How to Upgrade Your Notebook Graphics Card Using DIY ViDOCK

Your notebook is doomed to be obsolete soon after you buy it. Laptops have certain components that can't be upgraded. A new graphics solution for notebooks called the DIY ViDock promises to let you add an external graphics card to your laptop.

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Why only test at 1280x1024? Most decent external screens have higher resolutions than that and it would be nice to test this little guy at various resolutions to give people an idea of when that PCIe- x1 interface is going to not work so well.

This might be NBR, but it is a desktop part and I think establishing a baseline performance measurement for the GPU would be a good idea. Not everyone is going to use a 4890 and some kind of measurement indicating what kind of performance loss you might be looking at if I bought say a 5870 for a laptop...

 

Everything but where to buy?

 

Ok article, but it would help if there was some links to the vendors of the parts.

I went out and found the manufacturer's order page for the PCIe to Expresscard adapter though. It can be bought here:

PE4H (PCIe passive adapter ver2.0a)

Additionally, instead of using a huge desktop power supply, something like this would make it smaller:

Newegg.com - FSP Group Booster X5 450W Independent/Supplementary SLI Certified CrossFire Ready Active PFC Dedicated Multi.GPU Power

 

Added the product purchase page link into the spec area of the review.

The small power supply is pretty nice but still pricey. It would rank up there with the other modular units that would cut down on wires/bulk but add a good chunk of change to the build.

 

There's well over 1 year of existing discussion on the DIY ViDock in the threads below. The DIY concept extended to making enclosures as well:

Details/discussion: Enclosures:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-vidock-experiences.html http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...se-post-your-diy-vidock-pics.html#post6109661

Also, I had expected a NVidia GTX460 in an Optimus setup for the review as indicated earlier. That would have changed benchmark results considerably. Consider a An i7-620M Lenovo_X201 GTX460 DIY ViDocked here obtained 3dmark06=14530 and 3dmarkvantage.gpu=10503. That's faster than the current gaming systems like the G73JH. I guess that could be a major buying deterrent of bulky gaming notebooks, perhaps a good reason to benchmark the substantially slower HD4890. The HD4890 is NOT recommended as a choice for a performance DIY ViDock setup.

Consider too that pci-e 3.0 (8Gbps) with the Sandy Bridge platform scheduled for Q1 2011 will provide 4 times as much bandwidth as current x1 1.0 (2.5Gbps - 2Gbps after overhead) setups. Now that will be sufficient bandwidth to provide near-desktop performance levels.

 

I can imagine with the right enclosure setup, someone could make a lot of money off this, selling pre-built video docks.
External video cards in the past were abandoned. I think Asus did one if memory serves. It goes to show how truly inexpensive this could be. I can't help but wonder if companies may pick up on this, considering the homework has already been done for them (thanks to the contributors at NBR).

 

We have a GTX 470 in the office (originally thought it was the 460) we were initially planning on using for the review until we started reading about the mods required to the power regulators to prevent black screens of death with the card consuming too much from the adapter slot. The 4890 was a fall back option and kind of played into the "building a gaming rig from parts around the office".

The end result is the same overall, highly recommended if you want huge gains from an otherwise "slow" notebook. Going with the faster card just means even higher performance

 

GF100 based cards like the GTX465/GTX470/GTX480 require Panzer's fuse bypass mod. The GF104 GTX460 requires far less power so does not require that mod. Furthermore, PE4L is not affected and PE4H 2.1 scheduled for release this month will correct the need for the fuse bypass.

I'd highly recommend doing a GTX460 review in the Optimus setup as I'm sure many of the DIY ViDock folks were waiting for that. I know I was. Or do the very simple fuse bypass mod and use your GTX470 with your PE4H 2.0a.

 

Yup, which is why when I realized it was the 470 and not the 460 I realized I was kind of screwed.

The ViDock will be around the office for a while, so if in the next few weeks one of us gets our hands on a GTX 460 we will update the review or post in the forums our new results.

 

Do all current laptops have 1x PCI-e? I recall reading somewhere that new Vaio Z has 8x...

(I mean for the ExpressCard)

 

If someone sold a setup like this for $150/$200 in some sort of closed box they would make a killing.
It's great addition without spending thousands of dollars on a new laptop.
Do you need a external monitor for it or can you use the laptops screen?

 

Villagetronic have their Vidock3 (72W), Vidock4 (150W), Vidock4 Plus (225W) products which is enclosure and PSU all in one tidy box. Only problem is the price for it. Vidock3 starts at US$250-shipped.



The equivalent of the setup used in the review would be the US$330-shipped ViDock4 Plus whereas the PSU+PE4H used in the review can be had for ~US$130. Can do it for US$100 if go the cheaper PE4L option. So an extra US$200-$230 buys you a tidier solution if you want it, or pockets you a lot of spare change to come up with a DIY enclosure.

Worth noting that the Vidock4 plus' 225W would not reliably power a GTX470/GTX480 which require 232W or greater of peak power. Also, unlike the DIY ViDock's mini HDMI cables, Villagetronic's data transmission cable is not easily replaceable by a US$6-shipped part.

Required is a an external monitor for top performance. There are however NVidia Optimus and Ultramon setups to use the internal LCD with a performance penalty. The NVidia Optimus giving the most performance and flexibility *if* your candidate system has a 4500MHD or Intel HD card. NVidia have locked down their drivers to only enable Optimus enhancements if detecting one of those IGPs as the bootup primary video card.

With the imminent release of 75W TDP NVidia Fermi cards, likely called a GTS4xx or GT4xx, it will make it possible to do a Optimus portable DIY ViDock, similar to this 12V/80W HD5750 implementation. That would be the game changer, especially when used on Sandy Bridge's 8Gbps pci-e 3.0 ports. [4x more bandwidth than the current expresscard slots, equivalent to x4 1.0].

 

Sure, now that Apple got rid of Expresscard something cool comes out for it!

I sure would like to try this with my i5 Macbook Pro. I could get rid of my cheap gaming PC.

 

I believe most, if not all current PCIe ports are 1x. Some laptops give you access to multiple PCIe ports though for linking. Check out the scaling threads for the DIY ViDock.

 

Sorry just want to clarify, so if your laptop has an express card slot like the lenovo t400 it means that you can just plug the card in. What circumstances do you need to fiddle with the internals on your laptop?

 

In "theory" after you plug in the ExpressCard along with the external video card, power supply, and connect the external card to an external display Windows should automatically pull in the drivers it needs.

In practice, if you check the forums you'll see that some people have needed to download other drivers manually or tweak the hardware to get specific desktop video cards to work in the adapter.

That said, the idea behind the DIY ViDOCK is that you can plug it into any laptop with an ExpressCard slot, connect any desktop video card that works with the adapter and start using the desktop video card as your discrete graphics card on your notebook.

Although I'm very happy with my desktop at home I'm very tempted to give this setup a shot with an old laptop and an old ATI 4850 card I've got collecting dust in a closet at home.

 

Too bad they didn't come with this sooner. A PC-Card version would have worked sweet with my old HP zd7000. Although I'm guessing the PC-Card bandwidth might have been a bottleneck there.

 

Would the DIY ViDOCK need a power supply even if the video card doesn't require it (for example, a geforce 9500 gt which takes the energy directly from the PCI)?

 

I think a normal desktop pcie slot can supply 75W of power to the card, the express card slot in your notebook wouldn't be able to do that as far as I know.

I can't remember exactly how much the expresscard slot can supply, but I doubt it would be enough for any GPU (I could be wrong though).

 

Considering the ExpressCard slot still draws from the notebook's PSU, I'd definitely believe that the slot would not be able to run any desktop GPU.

 

You'd be breaking unity laws if it was possible to draw 75W of power from a notebook which often has a 60W adapter.

The DIY ViDock requires external power provided by either a 75W DC adapter or ATX PSU to provide the 75W pci-e slot power.

 

Exactly.

 

I'm a bit puzzled here; does this mean that for the upcoming notebooks (having USB 3.0 an as such the bandwidth problem is history), and using a similar setup, I'll be able to connect the latest GPU (powered through an external power supply) and be able to play the latest games achieving high frame rates at maximum settings and at a resolution of 1920x1080 (on my HDTV) !

For me that would be a dream come true, specially that I only game in weekends, and such a setup would be just perfect.

 

So why aren't there more posts??? I just read this and blew my mind after seeing the benchmarks. This is amazing!!!

 

If you want more posts, here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-vidock-experiences.html

 

Will this work with the X201?