Hi everyone,
I have a PVE cluster with three identical HP Z2 Mini computers (old CAD computers from my job i was gifted)—each with an NVIDIA Quadro M620 Mobile card. My goal is to pass through the GPU to an Ubuntu server 24.04 VM so I can run Plex for hardware-accelerated transcoding. Currently plex is running in a old i5 intel nuc.
What I’ve Tried So Far:
Custom ROM:
– I’m using the TechPowerUp ROM (230821.rom) placed in /usr/share/kvm/
Host PCI Settings:
– I’ve experimented with various hostpci0 configurations (e.g., using x-vga=on versus x-vga=off, and toggling rombar=0 vs. rombar=1), both with and without the ROM file.
CPU Flag Tweaks:
– I attempted to pass extra CPU options to hide virtualization (using -cpu host,kvm=off via the args field) to help convince the NVIDIA driver it’s on bare metal.
Observed Errors:
– Inside the VM, nvidia-smi always reports “No devices were found.”
– The guest’s kernel logs show errors like:
NVRM: GPU 0000:01:00.0: Failed to copy vbios to system memory
RmInitAdapter failed! (0x30:0xffff:1098)
I’ve tried every combination I could think of—but the mobile GPU still refuses to initialize properly. It seems that many mobile GPUs (including this Quadro M620 Mobile) don’t expose a usable UEFI VBIOS for VFIO passthrough.
My Hardware Details:
Hosts: HP Z2 Mini computers (three in a cluster)
GPU: NVIDIA Quadro M620 Mobile (one per host)
VM: Ubuntu server 24.04 (target for Plex transcoding)
My Question:
Has anyone successfully passed through a mobile GPU like the Quadro M620 Mobile on an HP Z2 Mini?
Has anyone managed to extract or use a valid UEFI-compatible VBIOS for this card (perhaps from a Windows install using GPU‑Z or a similar tool)?
Are there any additional configs or known limitations with mobile GPUs in Proxmox that I might be overlooking?
At this point, I’m considering moving to a system with a desktop-class GPU—but I’d love to learn if there’s a known workaround for these mobile GPUs.
Thanks in advance for any insights or suggestions. I’m happy to provide additional logs or configuration details if needed!
Erik
I have a PVE cluster with three identical HP Z2 Mini computers (old CAD computers from my job i was gifted)—each with an NVIDIA Quadro M620 Mobile card. My goal is to pass through the GPU to an Ubuntu server 24.04 VM so I can run Plex for hardware-accelerated transcoding. Currently plex is running in a old i5 intel nuc.
What I’ve Tried So Far:
Custom ROM:
– I’m using the TechPowerUp ROM (230821.rom) placed in /usr/share/kvm/
Host PCI Settings:
– I’ve experimented with various hostpci0 configurations (e.g., using x-vga=on versus x-vga=off, and toggling rombar=0 vs. rombar=1), both with and without the ROM file.
CPU Flag Tweaks:
– I attempted to pass extra CPU options to hide virtualization (using -cpu host,kvm=off via the args field) to help convince the NVIDIA driver it’s on bare metal.
Observed Errors:
– Inside the VM, nvidia-smi always reports “No devices were found.”
– The guest’s kernel logs show errors like:
NVRM: GPU 0000:01:00.0: Failed to copy vbios to system memory
RmInitAdapter failed! (0x30:0xffff:1098)
I’ve tried every combination I could think of—but the mobile GPU still refuses to initialize properly. It seems that many mobile GPUs (including this Quadro M620 Mobile) don’t expose a usable UEFI VBIOS for VFIO passthrough.
My Hardware Details:
Hosts: HP Z2 Mini computers (three in a cluster)
GPU: NVIDIA Quadro M620 Mobile (one per host)
VM: Ubuntu server 24.04 (target for Plex transcoding)
My Question:
Has anyone successfully passed through a mobile GPU like the Quadro M620 Mobile on an HP Z2 Mini?
Has anyone managed to extract or use a valid UEFI-compatible VBIOS for this card (perhaps from a Windows install using GPU‑Z or a similar tool)?
Are there any additional configs or known limitations with mobile GPUs in Proxmox that I might be overlooking?
At this point, I’m considering moving to a system with a desktop-class GPU—but I’d love to learn if there’s a known workaround for these mobile GPUs.
Thanks in advance for any insights or suggestions. I’m happy to provide additional logs or configuration details if needed!
Erik
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