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Video Card Recommendations for x8 or x1

Just wondering if any one has used video cards that were PCI Express x1 or x8 and if you have any recommendations?

May depend on the motherboard and your PS. How about a little more info. Also, will you be using it for a gamer, videos, bit mining, etc?
 
I was about to say that my response was totally off topic until I noticed the Category.

Anyway, I have a master server which is now over 5 years old.

It has multiple x8 slots. In fact it ONLY has PCI, generation 2, x8 slots

Some are x16 sized but they are electrically only x8

Anyway, for years (about 5) I've been running 3, 2560x1600 monitors using 2 graphics cards

Then last week I bought after some research and finger crossing (because here in CH you can't return anything just because ) and it only damn well works.

Finger crossing because the new Gigabyte card is a PCI generation 3 card, wanting a x16 slot

Wahoo

Okay the card is

Gigabyte GTX 960 ( GM206 4GB)

https://www.digitec.ch/en/s1/product/gigabyte-gtx-960-gm206-4gb-graphics-cards-4657689

It has 3 x Displayport port

and 1 HDMI 2.0 port

and a DVI-D and a DVD-I port

and can support upto 4 simultaneous monitors (install the Nvidia software)

I am so excited about it, well mostly becuase the 2 previous cards were each 2 slot wide cards (so taking 4 slots of space)

New card is double width.

Everything works. Again so far, very pleased.

regards marcus bennett.

 
Depends what you need the video card for, OS, and the motherboard in question. Some server boards won't work with a video card other then the built in one (have a dual xeon motherboard like that).
 
May depend on the motherboard and your PS. How about a little more info. Also, will you be using it for a gamer, videos, bit mining, etc?

Yes, I forget those kind of details.

I picked up a PowerEdge T610. I'd like to do something crazy and load it with video cards, but of course the only slots this thing has is x8 connectors.
 
Yes, I forget those kind of details.

I picked up a PowerEdge T610. I'd like to do something crazy and load it with video cards, but of course the only slots this thing has is x8 connectors.

In theory, any PCIe video card that fits will work, including a 16x. However, you will only see 8x performance as you might suspect. Most performance PCIe cards require extra rails from your PS, so before you leap, take a peek at your PS and see what's available. Example: My new gaming rig has 2 7970's which each require a 6-pin and 8-pin connector. So that's a total of 4 connectors just for video. Another thing to take into consideration is that the T610 is a server, and I'm not sure how that would workout in the long run for high end gaming, photo editing, etc. Above all, have some fun with it.
 
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I picked up a PowerEdge T610. I'd like to do something crazy and load it with video cards, but of course the only slots this thing has is x8 connectors.

If you want to do something crazy with it, I have read where people with PE1950's (2 x8 slots) cut out the partition at the front end of the PCIe connector and put an x16 board in it, and it worked fine. That is, cut out the end divider away from the back of the box and the remaining card edge from the board 'hangs out,' so to speak.

There are several x1 ATI FireMV 2250's on eBay right now, and a few nVidia Quadro NVS-series x1 boards, none of which are terribly expensive (< $50).
 
If you want to do something crazy with it, I have read where people with PE1950's (2 x8 slots) cut out the partition at the front end of the PCIe connector and put an x16 board in it, and it worked fine. That is, cut out the end divider away from the back of the box and the remaining card edge from the board 'hangs out,' so to speak.

There are several x1 ATI FireMV 2250's on eBay right now, and a few nVidia Quadro NVS-series x1 boards, none of which are terribly expensive (< $50).

I don't think they are Crossfire compatible but how neat would that be?
 
If you want to do something crazy with it, I have read where people with PE1950's (2 x8 slots) cut out the partition at the front end of the PCIe connector and put an x16 board in it, and it worked fine. That is, cut out the end divider away from the back of the box and the remaining card edge from the board 'hangs out,' so to speak.

I've done this twice and it's pretty dicey.

One board I managed to destroy because I used a sheetrock saw (basically a flat blade that vibrates really fast.) It cut through the plastic like butter but it also fractured a bunch of BGA joints on some SMD ICs from vibrating the whole board.

The second time was with a heated screwdriver to melt the plastic. While this worked, it knackered some pins at the end of the slot and I lost a PCIe lane.

You can try to cut the back of the slot out with a box cutter or similar, but that plastic is really hard and you'll be chipping away forever on it.
 
As mentioned above, you can use any PCIe card in any PCIe slot, as long as you can make it fit. All well-behaved cards should negotiate the number of lanes available. This is a common trick on cheap motherboards, there will be a x16 slot loaded but only 4 or 8 lanes electrically available.

In addition to sawing cards and/or connectors, you can buy several kinds of riser cards to go from {x1, x4, x8} to x16. I've used them to put quad-port gigabit NICs in custom router builds that only provided PCIe x1 connectors, when the goal was strictly number of gigabit ports, and not bandwidth.
 
If it's just for the sake of more screens, you can get USB based VGA adapters.
Get a PCI Express x1 USB 3.0 host adapter, and plug a whole bunch in.
 
I found some PCIx1 cards that are relatively cheap and I think I'm going to just fill it with those. I'm not 100% sure if the motherboard will support them but we'll see.
 
If it's just for the sake of more screens, you can get USB based VGA adapters.
Get a PCI Express x1 USB 3.0 host adapter, and plug a whole bunch in.

More screens but also mega performance. Ideally you aren't going to get the kind of performance where you might say have 4 x16 slots, but if you could put 4 or 8 ATI or NVDIA x1 cards in :)
 
This beast now has 192 gigs of DDR3 ECC RAM and two FireMV 2250 cards. It isn't the greatest and I am looking for something else that would fit in an x8 slot.
 
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