Can we please game on the Tesla k80?

[Legal_EasE]

So I recently bought a Tesla K80 for $130 on eBay and I'm going to try to get it to game or at the very least run PhysX in conjunction with my gtx1070, Quadro 2000, or with NVIDIA Optimus with the RX5708gb, or iGPU (whichever isn't impossible).  Anthony made a mining card work in "Nvidia Said We Couldn't Game On This Crypto Mining Card...").   I figured unlocking ( / hacking into) the potential of a 4992 CUDA core GPU with 24gbs of GDDR5 vram would be worthwhile if it can be done. I know the obvious stuff, no display i/o, this is not a gaming card, there's no gameready driver, ya da ya da, no cooling, can't install drivers for GeForce and Tesla on one machine, ya da ya da.  However, I'm determined to do whatever it takes to get this card playing any game, or maybe just crisis.  I've search fairly extensively and it seems there's people who've had some success, but no nice tutorial or instructions.

This guy claimed to have his k80 running physX with 2 gtx 980s in SLI.
These guys claim a tesla p40 can run Ryse Sons of Rome at 8k.

The CraftComputers guy made a server with a tesla k10 to run 4 instances of games as a server.

 

My parts are arriving at the end of the week, but I'd like to be ready when they arrive.

 

Parts at my disposal:

b250 ATX /w i5-7200

b150 mATX /w i7-7700k

x79 /w Xeon e5-1620 

Quadro 2000, RX 570, GTX 1070

3 power supplies at 650, 710, and 750

all the ram you could possible want and a few m.2 nvme SSDs.

custom cooler for passively cooled gpu
 

 

Spoiler

Any ideas about how this could be done are welcome.  It would be great if there were some instructions on how to do something similar.  Of course, I fully expect people to tell me this is impossible and all the reasons why I'm an idiot, that's fine too. I'm doing this out of boredom and frustration with the current state of the gpu market.

[ki8aras]

from what use gathered everyone is saying that this is possible, simply by using your motherboard output

[da na]

yup, I've done it on a k20, wasn't as good of an experience. but I can confirm it worked using an iGPU

[Legal_EasE]

2 hours ago, ki8aras said:

from what use gathered everyone is saying that this is possible, simply by using your motherboard output

 

Spoiler

 

Thanks for the reply ki8aras. Ok that'll be sweet, I am assuming you need to use windows graphics settings as shown above, but ...

 

what if I want to use it with my Xeon (no iGPU)?  Will it work with a Quardo 2000?

[Legal_EasE]

2 hours ago, wat3rmelon_man2 said:

yup, I've done it on a k20, wasn't as good of an experience. but I can confirm it worked using an iGPU

Thanks for the reply wat3rmelon_man2,

 

Ok, that's good to hear.  The k80 is a bit more powerful, but not hugely so.  At $130, if it beats a gtx1050ti I will consider that a win, I was hoping (probably foolishly) that it might be more like a gtx 1080 (similar vram size, possibly capable of overclocking) or a gtx 690 (same Kepler architecture). 

Did you need any special software or could windows do this natively in graphics settings?

[da na]

11 minutes ago, Legal_EasE said:

Thanks for the reply wat3rmelon_man2,

 

Ok, that's good to hear.  The k80 is a bit more powerful, but not hugely so.  At $130, if it beats a gtx1050ti I will consider that a win, I was hoping (probably foolishly) that it might be more like a gtx 1080 (similar vram size, possibly capable of overclocking) or a gtx 690 (same Kepler architecture). 

Did you need any special software or could windows do this natively in graphics settings?

it's basically just a 970 with a different name and a bad cooler... you will want an aftermarket cooler or mount a fan on the end as most Teslas are passive cooled.

The k20 i used was kinda in the gtx 580 range. 

DX12 is supported for compute applications but expect support to be limited for new games.

 

 

So, you're basically getting a GTX 970 I would assume with the k80, just looking at its TFLOPS performance.

The interesting thing is, you need no other software... just Windows power settings. I tested this 2 years or so ago, don't know if it works now. but all you needed were the NVIDIA drivers, plug in to your iGPU and it should run well. Only thing is, not all game will run. For some reason on the K20, some games just got errors at startup.

However if you can find a cheap one the k80 is a good deal.

 

It'll work with/without igpu but I reccomend you use it with the Quadro as these gpu are designed as accelerators. Most workstation configurators from dell and HP allow you to use a tesla to boost a Quadro, because they are designed to take load off of another card when processing lots of data, not handle gaming themselves.

[da na]

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_nkw=tesla+k80+fan&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_osacat=0&_odkw=tesla+k80

look for these... these are literally needed so you won't melt your GPU, case, and kill your MOBO.

Good luck, I really do hope this works out for you.

[Legal_EasE]

12 minutes ago, wat3rmelon_man2 said:

it's basically just a 970 with a different name and a bad cooler... you will want an aftermarket cooler or mount a fan on the end as most Teslas are passive cooled.

The k20 i used was kinda in the gtx 580 range. 

DX12 is supported for compute applications but expect support to be limited for new games.

 

 

So, you're basically getting a GTX 970 I would assume with the k80, just looking at its TFLOPS performance.

The interesting thing is, you need no other software... just Windows power settings. I tested this 2 years or so ago, don't know if it works now. but all you needed were the NVIDIA drivers, plug in to your iGPU and it should run well. Only thing is, not all game will run. For some reason on the K20, some games just got errors at startup.

However if you can find a cheap one the k80 is a good deal.

Wow, thanks man. That's super helpful. I bought one of these for cooling, hopefully it will be enough. https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Expansion-Exhaust-Cooling-Connector/dp/B0000510SS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=pci+fan&qid=1614111001&sr=8-1

Ya, there are tons of cheap ones on eBay right now.  Probably thanks to this guy for telling everyone that you can't do it:

 

[da na]

1 minute ago, Legal_EasE said:

Wow, thanks man. That's super helpful. I bought one of these for cooling, hopefully it will be enough. https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Expansion-Exhaust-Cooling-Connector/dp/B0000510SS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=pci+fan&qid=1614111001&sr=8-1

I have one too... they are good, they're loud though.

[Legal_EasE]

3 minutes ago, wat3rmelon_man2 said:

I have one too... they are good, they're loud though.

Do you think something like this would work better?
https://www.amazon.com/Aluminum-VGA-Graphic-Card-Cooler/dp/B07P9Y18HB/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=gpu+cooler&qid=1614111319&sr=8-3

[da na]

23 minutes ago, Legal_EasE said:

Do you think something like this would work better?
https://www.amazon.com/Aluminum-VGA-Graphic-Card-Cooler/dp/B07P9Y18HB/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=gpu+cooler&qid=1614111319&sr=8-3

sure... you could try, but a back exhaust fan would be much better

[Legal_EasE]

6 minutes ago, wat3rmelon_man2 said:

sure... you could try, but a back exhaust fan would be much better

Ya, that was my plan, like this: 

 

[Legal_EasE]

 

So this ended up being much trickier than I meant it to be and that was mostly my fault for wanting to incorporate a bunch of different things into one build.  I tried to set the HDDs in RAID0 while running to OS on a m.2 on the x79 motherboard with a Xeon E5-1260 ocerclocked up to 4.2ghz all to run Windows 10 AME. 

I installed linux (both Pop_OS and Manjaro) no problem and it recognized the tesla, but then I spent about two days cursing about installing windows on the M.2.  It just didn't want to work, so I eventually unplugged everything but the quadro 2000 and an ssd and installed windows 10 pro for workstations.

 

I realized during this process that I probably could install 10 Home and not ever have to deal with watermarks, but I thought workstation would make the most sense with the hardware.  I spent about another whole day downloading different drivers from NVIDIA, even though the first one worked as intended.  It did not however let me run PhysX with the tesla.  I tried installing cuda_11.2.1, 390.85_tesla-desktop-win10, PhysX-9.15.0428 and several versions of quadro-grid-desktop, but only had luck with some of the quadro drivers, currently I'm on 372.95.  I read that quadro can now run on GeForce drivers, so I am about to restart after installing that.  The problem is that the NVIDIA Control Panel will not allow you to select the Tesla as the PhysX processor.  I can use the CPU or the Quadro, even though I can use the tesla for "cuda." (whatever that means).  My cinebench scores haven't been impressive and are in keeping with other good quadro 2000s.  My next move will be to try to run it in a VM and see if the performance there is better.  I understand that you can make this work with VirtualGL and TurboVNC. I am not familiar with any of these, but it may be where this needs to go.

If anyone has any suggestions, please, by all means.

 

The Machine:

Spoiler

 

The Cinebench:

Spoiler

The NVIDIA Control Panel:

Spoiler

 

 

 

[decolon]

Should definitely be possible. IIRC Geforce Now uses Tesla cards for cloud gaming and the games run fine.

[Legal_EasE]

35 minutes ago, decolon said:

Should definitely be possible. IIRC Geforce Now uses Tesla cards for cloud gaming and the games run fine.

I know, right?  It's just not as easy as I hoped.  One thing I wish I had done would have been to use an iGPU instead of going with the Xeon/Quadro combo.  I've seen youtube videos of gaming servers running on these cards and if you can do it remotely, why can't you do it locally?

[popsi]

Hi, I have registered at this site mainly to follow this topic. I have Tesla K80, RTX 3060Ti, x570 Aorus Elite mb, Ryzen 2700x. So, I dont have iGPU. I tried to use K80 in VM QEMU/KVM with PCI passthrough but unseccessfully (Arch linux host, Windows 10 guest). Pci passthrough works, Windows 10 vm guest sees K80 (as two devices) as well as Nvidia Tesla driver (version 390) recognizes K80s and places them under the display adapters section of Control panel. I planned to use Looking glass which would display output in a window of my monitor to which the rtx card is attached. Looking glass copies framebuffer from one to another card using shared memory and hence it has much lower latency than the usual approach with vnc. In other words many games are much smoother than with vnc. HOWEVER, the main problem is: in order Windows (and hence Looking glass too) to output display through a desired gpu, that gpu must be connected to a monitor or at least to a small device which fakes the card that it is monitor by sending to card some info like available resolutions and refresh rates. Attaching monitor to gpu is only necessary at setup time of Looking glass. After that a virtual display is used. But K80 doesnt have any physical output. This made so far an unpassable problem to me. I tried various things like disabling virtual display and windows vga adapter hoping that K80 device will take over but nothing works. 

 

I am happy that there is somebody else who is trying to achieve the same thing as I do I hope you will find a way to use K80 as a graphics adapter in a vm. I will follow the topic.

[Legal_EasE]

On 3/12/2021 at 11:30 AM, popsi said:

Hi, I have registered at this site mainly to follow this topic. I have Tesla K80, RTX 3060Ti, x570 Aorus Elite mb, Ryzen 2700x. So, I dont have iGPU. I tried to use K80 in VM QEMU/KVM with PCI passthrough but unseccessfully (Arch linux host, Windows 10 guest). Pci passthrough works, Windows 10 vm guest sees K80 (as two devices) as well as Nvidia Tesla driver (version 390) recognizes K80s and places them under the display adapters section of Control panel. I planned to use Looking glass which would display output in a window of my monitor to which the rtx card is attached. Looking glass copies framebuffer from one to another card using shared memory and hence it has much lower latency than the usual approach with vnc. In other words many games are much smoother than with vnc. HOWEVER, the main problem is: in order Windows (and hence Looking glass too) to output display through a desired gpu, that gpu must be connected to a monitor or at least to a small device which fakes the card that it is monitor by sending to card some info like available resolutions and refresh rates. Attaching monitor to gpu is only necessary at setup time of Looking glass. After that a virtual display is used. But K80 doesnt have any physical output. This made so far an unpassable problem to me. I tried various things like disabling virtual display and windows vga adapter hoping that K80 device will take over but nothing works. 

 

I am happy that there is somebody else who is trying to achieve the same thing as I do I hope you will find a way to use K80 as a graphics adapter in a vm. I will follow the topic.

You got a bit farther than me.  I gave up, I think.  I did find a tutorial recently though.  https://theterminallife.com/virtualgl-on-centos-7-using-nvidia-tesla-gpus/  I hope that helps.  Also, I am selling mine for $139, if you're interested.

[popsi]

2 hours ago, Legal_EasE said:

You got a bit farther than me.  I gave up, I think.  I did find a tutorial recently though.  https://theterminallife.com/virtualgl-on-centos-7-using-nvidia-tesla-gpus/  I hope that helps.  Also, I am selling mine for $139, if you're interested.

Oh it is pity that you gave up since your original post was so enthusiastic. Thanks for the link, I havent heard of virtualgl. I will check the tutorial. I already have a K80 and dont have a spare pcie port for another one. Good luck with selling yours.

[Legal_EasE]

On 3/14/2021 at 5:38 PM, popsi said:

Oh it is pity that you gave up since your original post was so enthusiastic. Thanks for the link, I havent heard of virtualgl. I will check the tutorial. I already have a K80 and dont have a spare pcie port for another one. Good luck with selling yours.

Ya, I know.  I put in a few solid days and got nowhere.  Well, I learned a lot about what I was probably not able to do in under 100 hours.  I think it is certainly possible but it is beyond this mere enthusiast's abilities.  The real purpose or value would be to use it to play your AAA games on any device in your house via your gaming server.

[ErnestJ]

Everyone told you cant run xeon phi 7290 on windows and its doing fine running windows 10, just had to get Asrock rack tr-knl workstation motherboard.

 

There tesla k80 drivers for windows 10: https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/131167/en-us

 

There did you get that tesla card that cheap ???? What seller ? Can you pm me his link ?

[TroubleElectrical]

I know this is an old thread, But there was a recent video on the subject:

$180 for a Gaming GPU Today??? Gaming on an nVidia Tesla K80!