Vaio Z128 Laptop + External GTX580 = BIG Grin! ;)

[Phatboy69]

And now for something entirely different...........

Take one....

Vaio Z128GG Laptop



and one....

PE4H-EC2C-ver2.4 Express card to PCIe adapter +



and one....

Gigabyte GTX580ud




Shaken not stirred...








And you get...

[dinos22]

you might as well just stick that card in a desktop, who would carry around all that stuff with the, PSU, board, card and then only get a fraction of full performance. It's still very cool though but defeats the purpose of running it off a laptop like that imo

[Phatboy69]

you might as well just stick that card in a desktop, who would carry around all that stuff with the, PSU, board, card and then only get a fraction of full performance. It's still very cool though but defeats the purpose of running it off a laptop like that imo

Yes but I dont need another system and when I put it in this case I can easily take it away with me and use the built in LCD or hdmi input on a telly!

[Phatboy69]

For those wondering what real world performance is like.

In Crysis 2 DX11 Ultra pak @ 1920x1080 I get min 24fps avg 35fps outdoors and 50FPS indoors. Compared with the GT330M struggling to do 20FPS on lowest settings @ 1600x900!

My favourite flight sim gets 50FPS compared to 3FPS with the GT330M.

18K Vantage compared to a desktop GTX580 @ 24k.

$85US

Everything you need to know is here...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gami...periences.html

WARNING its not a simple plug n play affair. You have to do a fair bit of driver hacking and bios hacking to get it to work for some systems, particularly for the Vaio Z because of it's gay Hybrid graphics and Sony's slack video driver support!

[dinos22]

it's a cool gadget i might buy one to have a play anyways LOL

[Phatboy69]

And just to put that into perspective, my built in so called dedicated GT330M does Vantage P1825 and 5fps vs 18900 and 55fps for the external GTX580.. Thats a 1000% (10x) increase in performance.

[fr0wn3r]

Nice work! I was watching your build log and hoping I will hunt this setup of yours when you announced it in the log.
I like this solution, honestly.
Though out of curiosity what bandwidth is available to 580 at this setup? How many lanes and of which PCI-e generation? I see two points of possible bottlenecks at Express Card entry in laptop and at PCI-e slot on that PCB. Maybe even at that point where cable connects PCB and adapter. I know the weakest out of these three points is the limiting factor but dunno which is it? Guess it's the Express Card dock?

[TJ TRICHEESE]

from the gpuz screenshot it appears to be pcie x1 1.0

[Phatboy69]

Yes its a pcie x1 which give about x2 performance with Nvidia Optimus drivers which gives about 80% of the maximum performance you would get on a x16 slot for most apps. There are exceptions but as I've said earlier its basically 10x faster than the GT330M which makes everything playable at maximum settings compared to barely playable at minimum settings.

The bottle neck is the PCIe x1.opt slot via expresscard. The external PCIe board has 4 x1 channels that can be ganged together with the right laptop to get x4 performance but it ends up being a bunch of spaghetti and half disassembled laptop so its not worth it.

The Expresscard to PCIe is the elegant solution with a very satisfying improvement over builtin Laptop GPUs. GTX580 is probably overkill, a 560TI is pretty much the sweet spot to maximise the pcie bandwidth without wasting GPU horsepower. Just for comparison a GTX580M SLI mobile setup is only marginally faster than my setup with external GTX580.

[M.Beier]

Considered doing the same stuff....
But... Waiting for Intel to launch thunderbolt.... (as in actually not making it cost close to same as a full system).... When that happens... i7 quad in an ultra mobile, with an external graphics card.

[dinos22]

ive had thunderbolt on my laptop for a while but where are the adapters hehehe

[Phatboy69]

ive had thunderbolt on my laptop for a while but where are the adapters hehehe

Magma have just recently announced this thunderbolt pcie extender with 3 x PCIE slots. 20Gbit bandwidth (10 each way)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4743/t...-expressbox-3t

And Magma's Super duper expensive $829 (inferior version) of what I have for $85 plus PSU plus a case.. maybe $300 tops for my setup in a case...

http://www.magma.com/expressbox1.asp

Sonnet Tech also announced a Thunderbolt PCIE expansion device too..
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/

[fr0wn3r]

Thanks mate, really cleared my mind. Yeah, as I said, it's completely viable solution. Heck, more than that... I would do it if I had the need for one.

[jalyst]

Can't you get external GPU enclosures that connect via Thunderbolt nowadays?
I believe Sony even has their own iteration of Thunderbolt...
Would be a lot cleaner as the external card has it's own buit-in PS or AC/DC adapter etc.
Even if you already owned a laptop w/Thunderbolt, it'd prolly be pricer than what you're proposing.
But worthwhile/slicker overall IMO....