To develop NVIDIA CUDA programs, the tools needed are:
Developer drivers
CUDA Toolkit
GPU Computing SDK
What is this developer driver? Installing it silently overrides any NVIDIA graphics driver that is already installed. So, how is the developer driver different from the usual NVIDIA graphics driver? What extra components or functionality does it contain?
The developer driver is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavours. If I am developing 32-bit Visual C++/CUDA projects on 64-bit Windows 7, which flavour of the developer driver do I choose? Why?
From the developer download page:
Note: The developer driver packages below provide baseline support for the widest number of NVIDIA products in the smallest number of installers. More recent production driver packages for developers and end users may be available at www.nvidia.com/drivers.
The developer driver is released with the Toolkit and is intended to have wide support for all CUDA capable devices. On the other hand the drivers on the main driver page are released as appropriate; the main drivers have full support for CUDA, but each one may support a subset of devices.
Incidentally, when you install a NVIDIA driver it tells you what version is currently installed and what version you're installing (unless you choose a silent install!).
Related
Not a duplicate of this question
When downloading NVIDIA GPU drivers, I've also been asked for some time which CUDA toolkit I prefer.
Now, what does this choice imply when downloading a driver?
As far as I know, different CUDA toolkits have different minimum drivers supporting them (also stated in the release notes), but what does this choice at the driver download page imply?
Generally speaking, there is a backwards compatibility strategy for drivers with respect to CUDA toolkits. For example, the latest driver should work with any older CUDA toolkit. An older driver may not work with a newer CUDA toolkit.
That is a general statement of compatibility. You can find it expressed here (e.g. table 1) also.
However, each CUDA toolkit ships with a particular driver branch. For example CUDA 10.1 ships with a 418.xx driver branch (this corresponds to the version of the GPU driver that is bundled with the CUDA toolkit installer).
So even though a 430.xx driver is compatible with and should work with CUDA 10.1, that isn't actually the driver branch that ships with CUDA 10.1
The dropdown allows you to select a driver that is in the same branch as the driver that particular CUDA toolkit was shipped with and has the highest test coverage with.
I am new to CUDA Development. I installed CUDA Toolkit 8.0 on my laptop running Windows 10 home and has a GTX 960M. Before Installing CUDA Toolkit, the context menu on desktop (right-click on desktop) used to have an option to access Nvidia Control Panel. And there also used to be system tray icons for accessing GeForce experience and GPU Activity status icon.
But after Installing CUDA Toolkit, these icons and options are no longer visible. And when I try to launch the Nvidia control panel from the System Control Panel, an error dialog box appears stating - "Nvidia Display Settings are not available. You are not currently using a display attached to Nvidia GPU."
I don't understand what this means. Did I mess-up the CUDA Toolkit Installation? Do I have to re-install the Display Drivers and the CUDA Toolkit?
Note: During the installation, I deselected the Display Driver, GeForce Experience and PhysX from the options because I already had their latest up-to-date versions installed on the system.
The Nvidia drivers provided with CUDA toolkit are really old; newer Nvidia drivers are available from the website. The same goes with NSight Visual Studio plugin.
I generally install CUDA toolkit first, then update the Drivers and Nsight through separate installation.
You just need to reinstalled the Nvidia drivers.
I have laptop which has Quadro K620m GPU. I am trying to learn CUDA programming and downloaded the network installer from NVIDIA site.
During CUDA SDK installation, just when its checking the hardware of the machine, it displays
Do you want to Continue?
This graphics driver could not find compatible graphics hardware. You may continue installation, but you will not be able to run CUDA applications.
Any thoughts why this could be happening? In my computer's device manager, I can see NVIDIA Quadro K620m in the display adapter listing.
Thank you.
This is normal, when the driver packaged in the CUDA installer is "older" than your GPU.
You should retain your current GPU driver, and go ahead with the CUDA toolkit installation, but de-select the option to install the GPU driver.
Your existing driver should work fine.
I have recently installed cuda 6.0 with a view of performance increment in windows 7 . the toolkit installer has display driver installer along with it and it installed display driver version named as 9.18.13.4062 . is this version mean 340.62???
Also it is mentioned that driver version 340.29 with cuda increases performance according to this link
does 340.xx series have the same performance ?? I couldnot get the version 340.29 driver. where can i download it from???
340.62 is the Windows GPU driver that ships with the CUDA 6.5 (windows) installer.
340.29 is the Linux GPU driver that ships with the CUDA 6.5 (linux) installer.
The link you have provided is referring to linux. 340.62 and 340.29 should be comparable, as much as "comparable" can be stated about a windows platform vs. a linux platform
Regarding the performance in the article linked, CUDA 6.5 (i.e. not just the driver) has significant performance increases in various libraries and in the compiler as well.
To get an idea of these performance increases, there is a webinar you can attend tomorrow (wednesday, September 17th) by following the link here.
I have the Nvidia Quadro NVS4200M along with Intel Integrated Graphics (on my laptop). I can't seem to get the CUDA 5.0 toolkit installation to succeed.
I am running Windows 7 Enterprise Edition 64-bit. I tried the 64-bit desktop & notebook installers and the 32-bit installers.
All of them seem to fail with the error message "Display Driver failed installation". I installed the latest drivers from here, and it is supposed to support CUDA-5.0, and despite that, the installation fails.
After failure, the libraries and binaries are present, but NSight Eclipse (which seems to have no standalone installation link) isn't installed. What could be the possible issue?
I'm not sure why the driver install failed in your case, but if you
have a "recent" driver installed, it's not necessary to use the
driver that comes with the cuda installer. The cuda installer
offers individual options to install the toolkit (required), samples
(optional), and driver (required only if you have an older driver),
so you can just select "no" when prompted for the driver install, to
avoid this, assuming you have a recent driver or installed one such
as the 307.45 driver.
You should always use a 64 bit installer if you have a 64 bit OS.
The only officially supported C/C++ compiler for windows is cl.exe, the microsoft compiler that ships with either Microsoft Visual Studio (the Express edition will do, it is free), or the Windows SDK (for command line use only). You're free to experiment with other stuff, but your mileage may vary. MS VS 2010 (and 2008) are the easiest to use. MS VS 2012 can be made to work but may require extra steps.
I recommend installing cuda after installing Microsoft Visual Studio. This is because the cuda installer should automatically find your VS installation and update some important files to make building cuda projects easier.
nsight Eclipse Edition is a linux-only tool (or mac). It is not for windows use, and will not be installed by the windows cuda installers. nsight EE provides an environment for code building, debugging, and profiling. In windows, the corresponding operations can be done via MS VS IDE for code building, the standalone visual profiler for profiling, and using a separate plug-in, nsight visual studio edition, for debugging and profiling within visual studio. Due to the way visual studio is constructed, nsight visual studio edition will not work with the free versions of visual studio. nsight visual studio has it's own separate installer.
The windows getting started guide may also be of interest.