[sf-lug] Success on getting a GTX970 graphics card running on my old Lenovo W520

[Ken Shaffer]

My old Lenovo W520, a business machine, is fine for everything except
graphics. Most external graphics upgrades involve Thunderbolt, which of
course the W520 lacks, but I did find a cheap expresscard/PCIe adapter
which allowed a loaner 1G GT640 to run.
The laptop screen was used as a primary display, and an HDMI monitor could
optionally be plugged into the external GPU. Total setup was to disable the
internal Nvidia Quadro 1000M.

With that proof of concept on a card off the low end of the recommended
cards for the adapter, I went all in off the high end and got a 4G GTX970
off Ebay from a San Francisco seller.  There were all sorts of reported
problems with 4G cards on the W520, because it was originally sold with 32
bit Windows 7, and Lenovo's firmware revisions squeezed the PCI memory in
the lower 4G to give the poor 32 bit users more memory -- ignoring the fact
the W520 is a 32 bit UEFI machine, and most users probably are running a 64
bit OS these days on it.  Anyway, as expected, Ubuntu ran just fine with
the new card, and unexpectedly, Windows 10 1909 did too.  No tweaking for
either OS.  I now have the CUDA compute capability to upgrade my old CUDA
8.0 to 10 and even run Tensorflow.

Biggest problem was getting the right power supply splitter cables for the
new card (the 6 pin plugs come in two flavors, one with a rounded plug next
to the clip, and one with a square plug). A square plug wont fit a rounded
socket, which the video card has.  The Newegg reviews on the cables
indicated that picture were not to be trusted, so I bought excess cables,
figuring I could make my own working one if necessary.  Turns out the two
splitters and extension were just what I needed to properly power the card
(ugly though).

So, total cost to upgrade the Lenovo W520 with a GTX970 GPU:
$20 Portable Dell Power supply
$40 Expresscard/PCIE adapter
$109 GTX970 GPU (Ebay, local seller)
$20 power cable splitters
$189 Total (incl tax and shipping)

Today's meeting was canceled, but hope it wont bee too long before we meet
again.
Stay Safe,
Ken
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