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

[Ken Shaffer]

On 4/10/20, tom r lopes <tomrlopes at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?

Yes, it does disable the Display port output on the W520.
>
> 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<=== Should be 64 bit my error, it's fully 64 bit but for some  BIOS settings being optimized for 32 bit users..

 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
It's 64 my brain fart;^O

> 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?
Most of the complaints are on an egpu site, with people needing help
getting 4GB video cards to work.  See
https://egpu.io/forums/pc-setup/fix-dsdt-override-to-correct-error-12/
 Google TOLUD for BIOS change causing some problems.
>
> "4G GTX970"  Do you mean 4GB video ram?
Yes, 4GB my carelessness. There are complaints about this 970 card not
being a real 4GB card, but is a 3.5GB + 0.5GB.  Maybe that saved the
problems seen with so many 4GB cards, allowing the PCI memory to be
split up a bit.  I was really happy the new card was just plug and
play -- no memory tweaking necessary at all.  I just got CUDA 10.1 and
Tensorflow 2.1 installed on my SSD running Ubuntu 20.04Beta, so I am
really happy with this setup, as that was my primary goal (and a minor
secondary to play a Windows Steam game).
>
> 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?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MZL12PM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The current price is $48.62 but free shipping.  Supposing you can
still get things shipped from China -- A GTX 970 card was refused by
the shippers, so the vendor said, no reason given. So I finally bought
one locally for twice as much (but it is a nicer card, not double
width).
>
> 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
>>
>>
>