A question for the gurus out there. Under W10, can one crunch on an NVIDIA GPU which is NOT attached to a monitor - the monitor being attached to an internal graphic card?

I remember something was mentioned about a dongle. Is this a thing?

Thanks!

No clue on Wins 10 as I stay away from it. But on Win 7 you can. The dummy plug I use just to keep the screen resolution at my preference instead of max size when I remote into the machine. Just a FYI. Amazon sells dummy dongles.

Yes - I got mine through Amazon, too. Search "dummy plug headless" does the trick. People used to solder them themselves in VGA days, but you can now get DVI and HDMI up to (at least) 4K resolution - I wouldn't try making one of those.

I believe Toni's question was not about using a dongle for remoting into a headless server, but rather will BOINC crunch on a gpu that does not have a monitor or dongle connected.

Yes it can.

I believe Toni's question was not about using a dongle for remoting into a headless server, but rather will BOINC crunch on a gpu that does not have a monitor or dongle connected.

Yes it can.

+1

I'm running several of my GPUs headless under Win10. Works without issue.

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I believe Toni's question was not about using a dongle for remoting into a headless server, but rather will BOINC crunch on a gpu that does not have a monitor or dongle connected.

Yes it can.

Though not always for Intel GPUs.

Under W10, can one crunch on an NVIDIA GPU which is NOT attached to a- the monitor being attached to an internal graphic card?

The Monitor can be connected to internal GPU, the Nvidia GPU does NOT need to be primary GPU (as long as motherboard BIOS supports this config) nor does it need a dongle to crunch.

The only card I've seen picky about having something attached has been my RX 580. NV and Intel are fine w/o anything attached. Sometimes a 2nd 'monitor' can be setup within windows w/o having a physical monitor actually attached to satisfy the GPU.

I do this on several Windows 10 PCs:

I have several PCs with integrated graphics which do have an added GPU while the monitor is connected to the integrated GPU.
This poses no problem at all on my AMD pcs, and I only have a small issue on my Intel pc, see below.

Here they are:

AMD A8-9600 with integrated Radeon R7 + a GT710 doing the crunching:
http://www.gpugrid.net/show_host_detail.php?hostid=514223
No problem whatsoever.

Athlon 200GE with integrated Vega 3 and an added GT730 doing the crunching:
http://www.gpugrid.net/show_host_detail.php?hostid=503400
No problem whatsoever.

On my Intel pc it works too, but there is a small bug though:
Intel Core i5-8400 with integrated Intel graphics, and an added GT730 doing the crunching:
http://www.gpugrid.net/show_host_detail.php?hostid=513885
It works, but as soon as the BOINC screen saver starts, moving your mouse or touching the keyboard can no longer bring back the Windows screen.
I need to push ctrl+alt+del to get the Windows screen back.
I haven't been able to solve this issue until now, not even with the latest drivers... Maybe it's a BIOS issue.
But for the rest the GPU number crunching works perfectly on this pc too.
Turning off the BOINC screen saver probably solves the problem, but even on LCD screens it is not a good idea to let the same screen be projected for hours...
Maybe I could try using another screen saver like the "lines" screen saver in Windows... haven't tried that yet.

In the Windows Task Manager - in the performance tab - you get to see both GPUs,
and you can see in the graphs called "CUDA" or "Computing" which one is doing the work.

There, I hope this info helps you out. :-)

Have a nice day;
Carl

Turn off the BOINC screen saver. It just wastes CPU cycles anyway. You can either set your screen saver to a blank/black screen or have your monitor turn off.

Turn off the BOINC screen saver. It just wastes CPU cycles anyway. You can either set your screen saver to a blank/black screen or have your monitor turn off.

Thx for the advice. :-)
Having the monitor go to sleep is probably the best option indeed. Minimises the usage of the monitor and saves electricity as well.