ViDock or similar eGPU possibilities

[kyron]

I'm looking into expanding the graphical potential of my Hackintosh, so I'm appealing to the brilliant minds here. I've done some research into the DIY setups but find the ViDocks to a bit simpler in terms of usage and upgradability. I'm wondering if anyone has attempted (successfully) a venture such as this that cares to shed some light..

 

[PJALM]

External GFX cards are far from simple, easy or cheap. In fact they can be 4x or more the cost and very under powered.

 

[kyron]

External GFX cards are far from simple, easy or cheap. In fact they can be 4x or more the cost and very under powered.

If you don't mind being a touch more specific.. the solutions I have explored so far would include the ViDock which is anywhere from 129-300$ and then a GPU of your choosing. It seems like a rather efficient solution to improving graphical performance don't you think?

 

[PJALM]

Are you talking about using an external solution to upgrade your notebook graphics?

 

[kyron]

Are you talking about using an external solution to upgrade your notebook graphics?

yes; eGPU= external graphics processing unit. have any ideas what I can do?

 

[PJALM]

You will need an expresscard port and even if u di it will only be 1.1 so a maximum of 1x PCIe lane @ 2.5GHz, not enough for any graphics card.

 

[willpower101]

PJALM, you are a little behind on the times with your egpu knowledge to be giving advice.

For both of you, a few hours reading over here would get you started http://forum.notebookreview.com/e-gpu-external-graphics-discussion/

For the probook, in my case a 4440s, there's no expresscard port. There is however, a quite fast mpcie slot on the bottom (currently being used by wifi) that should (should) work fine according to experiences in that forum. You could always scratch the wifi and use a dongle instead.

Our 4440s' have a blank pcie slot where I'm going to add an extra header, as well as tapping the extra usb line there to add an internal bluetooth dongle.

http://www.lgutschow.com/samsung-n150-plus-broadcom-crystal-hd-hack

This stuff is not to be tackled by someone without component experience. Mouser can source your parts. Baking your board should be done with an IR machine at a shop!

 

[PJALM]

That mini PCIe slot is only 1x so not able to handle gfx data, way too slow to be usefull.

The Crystal HD mPCIe card is not a gfx card its only a mpeg card.

 

[EpicBlob]

I use a ViDock 4+ with my 4530s. Laptop has a intel hd 3000 and 2760qm cpu. Runs at pcie 2.0 x1 so 5Gb/s. Works in both Windows 7 and os x 10.8.2. To get it working in os x, I just plugged in the expresscard before bootup and it showed up in system information.


And pjalm just because it is running 1 lane instead of 16 lanes doesn't mean it is 1/16th the performance. The expresscard has about a 20% decrease in performance compared to the full 16 lanes. And compared to the intel 3000? Almost all of my games show an increase in performance ranging from 500%-1000%. Or 5fps to 45+. It is a completely viable solution.

To OP, if you have any other questions about external graphics feel free to ask

 

[tonybinjch]

So it works? But what's append after showing in system information? How to say to the computer to use the adapter? THX