PE 840 graphic card problem

Second screen is still visible, just before the "starting windows" screen. Furthermore, even BIOS menu is black. I'm installing it because some applications require more graphic memory than 8 mb.

Sorry for my english.

Hi Michele,

The embedded video is part of the system board, it is not a removable part. How far into post is the system getting? Why are you installing the graphics card?

If it gets that far the card is being detected. Try booting to our live linux disk and see if that works. http://linux.dell.com/files/openmanage-contributions/omsa-71-live/OMSA71-CentOS6-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso

I tried to boot with CentOS and other live disks like Ubuntu... nothing happens. I always have black screen before they are loaded.
The card is detected, but i think it's in conflict with the primary video card.

It's good you have kept to card with less that 25W power draw as this simplifies using graphics cards in servers never intended to house such cards that can pull 75W from PCie slots.

It's possible and likely that your PCIe graphics card conflicts with the embedded video function within the server. As a result, resources aren't handled correctly by BIOS and the boot process either locks up or we continue and the card is not available within the OS.

In either case, usually you need to try another card which may or may not work. ATI may or may not work better than Nvidia but some feel ATI have a better hit rate... PCI or PCI-x cards may or may not work better than PCIe. It's trial and error since we don't know what is happening within BIOS and at the hardware level.

Sometimes, boot lockups can be due to PCIe lane negotiation (hotplug detect) failure due to an obscure motherboard PCIe graphics card compatability issue. Sometimes this can be resolved using a short piece of wire to 'force' a set number of PCIe lanes to be used. If you look here, half way down the page, you'll see how one can force x1 lane. Then looking here you can deduce which PCIe pins need to be connected to force x1, x4 or x8 lanes.

Other times, compatability issues related to smbus and intel chipsets can cause some raid card (and presumably other cards) to not play well. See here for hints. 

But it's not even clear if the above could be a problem for you as you haven't mentioned whether you are even using a PCIe card, or if you are, how you made a x16 card fit into a x8 slot, let alone mobo version, mobo bios version, graphic card manufacturer, graphics card version and graphics card vbios version. Most don't get into such details and that's why some cards work on some systems and not in others...

It's also important to read the "PE840 Hardware Owners Manual" from cover to cover if you have not already done so as it has a section on trouble shooting IRQ and i think video issues.

Lastly don't overlook the fact that it's stupidly easy to forget to move the video cable from the motherboard connector to the graphics card connector in onces excitment to get their modded system up and running (though i will never admit to such)... 

At the end of the day, you need to search and read lots and lots of forum posts related to video cards for these old servers (here and elswhere). And understand the technicalities and limitations of what you are working with. Then you need to do lot's of head/leg work to get to a well tested solution (as nobody wants a partly working and frustrating solution).

Unfortunately there is no magic answer that this card will work...

Thank you for your exhaustive answer,

This is the video card i'm trying to use
http://www.nix.ru/autocatalog/palit_graphics_accelerators/192997_2254_draft_large.jpg

And these are some of the technical specs
www.palit.biz/.../Palit-GTX720_series-en_01.php

Mobo: Dell XM091 RH822 Motherboard

Mobo bios: Dell Server BIOS PowerEdge PE840 Version A08

I've been trying to read and understand the interesting articles you suggested me (i'm not anglophone) but I couldn't find any example about my actual video card, which actually is a PCI-e "X8" (shorter than a normal PCI-express) that, anyway, perfectly fits into its motherboard bus.

Thank you again.