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I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC

blog.tymscar.com

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Re: I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC

#151

Post by NortySpock »

hakfoo wrote: post #112
darkwater wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said in the beginning that it doesn't even have a video out, so you cannot do gaming.

I'm actually surprised there hasn't been a dedicated effort to support display offload to, say, the CPU's iGPU. I'm sure manufacturers would love saving a dollar per card, and OEMs would appreciate eliminating the support calls from "I just bought a new $2500 gaming PC and no video" because they plugged the monitor into the iGPU instead of dGPU.

I have occasionally wondered the same thing.

Thinking about it more, on my setup I have a DVI port on the motherboard that I would be happy to use with a DVI cable, but I instead need to buy a DisplayPort DVI converter cable to plug directly into my video card...

Yeah, seems like an obvious thing for some motherboard providers to want to provide.

Re: I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC

#152

Post by binyu »

The V100 and the 4090 are based on vastly different architectures, the former uses the older Volta while the latter uses Ada. Last I checked you cannot meaningfully combine them. The 3090 is better than the V100, just get two 3090 and a NVLink.

Re: I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC

#153

Post by krackers »

gtirloni wrote: post #52

> The compute is still real. The VRAM is still real. And the memory bandwidth is where it gets genuinely surprising. sigh

Usually that cloying pattern is reserved for "emotional" contexts to validate the user ("your struggles are real [despite others thinking it's in your head]").

Here it doesn't even make sense, of course the VRAM is real. Is it going to tell me that my keyboard is real next?

I wonder if this was generated with the local model, this seems to be a case where it memorized the style but not the meaning and intent.

Re: I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC

#154

Post by krackers »

postalrat wrote: post #8
lelanthran wrote: post #3

> The compute is still real. The VRAM is still real. And the memory bandwidth is where it gets genuinely surprising. Because humans write exactly like this /s

Where do you think llms learned to write that way?

This particular case seems to be an LLM trying to blindly apply the saccharine therapeutic pattern "your frustration is real" to a context where it doesn't make sense. No one is debating or questioning the fact that the card has 16 gigs of vram.

The point of "X is real" in a therapeutic context is to make the person feel seen and acknowledged, that his struggles are real to him and really do weigh on his mind, even if it is technically "all in his head".

Re: I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC

#155

Post by cthalupa »

doubled112 wrote: post #134
sonzohan wrote: post #100

I also recently decided to buy a datacenter GPU and slap it into a system. Some notes from my experience that the author doesn't mention in their article: Decommissioned NVIDIA V100s and AMD MI50s are fairly cheap, $200 for 16gb and $400-500 for 32gb, for local experimentation. They are also very old. There's an enthusiast community keeping these two cards alive and working with current platforms and models. Nitpick,…

> if given the same treatment a datacenter GPU will overheat itself idling I have a friend who has learned this through several server grade cards over the years. Yes your Intel 10G NIC was cheap. No you cannot just stick it in your desktop. It is expecting server level airflow, probably with a cold intake side. He printed a fan mount, slapped it on, and they’ve been happy together since.

I've had multiple X520-DAs in desktop cases for years without doing anything special for cooling. Hell, one of them was in a fully watercooled system that had very little in-case airflow.

Re: I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC

#156

Post by gerdesj »

doubled112 wrote: post #134
sonzohan wrote: post #100

I also recently decided to buy a datacenter GPU and slap it into a system. Some notes from my experience that the author doesn't mention in their article: Decommissioned NVIDIA V100s and AMD MI50s are fairly cheap, $200 for 16gb and $400-500 for 32gb, for local experimentation. They are also very old. There's an enthusiast community keeping these two cards alive and working with current platforms and models. Nitpick,…

> if given the same treatment a datacenter GPU will overheat itself idling I have a friend who has learned this through several server grade cards over the years. Yes your Intel 10G NIC was cheap. No you cannot just stick it in your desktop. It is expecting server level airflow, probably with a cold intake side. He printed a fan mount, slapped it on, and they’ve been happy together since.

Show your friend QSFP and QSFP+ ...

Re: I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC

#157

Post by sonzohan »

overfeed wrote: post #148
sonzohan wrote: post #100

I also recently decided to buy a datacenter GPU and slap it into a system. Some notes from my experience that the author doesn't mention in their article: Decommissioned NVIDIA V100s and AMD MI50s are fairly cheap, $200 for 16gb and $400-500 for 32gb, for local experimentation. They are also very old. There's an enthusiast community keeping these two cards alive and working with current platforms and models. Nitpick,…

> You will need to buy, at least, a bunch of decent 120mm fans to prevent this or invest in some water cooling There's a cottage industry of 3D-printed fan-shrouds for data center GPUs - 120mm are often the sweet spot for quietness and practicality. The shoud smugly fits the GPUs intake, so it gets all the airflow from the attached fan(s), whose speed curves can be attached to GPU temperature.

Shoutout to the makers and hackers supplying those!

Re: I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC

#158

Post by p_l »

cthalupa wrote: post #155
doubled112 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if given the same treatment a datacenter GPU will overheat itself idling I have a friend who has learned this through several server grade cards over the years. Yes your Intel 10G NIC was cheap. No you cannot just stick it in your desktop. It is expecting server level airflow, probably with a cold intake side. He printed a fan mount, slapped it on, and they’ve been happy together since.

I've had multiple X520-DAs in desktop cases for years without doing anything special for cooling. Hell, one of them was in a fully watercooled system that had very little in-case airflow.

The -DA might have been critical in them doing so well ;-) -TA2 might have heated somewhat mightily (only recently lower thermal power twisted-pair gear started showing up)

Re: I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC

#160

Post by p_l »

hakfoo wrote: post #112
darkwater wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said in the beginning that it doesn't even have a video out, so you cannot do gaming.

I'm actually surprised there hasn't been a dedicated effort to support display offload to, say, the CPU's iGPU. I'm sure manufacturers would love saving a dollar per card, and OEMs would appreciate eliminating the support calls from "I just bought a new $2500 gaming PC and no video" because they plugged the monitor into the iGPU instead of dGPU.

This is exactly what "Optimus" and "hybrid graphics" is, the issue is that you need to configure that - laptops will provide information to OS "hey, this card has no video output" or "hey, there's an output MUX connected to output X on iGPU and output Y on dGPU", and drivers pick that up and know they have to setup transferring frames between the two or trigger the mux etc.

nVidia has also used the datacenter cards to run GeForce Now, at least for some lines of the cards, plus some of them come with license (or you can buy it extra?) for nVidia GRID that provides more flexibility for multi-instancing etc to run in virtual desktop

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