Despite various mobile graphics solutions making laptops a little better at slinging pixels while maintaining great battery life (
Ion,
Optimus, etc.), sometimes you have ready access to an AC outlet and just want to get your game on. This is a situation that external graphics adapters are looking to manage, and while we've seen a variety of
official options in the pipeline we just had to share this rather
unofficial solution from
HardForum member Cyclone. He took an $85 PCIe to ExpressCard adapter, slotted in a 2GB
Radeon HD 5850, added a 550 watt power supply, and connected it all to his
Lenovo T410s. The result? A "major pain in the ass" to configure, apparently, but it bumped his 3DMark06 score from a 1,720 on integrated graphics to a 12,765! That's a bit low compared to running that card in a dedicated gaming rig, as it's being forced to run at 1x over ExpressCard, but it is impressive regardless, and a possible option for anyone looking to turn their portable into a rather more grounded gaming machine.
[Thanks, Chris R.]
posted June 1st 2010 2:33PM
Damn.
I saw somewhere else though that PCI-E bandwidth scales rather well for cards. Can't remember the exact figures off the top of my head, but 8x gives around 97% performance, 4x 75%, and 2x 50%ish or something similar. Very impressive still I thought.
This was with PCI-E 2.0 though IIRC.
@richb93
PCIe1 x1 = 250 MB\s (500 full duplex)
PCIe1 x4 = 1000 MB\s (2000 full duplex)
PCIe1 x8 = 2000 MB\s (4000 full duplex)
PCIe1 x16 = 4000 MB\s (8000 full duplex)
PCIe 2.0 doubles it from 250 to 500 per lane.
Yeah I know all of that but I'm talking about real world performance. :)
Points for ingenuity and I'm sure he had fun doing it, but that's too much work for stunted gain.
You need to have way too much time on your hands to be able to do that. I guess he needs a girl.
@slickpaki Because anybody who doesn't spend all their time trying to f*ck someone is messed up in the head.
@slickpaki
I think he can set this up in 5 mins. You just need to connect all the parts he mentioned.
@slickpaki You must be twelve and listen to ICP..
I have for instance have a beautiful girlfriend and still have time to dick around with computers. The only thing keeping me from doing this is the second display I'd need to make it viable. It's a major drawback.
This is a pretty cool idea for people that really want a more portable, power efficient laptop when they are working or on the go, but when they get home or to a friends house they can fire up some games or do some 3D rendering.
I doubt this is a better solution than switchable graphics, but if the PCI-E case you have is modular, you could theoretically update your graphics card for your laptop whenever you want. Its definitely a niche item, but cool nonetheless.
hardocp.com rules long live the [H]orde!!!
So here's the question -- why are none of these manufacturers using ExpressCard 2.0? That would double the throughput...PCIe 2.0 has been around for a few years now, right? I don't see any laptops using the updated ExpressCard 2.0 spec yet...why?
Awesome! Great job at being able to set that all up
Wow Engadget. Original story is here http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-vidock-experiences.html
From 2009, what this guy did with his IBM is not rare, many people have done this but you have never even seen it!
@thescreensavers
IF "many" people have done it then WE would have seen it
[H]ardPoet!
@thescreensavers
Yeah, and people have been using Magma chassis (http://www.magma.com/) since the days of conventional PCI and PCI-X.
Your point?
@DefPoet
Look at my link, they are doing 100% what Cyclone on your boards did he just read up what these guys did. and did it himself. What a SHAM!
@thescreensavers
True but my point still stands *they* do not equal many. They were probly the first to do it but being the first does not mean most well known.
@DefPoet
Ok I understand, but the guy at hardforums should not be getting credit for doing this. The guys at NBR who put there time and effort to make the guide so that people like the OP at the hardforums can do it should get the credit.
Engadget should do some homework before posting articles, more or less the author, Tim Stevens.
@thescreensavers
If you read the Forum post at the HardForum you'll notice that Cyclone links and credits the NBR project. I've been following the NBR project since it's inception and have already hooked up my own Studio XPS 13 to an HD 5770 with pretty good results. You can find my results on the NBR experience page.
The photo in the engadget post is misleading as the video card can only output to external monitors and cannot be used to drive the laptop's build in screen.
@stacky
Yes I see that he linked it, but it is not listed on here, and majority of the people at Hardforum seem to have not seen it.
@thescreensavers
with that i absolutely agree :)
Why not just pull out your wifi card and use that mini-PCIe slot with some sort of adaptor?
@fencesitter
Because people like to have internal wifi on their laptop?
@max1001 Sorry, bad example. Nowadays laptops have up to three or more mini-PCIe slots in them- one with the wifi card in it, sometimes another with a 3G modem in it and very rarely a WiMAX car in the other.
Use one of those unused slots for a min-PCIe to PCI card adaptor. And you can still have a spare for a mini-PCIe SSD.
Here's the reverse: http://www.hwtools.net/adapter/mp1.html
Ah, here it is: http://www.adexelec.com/pciexp.htm#PEMINI2X1 but only X1.
@fencesitter
you can, but your still limited to the same speed as the express port. what you can also do is link the graphics card to both the internal mini-PCI-E and the express card port, thereby giving you 2x 1.0 pci speed, the same as an express port 2.0 would give. this brings the speed up from 50% to around 75-80% of the standard running speed of the card if found in a desktop.
of course, USB 3.0 will make external graphics solutions a whole lot easier faster and better, but we godda wait.
@roosta Thanks. I realized a little/way too late that I should really RTFA where that was mentioned.
Lenovo T410 can now play crysis
Add a tube amp and I'm in love.
@TheEvilMachinist I love your avatar.
Wouldn't it then make more sense to connect a cheaper, lower-powered card? Or even more for there to be a non-haggled-together solution for such a thing, like the long sought after interchangeable mobile graphics chip or a more sensible external connector?
@KupoCheer
This isn't about making sense, if he was trying to make the most sense he'd just have bought a gaming pc in the first place.
I may be in the minority as a corporate tool who carries a work and gaming laptop on every business trip I'm forced on. This is perfect, now in theory I could dump the gaming machine in favor of a smaller external card.
@CanceledLegend
and a power supply which probably weight as much as your gaming laptop.
@CanceledLegend
And an external monitor.
I'm surprised there's decent performance - I've got a FireGL V3400 in a ThinkPad Advanced Dock (a dock for the ThinkPad T60 and T60p, basically, with a mechanically-x16-electrically-x1 PCIe slot,) and it's horrendously slow at pushing (2D!) pixels, at least how I use it.
Turning laptops into desktops one step at a time.
Holy crap. I was just talking to my friend about this same thing like 10 minutes before I saw this article! I said, I wish I could take a graphics card, connect it to my ExpressCard slot in my MBP and use that for my graphics card.
@Goaliegeek
I was also pondering it last night but from a slightly different angle (I was working on a macpro with a dead gfx card).
This article spun me out
That is performance of ATI Mobility 5870 (12.600) on ASUS G73Jh with Core i7. Great news.
Soon all of this won't be needed. You can do that and tons more with LightPeak. The graphics card will be inside a box (with PSU I assume inside) with 2-3 connecttions: one connection to your notebook, 1-2 connections to monitors. You'll get all the speed and without tons of issues to solve.
@hetz
how is that any differetn than this?
graphics card....check
psu...... check
connection to laptop.....check
same thing lightpeak wouldn't make it easier only faster
@DefPoet
This solution is a hack. You'll need to run a script from another pre-boot OS in order to enable it. Also this solution works as X1 PCIe while the card runs natively on X16 so you're loosing speed.
This solution is great right now for your current laptop. When lightpeak will be out and you'll have a machine which is "lightpeak enabled", you'll be able to buy a graphics box and hook it up just like you hook up external hard disk.
I guess it's still somewhat portable if you have a big bag, though having to have an external monitor kinda ruins it.
Nah.. from a practical perspective this "portable gaming" solution won't work other than for some special occasion involving a basement, a local area network, some jolt cola and some friends. Though fun to experiment with I bet!
I just went with a laptop sporting a Radeon HD 5650. Not super-high end (though decent for a lappy) but not wallet crushing either, and plays games at moderately high settings. Remembered 4650 had some memory bandwidth issues but 5650 seem to have moved on from DDR2 onto GDDR3. Half off topic there but still.
@Wokis But still what?, u can't just say something like that and go but still, no I say this is inadmissible and should be dismissed from the record, this is offtopic, but still!
I have a brand new x201. I wonder if this would work the same for me...
Wait.. how did they do that?!
I have an extra PCI Express to Expresscard adapter if anyone is interested. Its in new condition.
http://monterey.craigslist.org/sys/1770143717.html
Well, I no longer feel like an unrealistic for wondering if this could ever be done.
A while back I had a friend say something like "too bad there isn't some sort of external add-on you could plug a killer desktop graphics card into, then into a laptop or netbook... 'sigh'...". We just thought it was the good Bourbon talking, but no one's laughing now...
If you could do this with a Mac they could actually be gaming machines. These are the things that I miss out on with my mac.
Gonna have a look at my HP and see if I can do this. I like the card just sat there on the desk. Looks cool and will probably keep my wife from going anywhere near it.