Thinkpad Dock II with PCI based graphic Card

Message

tsukiyomi · #1 Post by **tsukiyomi** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 1:48 pm

Hi

I want to buy Thinkpad Dock II beacuse I wolud like to run
my CRT Monitor ( IBM p260) with graphic card attached
to the PCI slot in Thinkpad Dock II. I need such setup because
quality of vga out build in Thinkpad Replicator II, and thinkpad
itselfs, leaves a lot to desire.
I would like to ask if anyone used PCI graphic card with
Thinkpad Dock II and what kind of cards fit to docking station.

mrpaulin · #2 Post by **mrpaulin** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 8:58 pm

I have a T41 attached to a Dock II.
I am using a Radeon 9200SE (PCI) video adapter in the Dock II.
This allows me to have three independent displays:
1) the internal ThinkPad LCD
2) a 19-inch LCD panel at 1280x1024 on the Dock II DVI port
3) a 20-inch LCD panel at 1600x1200 on the DVI port of the Radeon 9200SE
This setup works perfectly, except for one thing -- sometimes the system will hang at boot when loading the video drivers. A power-cycle is then required to regain control.

leegaard · #3 Post by **leegaard** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 3:45 pm

Any of you guys know how potent a graphics adapter there will be available in ½ height PCI slot.

ATI 9200 isnt really up to Vista standard - is it?

davidspalding · #4 Post by **davidspalding** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 8:56 am

OP: depending on your model, your video might do greater resolutions via the Dock II VGA or DVI connections. You can find your model in the TABOOK.PDF (check the board FAQ for a link), the specs ought to list what the maximum video res on your card.

BTW, if you mention the machine type-model of your T4x, it would help us.

neomuzic · #5 Post by **neomuzic** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:26 pm

I have a t43 with the dock ii, what can I do / what do you suggest? I'd like the have the most powerful videocard available.

I saw this:

http://www.amazon.com/eVGA-GeForce-5200 ... B0001XX0PS

Anything better to put in the dock ii ?

How does one replace the card in it? What cards work? Only dvis ? Thanks!!

neomuzic · #6 Post by **neomuzic** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 12:43 am

Is it possible to put a SATA pci card there?

davidspalding · #7 Post by **davidspalding** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 1:34 pm

I don't see why not. You'd have to check that the size is proper. The Dock II guide refers to accepting a "short card," no longer than 174mm in length.

noetus · #8 Post by **noetus** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 1:57 pm

I have ordered a DIAMOND S9250PLDM128 ATI Radeon 9250 from Newegg which I should be getting in the next couple of days and I'll tell you how it goes. The reasons I got this card are:

(1) It has dual DVI outputs - that is, you can drive two monitors independently from this card, on either analog or digital signals. (It has no VGA output, but then, you shouldn't need it.) Incidentally, if you only plan to run two external monitors and don't care about having the LCD when the system is docked, you might think you can just go with a single-output card and use the DVI output on the dock for the other monitor. I think it is better to go with a dual-output card for three reasons, however. One is that if you drag windows from one monitor on the Dock DVI to one on the PCI DVI there will be a slight delay as data is written across the PCI port. This may not be significant or annoying, as I haven't seen this setup in practice, but I read elsewhere on this forum that it will happen. (Also, you are inviting compatibility problems, as the separate graphics drivers will have to swap the data, too.) If you're dragging from one monitor to another that are both on the PCI DVI then there should be no appreciable delay (and no driver issues). The second reason is that some people have reported problems getting the DVI output on the Dock to work. In fact, there has even been some doubt as to whether it will work for docked Thinkpads that don't actually have a DVI output. The short answer is that it should, even when the Thinkpad doesn't itself have a DVI, the graphics card supports it and should be wired to the Dock to allow it. The third reason is that the DVI output on the Dock is digital-only; it won't support an analog (VGA) monitor. (In other words, it's a DVI-D out, not a DVI-I out, while practically all PCI graphics card are DVI-I, if they support DVI.)

(2) It is VISTA ready (according to the Newegg listing)

(3) It is relatively cheap ($90) , and not too high-spec'ed. Apparently there is no point in putting a card with much higher spec than this in the Dock II, because of the limitations of the PCI bus.

(4) It has an ATI chipset. I have heard that there will be conflicts with the native ATI drivers in the Thinkpad with some cards, and I am hoping that because this is ATI the chances of a conflict will be minimised. (I have no idea if that logic actually works in practice, though.)

There are a couple of disadvantages with this card.

(1) It won't support the latest Catalyst drivers. You have to use Catalyst 6.5, not 6.9. However, hopefully I will be able to install Catalyst 6.5 to run both the internal and the PCI grpahics card with this setup, but until I've tried it and succeeded or failed, I won't know for sure.

(2) It is a low-profile PCI card, not a half-height one. As far as I am aware this is not a problem, except that the outside of the card won't sit flush with the Dock II casing.

noetus · #9 Post by **noetus** » Sat Oct 21, 2006 1:34 am

I have that video card installed and working now, if you want my impressions....

Thinkpaddict · #10 Post by **Thinkpaddict** » Sat Oct 21, 2006 6:41 am

noetus wrote:I have that video card installed and working now, if you want my impressions....

Absolutely! I (and many other people, am sure) are very interested in hearing your experiences with your new videocard.

Was installation painless, or did you have to go through a lot of trouble? What drivers did you install? Did you try Catalyst drivers? Does it fit completely into the Dock II? How is the performance (both 2D, like playing video, and 3D, like playing games)? Have you tried driving two monitors from it at once? Any problems such as crashes?

And, you can comment on anything else you can think of

Thanks in advance!

noetus · #11 Post by **noetus** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:09 pm

Well, the physical install itself was quite straightforward. The card is a 'low profile' card which means it is less deep, but roughly, as far as I can tell, the same length as a normal PCI card. The funny thing is that it looks like the space in the Dock II is big enough to take a higher, i.e. less narrow card. I don't see that it necessarily could take a full height card, but the low-profile card seems only to fill out about 2/3 of the height space. Perhaps the 'half-height' cards are higher, I don't know. Also, the metal plate at the end of the card that normally fits over the PCI slot, flush with the casing, is smaller than the slot in the Dock II and doesn't reach up to the screwhole where you would normally screw it in. So basically the thing is sitting snug as a push fit, and there is a funny space so you can see into the innards of the Dock. It worries me a bit that it's a push fit, as it moves around a bit as you work the cables on and off. If you had to do that a lot it could be an issue - though I think that mine is now in place, the setup is going to live more or less permanently on my desktop so it shouldn't be a problem.

The first mistake I made was to try and boot the docked machine up straight away. I got a blue screen half way through boot up. A conflict with the installed internal card drivers, it seems. I had to undock the machine, boot into windows, disable the internal graphics card, redock, and reboot. That was successful, and I was able to install the new drivers for the external card - at first I used the ATI Catalyst drivers. At first I had a weird problem that the screen was the wrong size, and trying to enlarge it resulting in the screen panning rather than filling out the monitor (they are both 24"). I figured it out eventually, though - I had to disable Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) in the Catalyst configuration. Ultramon works fine, and I get two independent desktops. I'm now using the Omega drivers as they enable me to use a non-standard (or just unusual?) desktop size - 1680x1050 - on one of the two monitors. (The other one is 1900x1200, both 32bit, both 24" - I am able to run 1900x1200 on both monitors without problems, but prefer to have the lower res on one of the monitors for increased text legibility.)

There are two unresolved issues, however. One is that the display seems slow - really slow - to draw and redraw. Video is painful. Even dragging open windows around is slow and jerky. The drawing is visibly slow when maximising/minimising windows, or when scrolling through long documents, as well. I knew the PCI slot might create some bottleneck issues, but I didn't think it would be this bad. (Directx and hardware acceleration are on and working ok, it appears.) The other issue is that re-enabling the internal video card causes a bluescreen when rebooting (after i've reinstalled the drivers for the internal card). I haven't tried to fix either of these problems, as I'm planning to test install Vista very soon, and there seems to be little point unless they recur with the new OS. These are both serious problems - if they can't be resolved, I don't think the current setup is usable in the long term.

noetus · #12 Post by **noetus** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:16 pm

Oh, there's another issue I forgot to mention. If the machine goes into sleep, or just switches off the displays after some inactivity, when I come to get the machine out of sleep mode it only wakes up one of the two monitors - although the desktop behaves as if both monitors are displaying as usual. (The open windows on the other monitor aren't visible, the display settings show the other monitor on extended desktop, etc.) In order to wake up the other monitor (with the extended desktop) I have to uncheck 'extended desktop' in the display settings, press 'ok', wait for a bit of craziness to end, then renable the extended desktop and press 'ok' and wait for some more craziness to subside. It's awkward. Not sure what the problem is - since the desktop behaves as if there are two monitors but one of them isn't getting a video signal from the video card, it could be a problem either with the card or with the drivers, I suppose. I haven't tried to fix the issue, e.g. by trying different video drivers, because as I said I want to test the setup with MS Vista first. If I have the two monitors displaying the same, single desktop, it isn't an issue.

Thinkpaddict · #13 Post by **Thinkpaddict** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 9:36 am

noetus,

Thank you for commenting in detail about your experience with the card. I am wondering if maybe the fact that it is an ATI card is causing conflicts with your internal graphics card and giving you all these problems.

I feel tempted to get an NVidia card to test its usability, and if that doesn't work maybe get a Matrox card and sell the NVidia on eBay. The problem with Matrox cards is that they are not gaming cards, and I would love to use my setup to play some nice games. However, Matrox cards are known to have the best 2D and multidisplay performance, so one of these would work nicely in a multimonitor setup where you don't need advanced 3D features.

If you sort out any of the outstanding problems, please let us know! That type of wisdom stays in the forums for posterity, and is what makes the forums such a great place.

Regards.

noetus · #14 Post by **noetus** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:46 pm

Sure, I will, I love contributing to and learning from these forums. I didn't think it was a conflict causing these problems because the internal video card is now *disabled* and I still get them. As I said I'm going to test install Vista (build 5744) this weekend, and we'll see if any of the problems get resolved then. If not, I may also consider using an NVidea card. One reason I got the ATI card was that I wanted to use Catalyst to control all three monitors at once (laptop and 2 external screens) but maybe that is a pipe dream.

noetus · #15 Post by **noetus** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 4:14 am

Bad news: it turns out that the ATI 9250 card is NOT Vista ready. There are no Vista drivers for it (and won't be). So when I installed Vista, the card is not recognized. It's a pity that we're constrained by having a PCI slot in the Dock II. If only it was PCI-Express (as in the Advanced Dock for the T60), we would be laughing. So, do NOT get the ATI 9250 card for your Dock II if you plan to upgrade to Vista.

After a bit of research I went ahead and ordered TWO more cards from Newegg, hopefully one of these will work as I want (two displays driven independently, Vista ready). Both of these are listed as Vista ready on Newegg's site and elsewhere. Here they are:

Jaton NVidia GeForce FX5200 128MB PCI

Vista Ready: yes, drivers available from NVidia site, includes multiple desktops. Two monitors? Yes, through double DVI port (analog or digital). OpenGL: 1.4. Low profile. Fan-cooled, unfortunately (a bit of noise).

Diamond ATI Radeon X1300 256MB PCI

Vista Ready: yes, drivers available from ATI site, includes multiple desktops. Two monitors? Yes, one through DVI (analog or digital), one through VGA port. OpenGL: 2.0. Fan-cooled, unfortunately.

For anyone else looking into which cards can be installed to the Dock II, it's VERY hard to find a PCI card these days, harder still to find one that will drive two monitors simultaneously, and harder yet again to find one that is Vista ready. So far I have found only these two cards that fit these three requirements. If you don't care about Vista, then you can go for the AIT 9250, or if money is no object and/or you want more monitors, a Matrox card (though as far as I can tell these use older technology, despite the capacity for many displays).

Once I have these cards, I am going to test them with Vista, and also see if I can get them working concurrently with the internal laptop LCD (I wasn't able to do that with the ATI 9250, and at least one other person on the forum had that problem with this card, as well).

Note to anyone considering running monitor(s) through the Dock II. Because the PCI bus has limited bandwidth, the display will have relatively slow refresh rates. Possibly not suitable for gaming (anyone confirm this?) Getting a T60 and Advanced Dock will fix this.

Edward Mendelson · #16 Post by **Edward Mendelson** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 8:11 pm

eVGA (www.evga.com) has some fanless PCI cards based on GeForce chips, including the MX4000. Don't know if this will have Vista drivers, though.

Utwig · #17 Post by **Utwig** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:30 pm

MX4000 is GF4MX aka GeForce2, DirectX 7, so forget about Aero.

I reserached PCI cards and fastest are FX5200. There are also FX5600 and 6200 from I think Gainward, hard to find, check ebay.

See if they are low profile.

Also, there is a market for low profile dual DVI or quad cards which is served by Matrox, Appian, and nVidia Quadro NVS line. Of those Quadro line might be vista ready, check out PNY site.

Also check out Matrox DualHead2Go.

noetus · #18 Post by **noetus** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 9:23 am

Utwig wrote:I reserached PCI cards and fastest are FX5200. There are also FX5600 and 6200 from I think Gainward, hard to find, check ebay.

How did you do your research, on spec or by trying out the card in the real world, in the Dock? Also, did you look at the X1300? That seems to be faster than FX5200 on spec. OpenGL 2.0 instead of 1.4. Also double the memory, though that may be overkill in the Dock. I tried both these cards in my Dock, and found the FX5200, at least the one I had, to have quite a noisy fan in comparison with the X1300 which is very quiet (Diamond manufactured), so I went with the ATI.

_erazor_ · #19 Post by **_erazor_** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 10:29 am

don`t forget this one:

http://www.bfgtech.com/6200_256_PCI.html

BFG GeForce 6200 PCI

noetus · #20 Post by **noetus** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 9:31 am

_erazor_ wrote:don`t forget this one:

http://www.bfgtech.com/6200_256_PCI.html

BFG GeForce 6200 PCI

I bought it! I LOVE this card! If you have the Dock II, get it, you won't be disappointed (I tried many other cards and none came up to scratch, but this one rocks)

tsukiyomi · #21 Post by **tsukiyomi** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 2:01 pm

I bought it! I LOVE this card! If you have the Dock II, get it, you won't be disappointed (I tried many other cards and none came up to scratch, but this one rocks)

So can you use with this card 2 external monitors and Thinkpad LCD ?
Please give us some more details.

noetus · #22 Post by **noetus** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:03 pm

tsukiyomi wrote:So can you use with this card 2 external monitors and Thinkpad LCD ?
Please give us some more details.

I haven't tried that - I've had a driver conflict with every other card I've tried, so assumed I would with this one, too. I'm not sure anyone has got that configuration to work. Anyone? I like this card because it is FAST (all other cards I tried were slow at basic things like maximising windows from taskbar) and the VGA output quality is high (unlike, for example, the Diamond ATI 9250 card I tried, and the Thinkpad's own VGA output from the Dock, which as you pointed out is pretty sucky - I found it to be blurry). Only drawback to this card is that it has a fan. However, just about all the faster cards do. At least it's a pretty quiet fan. It's a compromise I can live with. (It might be worth experimenting with disabling the fan, which is easy - you just have to pull its little power plug. You can monitor the GPU temperature from an option in the driver, so it would be easy to figure out if disabling the fan send the temperature too high or not. I find the temperature never goes above 70, and the internal shutdown threshold default is 145, so there is plenty of room to spare. Underclocking would also help bring the temperature down with the fan off. The card is overclocked out of the box.)

This card is driving two independent 1900x1200 displays and it feels as snappy (if not more snappy) than the internal chip driving the LCD alone (when the machine is undocked). No other card I tried could manage that (I was starting to think it was an inherent limitation of the PCI interface - happily, not so). Oh, there's another downside - the card is pricey. I paid something around $165, that was at BestBuy, you might find it cheaper online, but it isn't obvious where.

noetus · #23 Post by **noetus** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:07 pm

PS. Thanks, _erazor_, for bringing that card to my attention! Really saved me, I was about to give up on the whole 2xbig monitors experiment. Incidentally, I tried TWO different ATI X1300 cards (both with 256MB), one from Diamond, the other CompUSA's own brand. They both caused my T42 to hang up, just freeze. It's possible it's an incompatibility with my particular Dock, but more likely, I think, that it isn't suitable for using in the Dock II at all. So be warned.

noetus · #24 Post by **noetus** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:57 am

Anyone thinking of installing an nVidia card into the Dock II, beware... I have been having problems with the dreaded infinite loop nv4_disp BSOD error. Not sure if this will affect the FX series of cards or it's just my 6200. Not seen mention of this anywhere else in this forum...

ateece · #25 Post by **ateece** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 4:42 am

noetus wrote:Bad news: it turns out that the ATI 9250 card is NOT Vista ready. There are no Vista drivers for it (and won't be). So when I installed Vista, the card is not recognized. It's a pity that we're constrained by having a PCI slot in the Dock II. If only it was PCI-Express (as in the Advanced Dock for the T60), we would be laughing. So, do NOT get the ATI 9250 card for your Dock II if you plan to upgrade to Vista.

Now. I have two interests in this.... I have a T43 with a Dock II, and currently run a Matrox G450 off it, and have 3 external montiors, + the LCD iteself.

Sadly, with just 64mb of internal memory on the X300, Aero isnt supported when i run with an external montior. My hope is that i can drop to 2 montiors + LCD and get away with Aero if i upgrade the PCI card to something with 128mb+ of memory.

My second insterest is your comment above. I am running the Vista RTM (MSDN) on a machine with an ATI 9100IGP chipset on the motherboard. Now i started to panic as this is my spare dev machine, and i use it as a media center too sometimes, which needs vista drivers, standard vga wont cut it!

After spending HOURS trying to install the catalyst drivers, i thought i would try to install them manually. And lo-and-behold, Vista actually comes with drivers for LOTS of ATI cards!!! - It hadn't detected it, but it already had a driver.

Maybe worth a look?

noetus · #26 Post by **noetus** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 1:50 am

ateece wrote: After spending HOURS trying to install the catalyst drivers, i thought i would try to install them manually. And lo-and-behold, Vista actually comes with drivers for LOTS of ATI cards!!! - It hadn't detected it, but it already had a driver.

Maybe worth a look?

My impression was that Vista will work, but no Aero. Reason: no pixel shader version 2.0. But you say you are getting Aero on the 9100? Or the bare-bones Vista?

I am interested in your experience of the Matrox card. I have a Matrox P650 (which has 64MB of memory) and have failed to get it to work with either of the two Dock IIs I own. Boot up the machine, and I get no video signal at all from the card, latop boots to internal VGA, and no sign of a detectable video device on the PCI from Windows.

Also, I had heard that the Matrox cards have lovely clear text quality, but are slow, even on 2D. Is that your experience with the G450? I would only spend the time trying to get my P650 to work if I knew I would have fast performance, as fast as the NVidia 6200 OC card I currently have installed (which is optimized for 3D - not what I need - and is overkill with 256MB of VRAM). When I tried other cards, such as the 9250, I found them slow as well - even on simple things such as maximising windows that had been minimized to the taskbar, drawing the window was noticeably sluggish. The NVidia 6200 was the only card that seemed reasonably quick in the Dock II PCI slot (and I am talking 2D here). Mind you, I am driving two 1920x1200 displays, which may have something to do with it

ateece · #27 Post by **ateece** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 5:56 am

Okay.... the 9100, I honestly dont know if i am running Aero or not

It is running Media Center full time, and i haven't noticed if the windows outside MCE are transparent or not. I will check tonight and post.

My experiance with the Matrox isnt good. I have been trying to get it to work this am. I put the driver on from Windows Update, and the situation is, either the matrox works (single output only), and the laptop using a Standard VGA driver, or the ATI works but the Matrox driver reports a device error.

It seems strange that when ever i install the Matrox driver, the ATI reverts back to Standard VGA and i have to run qucikly through the driver update process!

I really want to run 4 montiors at work, like i could in XP. Laptop (1400res), 2 19"s (1280res) and a 21"(1920res). Preferably all with Aero. For the moment, i am running just the laptop and 21", at the desired res.

I was wondering, does anyone know if the ATI could run the LCD, an external analog montior AND an external digital monitor? I have looked into using a DVI2VGA adatper, but the DVI port on the Dock II is digital only, hence the lack of holes for pins around the + at one end. This would be great because i would sacrefice one monitor to be able to suspend the laptop when undocking instead of having to shut it down!!!

ambientscape · #28 Post by **ambientscape** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 8:08 am

Hey dude! Sorry to disturb....can all the discussion above be applied to the 2631 (Thinkpad Dock I)?

Thanks

ateece · #29 Post by **ateece** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 10:43 am

Okay, i've checked.

My MCE with the ATI 9100 CANNOT run Aero

And in answer to the above... Yes, i believe the above topic is relevant to a Dock I, however i doubt any machine for the Dock I has the hardware spec required to run Vista.

ambientscape · #30 Post by **ambientscape** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 12:49 pm

ateece wrote:Okay, i've checked.

My MCE with the ATI 9100 CANNOT run Aero

And in answer to the above... Yes, i believe the above topic is relevant to a Dock I, however i doubt any machine for the Dock I has the hardware spec required to run Vista.

well, thanks for the reply. I don;t need it to run Vista thou......just a descent graphic card that can play couple of games will do. So which card you guys talking about that can be really suitable?

Thinkpad Dock II with PCI based graphic Card

Thinkpad Dock II with PCI based graphic Card

Hi

sata pci card

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