Pcie video cards and ibm x236

[Panamaguy]

Does anyone out there actually have a PCIe (not PCI, not PCI-X) add-in video card of any flavor (x1, x4, x8) working in either of the two PCIe slots (#2 and #3) of an IBM x236 please? The slots are x8 mechanical but allegedly wired for x4.

 

[sk1939]

I recall people running things like HD5450's in Dell Poweredges, but the problem is the servers are not designed for the power draw of the higher end cards (no power connector), and the fact that many cards are multiple slots, which do not fit into some servers. In addition I do not know of any X8 or x4 video cards, and an x1 video card will work, but will be low on graphics power.

 

[Panamaguy]

Thanks sk1939. I have never seen a PCIe x4 or x8 video card either and none of the x1 cards I've tried including the ATI FireMV 2200 will work in either of my x236s. I've even tried modifying a VisionTek x16 down to a 4-lane and even with a "presence" jumper on pin B#31, I get nothing. (Slots are x8 mechanical wired for x4).

I work on very large Photoshop files but never gaming so I may be stuck with PCI cards. But even those with dual DVI ports are not easy to find.
I'm not using these machines as servers by the way, just work stations with Windows XP Pro OS and a couple of hardware RAID arrays.

 

[sk1939]

Interesting, it could be that the machines don't send enough power to PCI-e slots to power the cards, or lack the ability to host anything other than the integrated ATI chip.

 

[Panamaguy]

Oddly enough, the machine has no trouble running an ATI Radeon 9250 Card in the PCI slot. That's running a big Eizo graphics monitor and to my eyes (which have edited hundreds of thousands of photos over 50 years) the images are outstanding in color and detail. I sometimes wonder whether a so-called "bigger and better" card could improve the current images I'm getting on the Eizo anyway.

Perhaps it could do things faster but I'm not convinced the quality would be any better.

 

[sk1939]

It won't make a lick of difference in terms of color quality. So long as the Eizo has a DVI or Display Port and the card does too, it will work just fine.