PowerEdge: NVIDIA Control Panel Missing Options in Windows Server

Summary: This article details the procedure to enable the Windows Display Driver Model graphics drivers on the NVIDIA Quadro, Tesla, and GRID GPUs on PowerEdge Server running Windows Server.

This article applies to This article does not apply to This article is not tied to any specific product. Not all product versions are identified in this article.
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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.

Manage GPU Utilization menu


When checking in the Task Manager, the GPU tab is not showing.

Task Manager


The NVIDIA-smiThis hyperlink is taking you to a website outside of Dell Technologies. 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.

nvidia-smi command-line utility

Useful information that is outlined in the above screenshot.

  • Driver mode
    • As specified in the NVIDIA-smi command documentationThis hyperlink is taking you to a website outside of Dell Technologies. (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 0This hyperlink is taking you to a website outside of Dell Technologies.) 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."

nvidia-smi command-line utility2

Cause

As reported in the NVIDIA TCC documentationThis hyperlink is taking you to a website outside of Dell Technologies.:

NVIDIA GPUs come in three classes:
GeForce - typically defaults to WDDM mode; used in gaming graphics
Quadro - typically defaults to WDDM mode, but often used as TCC compute devices as well
Tesla - 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 subscriptionThis hyperlink is taking you to a website outside of Dell Technologies. 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 accountThis hyperlink is taking you to a website outside of Dell Technologies.. Once done, the NVIDIA vGPU software can be downloaded from the NVIDIA dashboardThis hyperlink is taking you to a website outside of Dell Technologies..
 
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.

nvidia-smi command-line utility3


Finally, NVIDIA Control Panel and Task Manager show the GPU options:

Manage GPU Utilization

 

Task Manager

Affected Products

Microsoft Windows Server 2016, Microsoft Windows Server 2019, Microsoft Windows Server 2022
Article Properties
Article Number: 000195702
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 05 Feb 2025
Version:  7
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