Symptoms
When opening the NVIDIA Control Panel, only the Manage GPU Utilization menu is available. In this menu, there is only the Dedicated for compute needs Usage Mode, while graphics tasks (like 3D Settings) are not present.
When checking in the Task Manager, the GPU tab is not showing.
The NVIDIA-smi command-line utility provides additional information regarding the GPU state. It can be run in the Command Prompt from its directory in C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI.The output prompts to the GPU status when running the nvidia-smi -i command, with its usage and driver details.
Useful information that is outlined in the above screenshot.
Driver mode
As specified in the NVIDIA-smi command documentation (page 8, under "Driver Model"), Tesla Compute Cluster (TCC) drivers are mostly used for compute operations (as shown in the NVIDIA Control Panel's Usage Mode), while the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) ones are for graphic usage.
The usage
No memory is being used.No processes are running.
The GPU-ID
The PCI bus ID (as domain:bus:device.function in hexadecimal).
The command nvidia-smi -fdm 0 (or nvidia-smi -g {GPU_ID} -dm 0) should force the usage of WDDM drivers (as the 0 identifies the WDDM drivers, while a 1 would identify the TCC ones). By default, the user does not have permissions to change it and gets the following error message:
"Unable to set driver model for GPU {GPU-ID}: Not supported
Treating as warning and moving on.
All done."
Cause
As reported in the NVIDIA TCC documentation:
NVIDIA GPUs come in three classes:GeForce - typically defaults to WDDM mode; used in gaming graphicsQuadro - typically defaults to WDDM mode, but often used as TCC compute devices as wellTesla - typically defaults to TCC mode Current drivers require a GRID license to enable WDDM on Tesla devices.
Resolution
A GRID license allows the user to download the NVIDIA GRID and Virtual GPU drivers so as to change from TCC to WDDM mode.The GRID license requires a NVIDIA Enterprise Account that is received by NVIDIA subscription purchase which should be considered in phase of order of the GPU. If this has not being done, it is possible to create a NVIDIA 90 days trial account. Once done, the NVIDIA vGPU software can be downloaded from the NVIDIA dashboard. Once installed, the WDDM mode should be enabled by default. This can be checked using the command nvidia-smi. If not, it can still be forced using the command nvidia-smi -fdm 0.
Finally, NVIDIA Control Panel and Task Manager show the GPU options:
