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Hi all,
I’m just starting out on the whole ‘Windows Server as workstation’ thing.
I have a Dell T105 server being delivered to me. It only comes with a single VGA port, but I want to use 2 screens, so I’m looking at the following graphics card:
http://www.dabs.com/products/matrox-millennium-g500-32mb-pcie-dvi-4YZ8.html
Am I on the right track? Does anyone have any experience of using this card with Win2k8?
Looks like this card isn’t officially supported even on Vista.
Why don’t you look at something less exotic? I suggest nVidia 210 or Radeon 4350. Most boards on those chips support 2 digital outputs (commonly 1 DVI and 1 HDMI which can be reduced to another DVI with an adaptor), and they are quite affordable. And, of cource, thay are perfectly supported on 2008-R2.Examples from your favourite website:
http://www.dabs.com/products/xfx-geforce-gt-210-589mhz-512mb-pci-express-2-0-hdmi-68DZ.html?q=210
http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyte-ati-radeon-4350-hd-650mhz-512mb-ddr2-pci-express-2xdvi-5HZ0.html?q=4350Looks like this card isn’t officially supported even on Vista.
Why don’t you look at something less exotic? I suggest nVidia 210 or Radeon 4350. Most boards on those chips support 2 digital outputs (commonly 1 DVI and 1 HDMI which can be reduced to another DVI with an adaptor), and they are quite affordable. And, of cource, thay are perfectly supported on 2008-R2.Examples from your favourite website:
http://www.dabs.com/products/xfx-geforce-gt-210-589mhz-512mb-pci-express-2-0-hdmi-68DZ.html?q=210
http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyte-ati-radeon-4350-hd-650mhz-512mb-ddr2-pci-express-2xdvi-5HZ0.html?q=4350Hi Sevener,
Thanks for your suggestions.
How do you know these cards are definitely supported by 2008R2? Is there a list somewhere?
Also, do you know if either of those cards would be good for graphics applications like Adobe After Effects? That would be a bonus.
@discopatrick wrote:
How do you know these cards are definitely supported by 2008R2? Is there a list somewhere?
They are DEFINITELY supported, although not 100% officially. You see, virtually any hardware driver for Windows 7 x64 will perfectly work on 2008 R2 as well, because those systems share the same kernel. So remember: if you can’t find 2008 R2 driver (and you won’t, in most cases), just look for Win7-x64 driver!
Drivers for GeForce: http://www.nvidia.co.uk/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-uk
Drivers for Radeon: http://www.amd.com/uk/Pages/AMDHomePage.aspx@discopatrick wrote:
Also, do you know if either of those cards would be good for graphics applications like Adobe After Effects? That would be a bonus.
Those cards are capable of almost everything non-specific 2D and 3D tasks, including full OpenGL and DirectX support, 10-bit colour-depth support, video decoding acceleration via DXVA, limited video encoding acceleration (software-specific), and more. Matrox cards simply don’t have anything significant that GeForce or Radeons don’t have.
About NLE-specific features… well, neither Matrox nor GeForce/Radeon will help you much with NLE as CPU will be the bottleneck. However, specialised NLE-accelerating boards exist, but I don’t know much about them, sorry.
P.S.
Now that I think of it, DXVA might be really helpful for NLVE, depending on what kind of the source material you’re working on. And DXVA is the best in modern GeForce and Radeon boards.@discopatrick wrote:
How do you know these cards are definitely supported by 2008R2? Is there a list somewhere?
They are DEFINITELY supported, although not 100% officially. You see, virtually any hardware driver for Windows 7 x64 will perfectly work on 2008 R2 as well, because those systems share the same kernel. So remember: if you can’t find 2008 R2 driver (and you won’t, in most cases), just look for Win7-x64 driver!
Drivers for GeForce: http://www.nvidia.co.uk/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-uk
Drivers for Radeon: http://www.amd.com/uk/Pages/AMDHomePage.aspx@discopatrick wrote:
Also, do you know if either of those cards would be good for graphics applications like Adobe After Effects? That would be a bonus.
Those cards are capable of almost everything non-specific 2D and 3D tasks, including full OpenGL and DirectX support, 10-bit colour-depth support, video decoding acceleration via DXVA, limited video encoding acceleration (software-specific), and more. Matrox cards simply don’t have anything significant that GeForce or Radeons don’t have.
About NLE-specific features… well, neither Matrox nor GeForce/Radeon will help you much with NLE as CPU will be the bottleneck. However, specialised NLE-accelerating boards exist, but I don’t know much about them, sorry.
P.S.
Now that I think of it, DXVA might be really helpful for NLVE, depending on what kind of the source material you’re working on. And DXVA is the best in modern GeForce and Radeon boards.Hi Sevener, thanks for the reply – only just got around to reading it.
Ok, looking out for Win7 drivers makes it a lot easier. Thanks for your advice on performance too.
Oh, I’ve just remembered that my PCI-Express slots are of the x8 type – is this going to make a difference? Both of the cards you recommended appear to be x16.
@discopatrick wrote:
Oh, I’ve just remembered that my PCI-Express slots are of the x8 type – is this going to make a difference? Both of the cards you recommended appear to be x16.
You can insert x16 card into x8 socket if it’s open-ended or if it’s x16 slot working at x8 speed.
If it’s x8 slot and not open-ended then you’ll have to look for PCIe x1, x4 or plain PCI cards.@discopatrick wrote:
Oh, I’ve just remembered that my PCI-Express slots are of the x8 type – is this going to make a difference? Both of the cards you recommended appear to be x16.
You can insert x16 card into x8 socket if it’s open-ended or if it’s x16 slot working at x8 speed.
If it’s x8 slot and not open-ended then you’ll have to look for PCIe x1, x4 or plain PCI cards.
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