eGPU

This morning, some lovely person using the handle Burger commented on one of my earlier postssuggesting that if I connect the eGPU setup after boot-up is complete then I should get a significant boost due to PCIe compression. I little bit of Googling reveals a bit more detail here, but it seems that you need to have a ‘modern’ Intel integrated GPU in combination with one of a fairly narrow range of Nvidia kit. [Read More]

Today my new graphics card arrived from eBay. It is a second hand MSI N460GTX Hawkwhich I picked up for a reasonable £79.02 including postage. This puts the running total for the eGPU project (not including bits that I had lying around) at £166.10. So how does it perform? Well you may remember that I previously benchmarkedboth the integrated graphics of my laptop and a borrowed Geforce 9600GT in the eGPU adapter with the eGPU providing a splendid 3 times increase in the 3DMark06 score. [Read More]

Well, I have done a spot of benchmarking. Specifically using 3DMark06 and the Resident Evil 5 benchmarking tool. If you are wondering what I am talking about here is an introductionand a follow-up. I guess a brief recap wouldn’t be out of place. I have a laptop with integrated graphics. This severely limits the games that I can play. This makes me sad. I have read that I can put together an adapter that plugs in to the ExpressCard slot in my laptop that allows me to use a desktop GPU to power the graphics. [Read More]

Today (26th) the adapter parts for my eGPU project arrived from Taiwan. I paid for it on the 20th via PayPal and on the 24th the PayPal status was updated to let me know that my purchase had shipped with a DHL tracking number. I am pretty happy with the delivery time. Something that I knew was a possibility, though was still slightly vexing, was an accompanying VAT charge from Customs amounting to £12. [Read More]

The PC that I use for work (and play) is a Toshiba Portégé R700-160 laptop. It is a delightfully sleek and portable device that packs a pretty decent Intel Core i5-520M Processor into its tiny chassis. A (perhaps unavoidable) weakness of the machine is its graphics capability as it relies on the integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD GPU. It can just about manage Civilization V but anything more graphically intensive is a shuddering no-no. [Read More]