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

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 4/5/20 1:52 PM, John Strazzarino wrote:
> 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

     John I do hope that you are running checksums on your downloads?

     Bobbie
>
>> 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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