Gpu in a laptop?

[piemadd]

So, I picked up an nvidia 8800 gg recently for free. Is it possible to use a pcie riser and plug it into the wifi slot on my laptop?

[Pendragon]

yes, you can do one of those janky things, but why would you even want to. the 8800GT is so old modern day iGPUs can match it.

[piemadd]

2 hours ago, Pendragon said:

yes, you can do one of those janky things, but why would you even want to. the 8800GT is so old modern day iGPUs can match it.

It is better than my igpu tho

[Funtoink63]

I don't know much about it but is looks like it can be done.

Spoiler

 

TL:DR

It can be done however, you my come up to some issues such as:

- BIOS whitelist - some laptops may have whitelist in BIOS, meaning that you can use whitelisted devices only, connecting non-whitelisted device will result in either error in BIOS or not booting/starting at all

- not enough resources - connecting GPU that is requires wide PCIe bus may result in "not enough resources" error. It happens when there isn't enough PCIe lanes to work with.

 

Another things to consider are:

- limitation of mini PCIe - compared to full size PCIe, mini PCIe is only 1x, (though it may be fine)

- portability / body modification - where is the mini PCIe on your laptop? Some laptops have quick access to mPCIe, some don't. Unless your laptop does have two identical mPCIes, you would lose WIFI. Meaning you will have to use cable or USB WIFI dongle to go on the internet. Also, your card may require power supply. And by doing this your laptop lose its portability.

For example, I have two laptops, first one has quick access to WIFI card, second don't. In order to do this on the second laptop, I would have to take out entire bottom cover (which is pain to do) or cut out a small hole for it.

 

I was reading about this few weeks ago and this is my understanding of it, so I may be wrong but:

The whole mSATA/mPCIe slot is mess of a standard. Both use same slot however, both are wired differently. That means, you cannot use mSATA SSD in slot wired for WIFI, or WIFI in slot wired for mSATA. Apparently, it can be wired differently for different WIFI cards. So even if you don't have whitelist, if a different WIFI (or maybe even WWAN) card require different wiring, it will not work. If you have more than one of this slot, it's either mSATA or second mPCIe for WWAN card.

[Pendragon]

Basically everything @Funtoink63 said.

But in addition, it's probably not worth the time and effort to do it. You need a PSU and then you need the EXC-GXP M2 eGPU thing. It's also janky as all hell and like above mentioned does not work all the time. And performance is meh. 

 

15 minutes ago, Funtoink63 said:

The whole mSATA/mPCIe slot is mess of a standard. Both use same slot however, both are wired differently. That means, you cannot use mSATA SSD in slot wired for WIFI, or WIFI in slot wired for mSATA. Apparently, it can be wired differently for different WIFI cards. So even if you don't have whitelist, if a different WIFI (or maybe even WWAN) card require different wiring, it will not work. If you have more than one of this slot, it's either mSATA or second mPCIe for WWAN card.

5

Yea...this is an issue sometimes, but on most modern laptops it's fine. Wifi cards run off mSATA (specific version of mSATA that I forgot what it was). and because we have the M2 standard now, there isn't alot of mSATA ssds around. An example would be the Dell Latitude E5570 where there is a mSATA slot but flaky as all hell. First it couldn't be booted to, and second it played favorites on what machines would be able to detect this mSATA SSD.