Building a monster

September 26, 2024 10:47 AM

Someone is offering me a number of Nvidia Quadro k420 graphic cards (ten year old tech). I also have a couple of older desktop towers. Can I stack them somehow into a monster CAD machine or something? If so, how so? Would there be any point throwing it in a somewhat newer, but minimum 5 years old computer that doesn't otherwise have a dedicated graphic card?
posted by J.R. Hartley to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Solidworks doesn't (has never?) support(ed) multi GPU systems and as far as I know many modern motherboards don't support Crossfire/SLI multi GPU setups anymore.

Not sure what CAD package you use, I only live in Solidworks land

Depending on available PCIe lanes/slots you have available you might be able to use them for training pytorch/huggingface models?
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:13 AM on September 26

Nvidia ended driver support for Kepler (at least on desktop cards) in 2021, so there's no hope of running modern drivers. And 1GB of VRAM is wholly useless for any kind of modern CUDA type of ai stuff. Those models need tons and tons of memory. Unless you want to make a fancy space heater or are just interested in the tech, these are doorstops.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:04 PM on September 26

Oh, and addressing the question of modern integrated graphics vs. one of these, the integrated graphics will wipe the floor because it will have up to date drivers. Cannot stress enough how the usefulness of a graphics card depends to an extreme amount on the driver quality.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:11 PM on September 26

A Quadro k420 compares poorly to new gpus - e.g. compare them to cheap high perf / $ cards here: gpu value benchmarks. They have about 5% of the performance of a new rx 6600, and 1/8th of the VRAM. Maybe it's worth working backwards -- what job are you trying to do, does that job need a graphics card, if so what's the most efficient option.
posted by are-coral-made at 11:53 PM on September 26