Dell poweredge 1800 server graphics adapter.

Hello Dan78,

 

Dell has not validated any add-in VGA cards or GPU for the PE 1800.

That doesn't necessarily mean you can't get it to work.  You'll have to work trial and error.

We can leave the post open for the community to share their experience.

 

 

One note of Caution I see in documentation:

If you have a DRAC4/P   card installed in the PowerEdge 1800, the integrated video will be disabled outside of Windows. The VGA connector on the back of the card must be used for video.

I only have a raid controller adapter installed on the pci 64 slot that the server came with when I got it, but the video card  does the same regardless if I remove the raid card cotroller or leave it in the slot, it go's blank once I try to boot into windows without any errors or anything, just a black screen. No drac adapter.

 

you said  'You'll have to work trial and error.' 

It does not give any errors with the card, everything starts fine, I press f1 to continue or f2 to enter bios and it's where it dies, it does not enter nor the bios nor windows.The card I have is a nvidia gt630 with an 8x pin for the 8x slot, so it's the small model that fits in. Card works fine on other PC. The card is not on VGA but on DVI and HDMI., has outputs for these.

Without this card the internal onboard video card provided by the motherboard works perfect, I don't have any problems, it enters windows. I need the GT630 to install graphical aplications programs, game servers, game engine,  that do not run with the onboard version because the onboard version does not have support for anything and it's just a simple vga standard adapter type of card. 

 

 

If you can explain a bit on what you meant when you said 

'That doesn't necessarily mean you can't get it to work.  You'll have to work trial and error.'

Is there a place I can start  to test things or install something.

When Charles says trial and error, he's essentially saying that you'll need to follow your own process. If I've misunderstood him, he can clarify, but did step out for the day.

 

As for an explicit hardware blacklist, I've seen that idea floating about on the internet, but as someone that ran a server with an unsupported hardware configuration for a few years, I've no reason to put any stock in it. I believe some folks in the forum have gotten GTX cards to work with their servers, but I can't speak to the individual details.

 

The GT630 is also a consumer card, and not something we could support. Speaking purely anecdotally, the devices I've seen have most issues in servers are consumer devices. You might remove the card, boot into the BIOS, then check to see if you can find an option to disable the onboard video controller. I didn't see this option listed in the manual, but I think it'd be worth double checking in your BIOS.

There is no option to disable the onboard video adapter in the bios, I checked a and double checked long ago.

What I was hoping maybe is someone to tell me about some bios updates that could possibly fix my problem. I went to the bios updates page but Dell is not very specific what each update contains.

 

I take it when you say consumer card you are talking about a card that is commercial that people sell and buy,  as in consumer electronics, but so is the intel processors and the intel main board, it's all consumers so I don't understand why they would at least not make a bios update to support cards booting with the system.

If you are talking about power consumtion, then this card is very tiny and consumes very little power since it's an 8 x slot card, has no additional power cables like other cards and consumes only 65 watts maximum. But I think you were talking more about consumer goods , like other's people's stuff that they sell that is not part of the dell brand. If you ask me the xeons processors are not dell either so I don't understand this policy. They too are cossumer products.

 

I am not the only one who asked, before asking around I took  a look around the internet and there are others like me with this problem with pe1800. This server I got it brand new costs a lot of money back then, it's not high tec anymore but it's usable because it has xeon processors that compiles c plus plus code on the fly. Lucky I have the dual core proc version, this means it can compile heavy code, I put this server to the test to compile other c plus plus stuff not graphical related and it preforms very fast.

I don't get the same performance related to this mathematical speed on a regular intel processor and intel does not support  two logical proccesors on other brands it has, the i core brand does not have two logical processors. I don't want to buy a new computer , I have my desktop computer and this server.

 

 

So what I'm saying is that people still use this server for this kind of stuff and a bios update would be welcomed in the near future because people still use this server for compilng things, maybe game servers to run high math artificial inteligence calculations, game engine like unreal engine 4 to compile c plus plus code fast . I don't have the money for a new dell two logical xeon processor system to compile things and run server simulations.

Well anyway, anyone who can help me, guide me to some pages to read about things or to get a tool or something of the sort that may make it work.

Hi Dan,

 

the Poweredge 1800 first went on sale in October 2004, i think there will be no Update to change this because this system is not designed for this and it is very old now.

 

Installing a working video card automatically disables the system's integrated video controller.

I think 65W is to much for this server.

You could check this thread:

 

https://dell.to/3Dy0KUh

 

they are able to use Cards(much older ones) with less power needed.

 

 

Did you have any further questions?

 

Regards Martin

So it's not possible.

Okay, thanks.

I have no further questions, I wanted a yes or no answer from a dell guy working at dell because dell people know best, thanks for the answer.

 

@Dan78​ Hi Dan, I recently got this server and I remove temporary the heatsink near the pcie slot and try quadro 4000,HD3870x2,HD4870x2,HD5970x2,ati 800xl,6800gt,8800gts,9800gt and none works except my HD 6670 GDDR5 at pcie 4x on the 8x slot maybe I cut the last contact so 4x is not a problem, but I don't know why there is only the HD 6670 that works on it, but there is one.

and on PCI 32 bits my fireMV2200 works