Install graphics driver for Server 2008 standard

F

fuelvolts

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 24, 2005
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Installed Server 2008 in my server (ditched FreeNAS). It's just going to be a simple file server. Nothing fancy. I've heard from others that you should just leave the standard VGA driver alone. It's going to be a headless server connected via gigabit ethernet. Won't that offload the video to the cpu? Does installing hw acceleration create stability problems? I'm just going to be using remote desktop for maintenance and use my monitor if need be. It just sits here next to my other PC.

Thanks
 
I don't really understand the question you're asking. It's a headless server, so why would you be concerned with performance of the default VGA driver at all?
 
OK, let me clarify. It's headless, but when I try to drag windows around it's a little sluggish. It's just an Nvidia 6100 IGP, but will be run headless. My question is if I use the standard SVGA driver, is it eating up CPU cycles to process video or is it still using the IGP HW acceleration?
 
Uhmmm... hardware acceleration typically means 3D functionality, not 2D which is basically what you're dealing with most often when running a server OS. It won't kill you or that server to actually install the IGP driver soooo...

Yes, I do know that some aspects of the interface do benefit from installing the actual drivers, and yes the GUI will be "accelerated" but not in the sense of the basic interface since Server 2008 doesn't have Aero enabled by default.

As for sluggish performance, I'd have to say that based on my own experience with using Server 2003 and 2008 over the years that the default VGA driver in those OSes is ridiculously fast for the basic interface, so with your report of it being sluggish just dragging around a few windows, I would suspect the chipset drivers more than I'd suspect the default VGA driver.

Since it's an Nvidia chipset based product, not installing those drivers is tantamount to cutting a big chunk of your possible performance out and would most likely be the cause of the sluggish performance you mentioned. Worth checking into, at the bare minimum.

And just to ask: when you say drag windows around, are we talking about directly on the server with a monitor attached, or is this being visualized on your other machine using Remote Desktop? If it's RD, bump the bandwidth up because by default it's notoriously slow - practically dialup...
 
thanks for the responses. Yeah, I just installed the newest foreceware and got a substantial performance boost. I was using direct monitor. Now it's headless and am transferring files to it now. For gigabit, it's going kinda slow. Transferring @ total of around 14 mb/sec, but it's smaller files and 3 different transfers to 3 different directories.
 
Small files, especially a lot of 'em, means slower network transfers - not because of the network, but because the hard drive is forced to do smaller random reads to get the data flowing. Even so, 14MB/s over a Gigabit connection does seem a bit... how shall I put this, "weak" in terms of efficiency. Might be something to consider looking into at a future time, perhaps some network optimization might be in order, as silly as it sounds - Server 2008 is one damned fast OS, especially the networking stack.
 
You could add the GUI feature which would let you put on AERO and use the onboard graphics for the UI but I think at that point your just on a slippery slope.

The UI is sluggish because it's the old 2d UI like XP had where if there is a heavy workload, windows start getting stuck and blotching out. Windows classic/xp UI just does that. Aero would solve that but your going to start taking away system resources from your server. The servers default configuration is set up to give cpu priority to background task, not foreground task. I would install it, set up roles, unplug the monitor, and leave it alone.
 
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