It used to be that desktop computers reigned king in the world of powerful computing, and to some extent, they still do. But laptops are pretty powerful these days, and in our experience, a lot of engineering companies have actually swapped over to them for resource hungry 3D CAD applications — But what if you still need a bit more power?
Well, [Kamueone] wasn’t satisfied with the performance of his Razer Blade GTX870m laptop, so he decided to hack it and give it its own external graphics card.
Now unfortunately this really isn’t quite a simple as running some PCIE extender cables — nope. You’ll have to modify the BIOS first, which according to [Kamueone], isn’t that bad. But after that’s done you’ll also need a way to mount your graphics card outside of the laptop. He’s using an EXP GDC Beast V6 which uses a mini PCIE cable that can be connected directly to the laptop motherboard. You’re also going to need an external power supply.
[Kamueone] ran some benchmarks and upgrading from the stock onboard GTX870m to an external GTX 780ti resulted in over three times the frame rate capability — 40fps stock, 130fps upgraded!
This is an exremely cool hack but I don’t really see the point. If you need to use an external power supply, monitor and video card… why do it on your laptop? Just not worth it except for the cool factor.
dock it at home, play games, undock, take it with you.
This. Of all the different kinds of hacks out there, why would anyone need to justify a more powerful computer?
BitCoin Mining
Exactly! You, too, can become a captain of industry by increasing your electric bill and offsetting it by the few cents you would earn from GPU mining.
Does he need 130fps for some reason? Wasn’t it powerful enough for any human already?
That’s just a benchmark, this setup will be capable of playing games at a higher fidelity and/or framerate.
It is a pointless endeavor though, a simple desktop built around the card wouldn’t have cost much more, and has the added benefits of not melting under load and simply being a separate device.
Brian, your reasoning is flawed. Yes, there are a lot of good reasons why someone would be willing to pay more for faster hardware.
Game writers know their games will be played on machines of vastly different capabilities. Games can tune a bunch of parameters up and down (resolution, fine/coarse texture maps, realistic physics, smoke effects, degree of object tessellation). Powerful machines get better quality images; slower machines worse, such that a 10x more powerful machine won’t have 10x the frame rate.
Also, for a variety of reasons, the workload per frame varies wildly, so having an over-powered machine means that on simple frames the graphics card might be idle much of the time, but on demanding scenes it can keep going at 60 Hz or whatever, while a weaker machine will start suffering from frame stutter.
Another reason is to somewhat future-proof your investment. If you buy a card which barely handles today’s most demanding game, it will start having to bail water with the next generation game. Buying 50% more power than you need today may prevent you from buying a whole new card next year.
Some games can be played with LCD shutter glasses sync’d to the LCD frame rate; if your hardware can manage it, you can generate 60 fps for each eye independently on one display.
But humans can’t tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps (persistence of vision). Although I understand the increased frame rate (through interpolation or more image frames) can reduce motion blur and image “tearing”. And the increased power of the graphics processor may off-load the CPU, allowing more intensive work to be done by the CPU without causing frame stutter.
See, you were doing so well, then you tipped your hand as a troll by trotting out the thoroughly-debunked “humans can’t tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps” pile of steaming horseshit. You got a few bites, but you could have drawn this out much longer if you had kept your ace in the hole a little longer.
You get illusion of motion around 25fps, but that’s not really what’s important. What you really should look for is the ability to detect a single black frame between a load of white ones and vice versa. I don’t remember exact numbers, but detecting a black frame stops being possible around 60FPS and white one around 100.
Here’s a readily accessible and real-world example that this is false. The Hobbit series was the first widely-released motion picture to be filmed and projected at 48fps instead of the traditional 24fps. Try Googling “The Hobbit fps” and check out some of the widely polarized opinions on this choice. Some hated it, some loved it, but just about everyone noticed a significant difference. (Granted it’s not 30 vs. 60 fps as in your claim, but if the human ability to detect increasing frame rates ends at 30fps, the reaction to a mere additional 6fps would not have been so drastic.)
Yea in the /80’s/90’s the industry standard for CRT monitors was 60hz. People who were sensitive(got headaches or dizzyness) to the crt scan could turn them up (to 75 or 80)and have most of tier symptoms relieved. Some people can detect flicker of LED bulbs up to 120hz(the US standard for most LED bulb flicker). 25/50hz movies from Europe look foreign to US eyes. Point is that refresh rate is detectable up to about 120hz for some people. Some frequencies are pleasing, while some are horrible. Each person has their own set of frequencies they like/can view. But calling BS about people not noticing the difference is just stupid.
THIS IS A SERIOUS HACK. I have wanted exactly this for a loooong time. I do 3D modeling with my main and only computer, a 17″ Inspiron 9300 with a GEForce 6800 separate card inside, but it’s a laptop from 2005. Autodesk Inventor I run, and over the last 10 years have moved frequently, including 3 times to Japan from US. I needed a laptop all this time for portability daily, but I needed high graphics power for Inventor, mainly, and some gaming.
Even with the separate dedicated graphics card, it is all circa 2005, so not that powerful. Was awesome- in 2005. Everything since, even the damn java applets and youtube, make this thing lag. I needed something like this for years, that would let me keep the laptop that’s fine, and give me graphics capability- that I could upgrade just a card for, and not the entire laptop. Cards stay cheap compared to the equivalent in a laptop. I only need the capability of the card, not the cost of an entirely new computer.
Yes, I *think* they make some laptops with dedicated cards now still, but rare. And extremely expensive. And large, and heavy. With very very bad battery life. I wanted something small, light, easily taken around the world, but plug in serious graphics upgradeable at my choosing when I needed it for modeling my 100+ part assemblys.
I know this sounds ridiculous- but we have had laptops for 20+ years. I want my computer to be portable- because it can be, and I need it to be. Everytime I hear someone tell me “go buy a desktop” I think, hey, why do you need an Ipod? There are perfectly good victrolas laying around… People who aren’t willing to make a solution to a problem are just losing
a business opportunity.
There are some people out there that this hack was made for- because no one sells my solution. Or they do, and the laptop and it’s capbility will just be worthless in 2-3 years. I really like this!
So you can afford Autodesk Inventor, but you can’t afford a new laptop after 10 years ?
Dell alone makes plenty of laptops with video cards. Hell there alienware line has one with duel dedicated graphics cards. Look up the precision line of dell for some nice ones you arnt paying for all the extra lights and garbage on like the alienware
If the old one is otherwise running fine, why on earth would he want to replace it? Just because something is disposable doesn’t mean it should be disposed… The total cost to produce all these plastic, metal, and chemical devices is faaaaaar higher than the price you pay to get one. Kudos to [Drew] for not giving in to the consumer hamster wheel that demands that we replace everything as soon as possible, over and over and over again!
All Autodesk products are currently free if you’re a student of some kind.
This is exactly what I’m looking for. I only need to wait for a decent 12″ laptop and DDR4… A home gaming system and a portable office at once… Plus the docking station (with psu and gpu) would act as pluggable ethernet, usbs, additional fans, power supply…
Am I the only one that thinks this should have never been a hack? Why is this not a simple case of adding PCI extender cables? Besides power. What about laptops becoming MORE flexible rather than less?
Laptop with external desktop graphics is not that uncommon.
There are even commercial ones available for some laptops.
Dell/Alienware has one called Alienware Graphics Amplifier.
And there is one for MSI, the MSI GamingDock.
These are external cases, with power supply and a full PCIe x16 Slot.
A guy i know has been using essentially the same as OP for about a year now. I don’t remember him doing much hacking in the BIOS, though.
Then again, i also know a guy who’s been trying to make it work for half a year. Depends on the Notebook, i think.
There are ExpressCard to PCIe adapters, but they’re limited to an x1 single lane connection. Mini PCIe also has but a single lane, though some pins are reserved for a second, if any manufacturer implements it.
So unless this particular laptop model has a two lane Mini PCIe connector in it, the hack to extend it out was pointless, should have simply plugged into the ExpressCard slot.
What I’d like to see is an update to ExpressCard that widens the connector to the full width of the wide card and uses 100% of the expansion for more PCIe lanes.
This hack is nothing new. just Google for “egpu expresscard” and you will find quite some information on this topic. I’ve used such an adapter for two years. Nevertheless nice if your notebook only contains an onboard GPU.