What’s a good, cheap, no external power GPU to buy for VMs? Want to chuck a few in my Dell R730 server to make my desktop VMs more usable. Right now have an old K620 for a Windows VM, seems like 1030s are a good bet since I have a bunch of low profile slots I otherwise have no use for.
Intel arc a380 would be a good option, especially if you’re interested in av1 encoding. I know asrock recently showed off a low profile a380, don’t know if it’s available yet tho
I’ve been using a Quadro P600 for encoding without issue. It seems to be able to handle everything I throw at it, though I never do any crazy multi-streams. I got it for about $80.
Edit: I was too excited to reply. I have no idea if it’s good for driving a normal desktop VM. Sorry if this isn’t helpful!
@Nugget Yeah an older Quadro like the P600 is the fallback option. Looks like they run about $50 used on eBay.
Actually I lied, according to the Dell manual the full profile slots have a connector that provides PCIe power though I’d have to buy a cable for it. Long term the answer might be to get a used V100 and dive deep into the vGPU rabbit hole (erp).
depending on your use case these are cheap and cheerful.
https://www.newegg.com/sapphire-radeon-rx-6400-11315-01-20g/p/N82E16814202416
1030’s can be both low profile and passively cooled. They are cheap but their performance is quite low. I think it’s slower then modern integrated graphics. 1650’s are also available without external power.
On AMD’s side you can go for either a Radeon 460 or a Radeon Pro WX 5100. I think those 4 are your best options.
Edit: I think as someone else commented the RX 6400 might be the best option nowadays.
@Nilz Do you know if the WX 5100 supports SR-VIO? Getting mixed answers about what if any AMD GPUs support it, but having VMs share a single physical GPU would be a perfect solution.
Nvidia RTX 4090 ti.
Obviously a joke. I’d love to see some good suggestions here too ☺️
