flashing an nvidia gpu for use with grid and vmware

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markpower28

Active Member
Apr 9, 2013
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It can be done. [MOVED] Hacking NVidia Cards into their Professional Counterparts - Page 17

It normally requires hard wire mod then after flash the GPU BIOS it will act like Grid/Quadro but the function is limited. For example, even you could mode as K1/K2 but you can only use pass-through to a single VM. It's good for testing propose, but I won't use that for production.

Current gen K1/K2 price has been going down since the announcement of the new gen. Quadro on the other hand can be found in reasonable price. K4000 can be found around $450. You will be better off use pass-through for that. If more user session is required I would do RDS/XenApp with K4000 pass-through. You can easily get 10-20 users using CAD that way with reasonable performance.
 

Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
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I can get you the fw image(s) from a grid k2 if you need it.
I have a pair... granted I should probably check how well they work before offering but if you think it would be useful... I will put those higher up on my list of things to check.
 
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b3nz0n8

Member
Feb 18, 2013
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Nice project by Kevin here...

VMware View vSGA with a Nvidia GT640 in a Dell C1100

“Convert” the GT640 into a Grid K1
Now that we have all of our parts and tools lets change the resistors to make the GT 640 register as a Grid K1.
The first thing I did was put the card in a windows 7 machine to verify it was a working GT 640 card.
After I verified it worked I followed the posts above and changed out the proper resistors to make the card register as a Grid K1.









K1 and K2:
http://www.nvidia.com/content/cloud-computing/pdf/nvidia-grid-datasheet-k1-k2.pdf

Virtual GPU Technology for Hardware Acceleration | NVIDIA GRID | NVIDIA
 

Tobias

New Member
Jun 15, 2015
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I have a GTX680 converted to a grid K2 and a GT640 converted to K1 running in my Horizon view 6 /Vsphere 6 environment , and it works great for vSGA and vDGA but unfortunately vGPU is not working.
 

Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
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Nice
I bet you could get vgpu working with the right fw.

I have k1's not k2 derp
k1 has 4 gpus on it... 192sp/gpu
GT720