eGPU with lenovo i5 X220-EXP GDC Beast + 560Ti +4Gb ram

The idea

  I have to admit, when I've heard that my X220 with i5 and iGPU can play modern games I was thrilled. I began to search about this eGPU thing and discovered quite a community of users who buy buissness class laptops and then mount a eGPU unit, usually with 2gb vRAM cards. My setup, as stated in the title, is powered by a dell 220W power supply.

The story is, I bought the EXP GDC in an online chineese  shop called banggood, as it was the cheapest version available at the time and shipping free, plus no toll fee like from some US orders. It came with the wrong cable (PCI-E) instead of the one I ordered (Expresscard). Wrote to customer support and bang, got shipped a proper cable. I began to fiddle with it and.. it didn't work. Rumbled through forums, changed my laptops specs aswell as the OS (W7 currently, suck it 10) and it still was not working. After a LONG time, I think 2 months, from the original order, I wrote an email - I had speculations about the Expresscard cable they've sent me. After a quick email exchange, they've sent me another Expresscard cable. It works!

Not without its flaws

The biggest problem is in all previous and current V7 versions. Nvidia Kernel stops working. You play a game, and it basically shuts it down or your screen goes black as the drivers stop working. Sometimes when you fire up the game again and play, there will be no error and you will be able to enjoy the game. However, in most of the cases it means you have to restart your laptop entirely. Usually one restart is enough to make it work. Please do note that this driver crash will occur usually when you're in game for about 30 minutes (differs from each game and each time, may even be instant).

It happend to me numerous times, even on the right expresscard version and working Gen 2 cable. It still does happens from time to time, usually  in games from Battlefield series.

Performance

Now something that most of you are probably interested in and rightfully so. First of all I would like to say that it varies from Internal or External setup. For mobile purposes I have internal setup and I've been able to achieve so far 60+ fps in following games:

• Battlefields - all series usually mid-low settings with 100% res rendering
• Warframe - very good performance
• Doom 3
• Overwatch - stable ~75 fps 
• Counter Strike: Global Offensive all on low with at least 80fps

And there's more to come in the future. However, these are raw, simple stats, I'm going to be recording stats for specific games using Rivia Tuner and MSI afterburner and post them all in here for your liking, so you can see the full result. In short future I am willing to test the shadowplay to post the results on youtube, however I will need a bigger external drive.

Stay tuned for more info!