Coolest AGP card for headless server?

ianwi · Post by **ianwi** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 2:28 pm

I'm looking for a very cool running feature-stripped AGP 4x/8x (1.5v) graphics card to put into a home server I'm building. It's a headless server that I'll only use with Remote Desktop Connection so I just need basic 2D support.

Even the most basic ATI and Nvidia cards have way too much functionality for what I need.

Even between 9250's, there's seems to be quite a variation in heat output so it's not just fanless I want, it's minimal heat....functionless

http://www.neoseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rid=80929

Any ideas or articles on how many watts these cards really suck back?

I've ruled out using a PCI graphics card since I want to reserve the PCI bus bandwidth for other I/O. I've tried to find a S478 motherboard (I'm reusing a 1.6A Northwood) that had onboard graphics, 4*SATA, 2*PATA and Gigabit Ethernet but none seem to exist.

What do most ISP's/businesses put into their servers? I must be missing something!

Otherwise I guess it's tracking down old 4x AGP cards on ebay that Windows 2003 server will still support.

mrzed · Post by **mrzed** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 3:21 pm

It's still common to see ATI Rage 8Mb integrated graphics onboard new servers these days. That's reaching back at least 5 generations of graphics hardware.

I should think there must be plenty of integrated S478 boards out there though. It was the most popular OEM platform for a very long time.

edit: didn't notice your other requirements. I think you're out of luck on getting all that onboard. SATA was a future thing for most of the life of that socket, as was GbE.

dragmor · Post by **dragmor** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 4:53 pm

Just pick up a 9550 card. Their passive and have lower heat than the 9250's.

As for motherboards, some 865 boards should have 4xSATA and 2xPATA but you wont find one with integrated graphics. Maybe one of the old VIA or SIS boards?

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 6:15 pm

A Radeon 9550 or 9600 would probably be your best bet, the RV350 and RV360 cores these cards use are very efficient. X-bit Labs measured power consumption of a Radeon 9600Pro to be 9w idle 18w load. The GPU itself couldn't be using more than 10-15w load, probably ~5w idle, making these very easy to cool. Radeon 9550 should run even cooler.

[shameless plug]Or if you're interested, I'm selling a Radeon 9600 AGP8x that uses a mobility GPU. Passively cooled and only $30. More info here.[/shameless plug]

ianwi · Post by **ianwi** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 5:57 am

Still looking. My current conclusion is that a Matrox G450/G550 would be the best. The G550 only uses 7 watts and I'm guessing the G450 would be similiar. It's passive and has Windows Server 2003 drivers. They're pretty cheap on ebay.

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 6:03 am

I have a G450 and I have to say running it headless would be a frikkin shame. Such beautiful image.

jhh · Post by **jhh** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 9:55 am

ianwi wrote:I'm looking for a very cool running feature-stripped AGP 4x/8x (1.5v) graphics card to put into a home server I'm building. It's a headless server that I'll only use with Remote Desktop Connection so I just need basic 2D support.

Perhaps I'm being silly, but why would a headless server need a graphics card?

My Debian box in the wardrobe has no graphics hardware. I just installed the OS over the network and if I need to do anything I ssh in.

timmytimmytimmy · Post by **timmytimmytimmy** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 1:06 am

Perhaps I'm being silly, but why would a headless server need a graphics card?

The computer won't boot without an AGP card

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:12 am

timmytimmytimmy wrote:
Perhaps I'm being silly, but why would a headless server need a graphics card?
The computer won't boot without an AGP card

I hope that was supposed to be "without a graphics card" -- then you could just get an ancient PCI card made in 1996...

leo_fischer · Post by **leo_fischer** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:14 pm

You should be able to boot the computer fine without a graphics card of any kind, depending on the bios. A socketA board I had boots fine, I just had to change the setting 'halt on all errors' to not 'dont halt on any errors' . The computer might beep a bit on the next boot up, but linux didn't have a problem with it. I'm not sure that xp would be so forgiving though.

If you can't do that, I can pick up a mobility radeon card here for about 990yen(~10aud) which doesn't even have a heat sink.

jhh · Post by **jhh** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 11:17 am

timmytimmytimmy wrote:
Perhaps I'm being silly, but why would a headless server need a graphics card?
The computer won't boot without an AGP card

What a lousy motherboard! I like how they guessed for you that you'd be using a graphical operating system rather than letting you decide.

I've never seen this before on even consumer motherboards. How does it not let you boot, or is it just that Windows doesn't like not having a monitor?

If you really *must* use graphics, your OS doesn't have to support the card explicitly if you don't mind using the standard VESA interface, which should be more than enough for an almost-headless server.

In the UK (so probably everywhere else too) Ebay has plenty of AGP cards for about the £2/$4 mark. See http://computers.listings.ebay.co.uk/AG ... ngItemList for instance.

ianwi · Post by **ianwi** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:32 am

I solved it by buying an old Matrox Millenium G450 off of ebay for £12. It's a nice small card so it helps with airflow in the case and the passive heatsink is tiny. I know the G550 uses 7 watts of power so I assume the G450 is similiar. Matrox is still producing drivers that support this card.

You've got me curious though whether Windows Server 2003 will boot without a graphic cards.....that would be ideal.

For the record, here's my final component list for my home media server:

Antec P180 case (new)
ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard (new)
P4 1.6A FSB400 Northwood
Enermax 400watt PSU
512Mb Crucial DDR memory PC2100
Zalman 7000A AlCu cpu cooler with fanmate
1 HP CD-RW drive
1 Seagate Barracuda 80Gb PATA disk
1 Seagate Barracuda 250Gb PATA disk
4 Samsung SpinPoint P120 250Gb SATA-II disks (new)
Matrox Millenium G450 dual-head AGP 4x graphics card (ebay)

Ian

jhh · Post by **jhh** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 7:50 am

ianwi wrote:You've got me curious though whether Windows Server 2003 will boot without a graphic cards.....that would be ideal.

I might be able to offer some insight into this.

I run a web-based company. We use Linux for all our development, but of course need to test the site in IE so we have a headless WinXP box we and use RDP to access it over the network.

Being the big and bloaty OS it is

XP probably won't install without graphics, but when we borrowed the graphics card from the windows box for something else it didn't complain.

I wouldn't worry too much about the 7w though. That figure is probably the peek draw for when it is doing 3D graphics. Personally I also woudn't bother using up system resources installing the drivers and use standard VESA to install instead, but then again I always like to keep installed things minimal (not a bad attitude when you're working with servers)

Coolest AGP card for headless server?

Coolest AGP card for headless server?

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