ML370 T04 G4 tower server recommended graphics and sound alternatives

[ibakaneza]

Hi,

I would like to run opengl applications on my server and was wondering what are some good options.
Also I would like to install a sound card but I am a bit unsure which is the best way to go.

The servers specs are very vague on what you can and cannot do.

any help would be appreciated.

[Gregg Eshelman]

It has four 64bit 100Mhz PCI-X slots and two PCI Express x4 slots.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/ca/en/sm/WF06a/12146350-12146352-12146638-12146638-12146660-12146710.html

The PCI Express slots will take x1, x2, x3 and x4 cards. If there were open-ended PCIe slots, then ANY PCIe card would work in ANY PCIe slot. (There are ExpressCard boxes for laptops that have an x16 slot but only support x1 speed. PCIe cards can run on any number of channels from x1 to their maximum.)

I've only been able to find PCIe video cards in low-end x1 and high end x16. All the companies are ignoring the medium performance range for PCIe video.

SATA cards are plentiful in x1 and x4. Koutech (so, that's what happened to Kouwell...) makes a x4 SATA/IDE combo.

There are also x1 and x4 PCIe network and sound cards.

You *can* plug 3.3 volt 32bit PCI 2.x cards into a PCI-X slot, but that will slow down all the other cards on that bus. I dunno if the PCI bus in your server is split or if all slots are on the same bus.

It's very likely you won't find anything very recent in a PCI-X videocard, and the latest I've seen in PCI is a nVidia GeForce 6200- but it's severely bottlenecked by the PCI bus. (Even the old FX5000 series GPUs were strangling on PCI.) PCI-X videocards, being made mostly for the server and high-end workstation customer, tend to be horribly expensive.

If some company would get off their arse and start kicking out x2 and x4 videocards, that'd be very nice. (I have a PC with an x1 slot and an x4 slot that's only half connected so it's really x2.)

[ibakaneza]

Thanks for your response.

I picked up and old PCI-X card today.

Its a HP Visualise FX10B Pro 128meg (64bit long card)

So I am hoping that it works for now as a temporary solution. (will let you know in a week how it turns out)
Because I am running windows 2000 server hopefully the drivers won't be an issue.

Just the sound card now to try and figure out now.

I have contacted HP to see if they can offer any solutions as well, so If I hear anything back i will post it here for future users.