS450. For the former ensure you boot past the bios, hit F8 to halt Win7 loading, hotplug the eGPU and continue Win7 boot. If the later then you'll need to check if the bios has the facility to disable the dGPU. If not then use Setup 1.x to do it.

There are plenty of benchmark results on the first page. If you needed the DSDT override to over error 12 issues then pls post it, along with your system details and at least the DX9-centric benchmark results so it can be linked on the first page as another experience.