Nvidia on a good old GTX 650

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Setup and Installation
1

I have a Xubuntu 18.04, kernel 4.15.0-20-generic, with a GTX 650. lspci |grep VGA: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK106 [GeForce GTX 650 Ti] (rev a1).

Since nvidia-smi was not working, I did the usual “trick” from the thread “NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running - #6 by user47440”:

sudo apt-get remove --purge '^nvidia-.*'
sudo apt-get remove --purge '^libnvidia-.*'
sudo apt-get remove --purge '^cuda-.*'

and then reinstall everything from https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads?target_os=Linux&target_arch=x86_64&Distribution=Ubuntu&target_version=18.04&target_type=deb_network.

But even after doing this, and reinstalling everything, nvidia-smi gives:

NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn’t communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

Is there something specific to do to install a good old GTX 650?

2

Assuming you have the 515.XX version of the driver installed, from the Cuda 11.7 install, this driver does not support your card.

The latest driver that does is 470.129 here: Linux x64 (AMD64/EM64T) Display Driver | 470.129.06 | Linux 64-bit | NVIDIA

The GTX650Ti is a Compute 3.0 card and the last Cuda toolkit to support 3.0, is the 10.2 version.

3

Thanks @rs277 for your answer. So I’ll do the sudo apt-get remove --purge '^nvidia-.*'; sudo apt-get remove --purge '^libnvidia-.*'; sudo apt-get remove --purge '^cuda-.*' process once again.

Which apt install ... should I do to install everything? I would like to have nvidia-smi, nvcc, the drivers, etc.

The link you gave here is only the driver right? How to also install CUDA, etc.? Is there a one-line apt ... that would do this?

I haven’t found it here because it’s only for 11.7: https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads?target_os=Linux&target_arch=x86_64&Distribution=Ubuntu&target_version=18.04&target_type=deb_network

4

I’d remove everything you’ve installed and the 10.2 apt install process is here: https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-10.2-download-archive?target_os=Linux&target_arch=x86_64&target_distro=Ubuntu&target_version=1804&target_type=debnetwork

I’m not sure if this will give you the latest compatible driver, but whatever it installs will be compatible.

Update: I’m not familiar with apt install’s, but it appears looking at the 11.7 wget instructions that the 10.2.ones are the same, with the exception of the “apt-key” line. If the instructions on the 10.2 page install 11.7 again, you might want to download the “deb (local)” package and install that, following the “Installation Guide for Linux” link at the bottom of the page.

5

To install an earlier cuda toolkit than the latest, you select the appropriate meta package. This is covered in the linux install guide