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

[John Strazzarino]

Ken,

Glad to hear you are doing well and keeping busy with computers.

I am doing my best Bobbie S. Impression by downloading different versions of Linux, and then loading them on my ‘Linux Club’ machine to see how they work

Hope all are well in this group and may we meet again in person very soon.

John

Sent from my iPad

> On Apr 5, 2020, at 11:43 AM, Ken Shaffer <kenshaffer80 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 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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