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

[tom r lopes]

From: Ken Shaffer <kenshaffer80 at gmail.com>
> To: sf-lug <sf-lug at linuxmafia.com>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2020 11:41:17 -0700
> Subject: [sf-lug] Success on getting a GTX970 graphics card running on my
> old Lenovo W520
> 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.
>

So you disable in the bios, right?  Does that also disable the hdmi out?

Sometimes the video outs are connected directly to the discrete GPU so when
you disable it the Intel GPU can only drive the LCD.



>
> 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.
>
>
I have a W520.  It has 4 ram slots - up to 8GB each for a total max 32GB
ram.  I haven't played with it much, just put Ubuntu on it to see if it
worked.  I got it cheap a year ago out of a broken pile and it wasn't
broken! YAY!

But I'm surprised that you say it has a 32bit UEFI.  I lent it out to a
friend when his machine died and all we did is transferred the drives and
it booted right up.

On the other hand I have a couple BayTrail 2-in-1's and they definitely
have 32bit UEFI.  I have 64bit OS but the bootloader is 32bit.
grubia32.efi versus grubx64.efi  It is a little complicated to set up since
the Ubuntu installer will try to install grubx64.efi on Uefi booted
machines.

Also I looked at the Lenovo firmware changelog and I didn't see the PCI
memory thing.  I just skimmed it though.  Do you have a link to that or
discussion?

"4G GTX970"  Do you mean 4GB video ram?

Anyways I find this all very interesting.
So this video card is running like it is in a 1x slot (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExpressCard "ExpressCard's direct connection
to the system bus over a PCI Express ×1 lane")
I've played around a bit with a Chromebox flashed with UEFI firmware and I
found a mini-pciE to ethernet card.  I had some little idea to make a
router out of it.  Time to take out the dremel and make it fit, lol.

And I looked around for the "$40 Expresscard/PCIE adapter"  but only see
them over $100.  (the ones I do see have choice of pc interface
expresscard or mini-pciE)  Do you have a link to the one you got?

Thomas


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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