I’m completely new here so I don’t know if this is the appropriate section for this. So I’ve been working on a project where I’m using an eGPU with my old Dell Inspiron 17r-5720.I was able to set up an AMD GPU easily, but I couldn’t get a GTX 960 working on it. Because of this, I can not take advantage of Optimus (allowing you to use built-in laptop display with external graphics). So I’ve concocted up a plan to work around this. I want to hook up my GPU directly to my laptop monitor so I can take advantage of the eGPU without an external monitor.
So here’s my problem. My laptop refuses to boot up with the display disconnected (I get the 8 beep error code which means display error). Does anyone know how I can get around this?
As someone who works on Dell laptops on a daily basis, I honestly don’t know how you would do that.
Although to be honest, I’ve never seen one refuse to boot up just because the display wasn’t plugged in. I also don’t know how you would hook the gpu to the laptop LCD because they usually use some proprietary ribbon cable.
Me neither, on any laptop, though haven’t dealt specifically with Dell as far as I remember. I have used several other over the years with no / or an external monitor attached.
I’m thinking it’s like with wifi cards and PSU’s that just need two pins shorted out.
Ok uhhhh. Optimus is shit, for one. Its a massive pain in the ass to work with for two. And for three why can’t you just use a normal thing and use the egpu as a gpu? Theres no advantage to optimus its gimp technology for netbooks and low low end laptops.
@FaunCB I know, which is why I am not using Optimus anyways (AMD doesn’t have Optimus). By directly hooking up my display to the GPU, I avoid the bottlenecking of running the data back.
As to “why can’t you just use a normal thing and use the egpu as a gpu”? The answer is simply because I can. I’m a tech enthusiast so doing things like this is just normal for me. I already have a great desktop, having a portable workstation that I can edit videos on and occasional do some gaming is an intriguing project to me.
@Zumps You’re probably right. How would I determine what pins would I need to short?
Makes sense. We get a lot of kids in the fall / towards christmas sometimes that ask what a good GPU for an egpu would be and then they make 17 threads on how to make optimus work for their core2duo laptops. Its very aggravating.
It would probably be wise to consult a specs sheet of the technology. If it is proprietary you might be out of luck, but is it really? Another way is to measure the output of the pins. You can probably quite easily fint out which pins are ground, by knowing another ground pin somewhere on the motherboard, and work your way from there. It will get you started but might not get you to the finish lines in the first go, but you’ll have something more specific to work on and ask about on the forums.
Edit: oh wait, you have a control board, which means either it is not proprietary or it has been hacked already. This is a good thing. Even if it is “only” on the LCD side of things.
While my usual work isn’t that far into it, I’ve had to boot probably a few hundred without screens just in the course of trouble shooting. (this is bulk repair work). Usually I’m booting it without an LCD just to see if the screen or the video cable are causing a short of some kind, when I can’t see anything physical that would make me thing there is a short (burning, frayed cables, etc.)
In general if your running an eGPU, your going to connect it directly to the monitor, and don’t fuck with optimus, optimus is for internal gpus, now if you want to connect your laptop gpu you could just plug the hdmi port from your laptop into either another port on your monitor or just get a box that you run the display leads into (kvm maybe, that seems pretty far out there considering the question) and just switch inputs and mirror the display, But all of this assumes that your going to do this through software, if you tecnically can, you could totally fuck around with the laptop display controller, but I think that you should really use an external monitor.
I hear you, but like I said I’m making this a more portable workstation. It’s a project that I’m working on just for the fun of it. I already have a pretty powerful desktop at home so hooking this laptop up to an external display using the eGPU is redundant to me. I said I had no interest in getting Optimus to work as I couldn’t get my GTX 960 to work anyways and I already know of the severe bottleneck it has.