Anyone tried an external gpu with an x230 thinkpad? thinking of using the express card slot.
Mostly I'm keen to be able to use 3D modelling software like 3DsMax or Maya.
Anyone got experience with this kind of thing?
XCSOURCE EXP GDC Laptop External Independent Video Card PCI-E Graphics Card for Beast Dock Expresscard AC773
I've got an X230 i5 Model and that runs Maya pretty well in moderately complex scenes.
If you really want to increase you performance for those programs, I would recommend upgrading the motherboard to one with an i7, and then think about the GPU.
Nvidia has notoriously shitty openGL performance when starved of bandwidth/ power
If you run linux expect to suffer using native shit
AMD on the other hand works out alright with their free and open drivers. The mid-high end cards lose half of their performance on expresscard but other than that it's solid frametimes.
You can get a dell 8 pin brick to run the GPU off of if you have a sub 200 watt card.
Thanks for the feedback, replacing a motherboard seems like it would be a big job. If you're saying it runs okay I will give it a try and see how it goes, maybe I can try the mother board change later if needed
okay so AMD is the way to go, great thanks.
what dell charger an be used I've seen one in a picture but having trouble finding what it is
why buy a external gpu when you can build a ITX pc for less in less space that egpu box??
>ITX pc
Interesting, I'm traveling quite a bit at the minute so a laptop is a necessity. I have the x230 which is great for this but I need a bit of extra power so I figured the egpu would be the way to go.
I got that exact thing and it works better than expected OOTB both on Windows and Linux with an X201 and X220. Can't say much about Maya or heavy stuff like that tho (are you going to use it only for some GPGPU calculations or for display?), maybe the bandwidth would be a problem.
It's not really good for travelling since you need to carry an extra display and PSU +all the cabling...
I run a radeon rx480 on a x220.
Pci bus is extremely bottlenecking, but otherwise works like a charm.
Expect to have precisely the same fps on some games when graphics on lowest and highest settings. Which is weird but the bus speed simply cant keep up.
Oh and dont use a charger, go with a regular ATX PSU.
Running an RX 580 on my T430 with the same adapter, works just fine except in a few games.
You can use the recommended Dell DA-2 instead. Mine can't provide the full 220W (had to UV my RX 580 to stop it from crashing), but if your gpu doesn't need that much power, it's perfect.
get a REAL laptop
Why the fuck would I want to carry around a gaming laptop all day?
You're not a retard are you?
you can use it for work and then use your shitty thinkpad for everything else whatever that could be
because its better? hows that 3d modeling on a 13' screen? better buy a tablet lmao
Reminder that eGPUs are fucking shit for everything and should be only explored as curiosities
>I don't want to carry around a gtx1060 laptop
>but I'm carrying around an old thinkpad that is even heavier
big thinks
Used an eGPU setup with an X220 circa 2012 for CUDA work, which it did very nicely. Used the same rig on a W530 a few years later. It was a PE4L adapter, started with a GTX560ti in 2012 which worked but needed a fuck-off ATX PSU to provide the six-pin connectors, did it more recently with a 1050ti which takes all the power straight from the slot, which makes the whole setup a lot tider.
Word of warning - Nvidia fucked the driver support for expresscard egpu setups for 10-series and upwards cards. There is a workaround, but Win10, being the fucking shitstorm that it is, likes to break it whenever updates are pushed. This results in less than 100% reliability - the card works fine day-to-day but if I decide to really push it, lets say with some state-of-the-art gaymen, it will shit the bed and BSOD after about half an hour. Older cards and older OS's, no problem.
You may have to modify your laptop's DSDT to allow enough memory to allocate over an expresscard slot for the GPU's memory block.
If it doesn't work out of the box when you change your PCIe ID in xorg then you need to decompile your DSDT and recompile with the fix and load it with your bootloader on startup to replace the firmware's version.
Gonna play devil's advocate.
Huge fan of eGPU but slightly larger fan of a good dGPU laptop.
> Anyone tried an external gpu with an x230 thinkpad?
T420.
Works on Ubuntu, not so much on Windows. Required ACPI hotpaching for me. Also use egpu.io.
you will need wall outlet electricity for the pci-express box though
so Im not sure what you are winning by using the laptop instead of getting an mini itx pc case, small keyboard and 12" travelling TFT screen
my x230 weights 1.3kg which is only 100g more than my xps13.
The reason I don't want to carry my gaming laptop around all day is because it would be stupid to do so, you almost cettily aren't CADing enough to make it worth the price and adding a dedicated GPU to a laptop ruins the battery life enough to turn me away
The eGPU guys have the right idea. If you move around a lot for work just have a GPU you leave at home and a laptop you pair it with when you want to bingbingwahoo. The laptop should mainly be for light work and productivity through the day.
you wot nigger
you plug it in and it works
works like shit and all the cables make it less portable. just buy a laptop or pc or if you are gonna go retard then just go full retard and buy a tablet
>works like shit
works fine in literally everything except ETS2
>makes it less portable
You unplug it when you want to go somewhere, you plug it back in when you want to game again. I'm guessing most people who get eGPUs almost never play vidya away from home.
>just buy a laptop or pc
EXP GDC costs $50 and I already have a pretty good laptop, it's a pretty good stop-gap while I'm saving up for a good pc
>WHIIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
doesthe cooling work well though?