[SOLVED] Tesla M40 and Dell OEM board

[aubreydrake]

I am looking into buying a tesla m40 (24gb) for the extra vram for larger deeplearning models. I am concerned about "above 4gb decoding" not being an option in my bios. https://superuser.com/questions/1239231/what-is-above-4g-decoding
what issues will this cause, if any? m40s are ~260 usd

system specs:

• CPU4770
• MotherboardDell OEM OKWVT8
• RAM24 GIB
• GPU1070

 

[kanewolf]

I am looking into buying a tesla m40 (24gb) for the extra vram for larger deeplearning models. I am concerned about "above 4gb decoding" not being an option in my bios. https://superuser.com/questions/1239231/what-is-above-4g-decoding
what issues will this cause, if any? m40s are ~260 usd

system specs:

• CPU4770
• MotherboardDell OEM OKWVT8
• RAM24 GIB
• GPU1070

The biggest problem is that the M40 is passive cooled. So you have to have a whole lot of positive case pressure to ensure airflow through the GPU. They are designed for 2U servers and only SOME are certified. Cooling will be your biggest problem.

 

[aubreydrake]

The biggest problem is that the M40 is passive cooled. So you have to have a whole lot of positive case pressure to ensure airflow through the GPU. They are designed for 2U servers and only SOME are certified. Cooling will be your biggest problem.

I will have to mod it somehow. I am more concerned about the motherborad compatibility.

 

[kanewolf]

I will have to mod it somehow. I am more concerned about the motherborad compatibility.

Not a clue. If your system will work with a 1070, then I don't think a Maxwell based tesla will be an issue.
Mixing an 1070 and a Tesla may not work well either.

 

[punkncat]

I would approach this by way of the Dell discussion groups to see if the BIOS is locked to a specific set of GPU. I have run across this multiple times with their mobo and funny enough in particular with their "XPS Gaming" rigs.

 

[aubreydrake]

Not a clue. If your system will work with a 1070, then I don't think a Maxwell based tesla will be an issue.
Mixing an 1070 and a Tesla may not work well either.

This specific mobo only has one pcie 16x slot so I would only use one at a time. M40 for compute, and when i game the 1070.

 

[kanewolf]

This specific mobo only has one pcie 16x slot so I would only use one at a time. M40 for compute, and when i game the 1070.

There could still be driver conflicts swapping back and forth. And the risk of damage to PCIe slot or power supply cables, etc. This is sounding less appealing to me all the time...

 

[aubreydrake]

There could still be driver conflicts swapping back and forth. And the risk of damage to PCIe slot or power supply cables, etc. This is sounding less appealing to me all the time...

you do have a point, but i am just doing some info gathering at this stage

 

[86zx]

Ya there might be a way to get the drivers to work but I’ve put a quadro in with a GeForce card and it’s kinda a mess. As far as the passive cooling get a pci fan and tape it to the card I’ve done that with a amd FirePro s9000 worked pretty well. If you want decent gaming and work gpu I’d go for a Radeon vii it’s pretty much the only “bridge” gpu on the market. Quadros can game fairly decently but they are very expensive even used so it’s not worth it

 

[aubreydrake]

Ya there might be a way to get the drivers to work but I’ve put a quadro in with a GeForce card and it’s kinda a mess. As far as the passive cooling get a pci fan and tape it to the card I’ve done that with a amd FirePro s9000 worked pretty well. If you want decent gaming and work gpu I’d go for a Radeon vii it’s pretty much the only “bridge” gpu on the market. Quadros can game fairly decently but they are very expensive even used so it’s not worth it

The software that i use is pretty much nvidia only at this time.