Z800 Graphics card to drive Omen 34 C gaming display

[--ies--]

Have HP Z800 and new display: Omen 34C (SN: [personal info removed])  Need Graphics Card Upgrade for it.

[DGroves]

the z800 had two power supplies the stock 850 watt and the optional 1250 watt

you can look at the label on the supply or check the AUX GPU connectors, the 1250 watt supply has two GPU rails with 3 six pin gpu connectors the 850 watt only has one gpu cable with two 6 pin connectors attached to the single power supply GPU rail

so depending on which supply you have (or buy) will determine the video card you can install

the 1250 watt unit will run up to a 1080 TI which is a bit overkill on the z800

the 850 watt supply will run a  1070/1080 (non TI)

[Macrero]

Not to question (the unquestionable) DGroves' knowledge, but I think 850W is more than enough for a 1080 Ti  and even 2080 Ti. 

I have an EVGA 2080 running flawlessly in a Z4 G4 with 750W PSU. I'm using 2K/60Hz monitor. 

The Omen 34C is WQHD (3440x1440) at 165Hz. Depending on what you use the PC for, the 1080 and even 1080 Ti could fall kinda short for such a beast.

Don't get me wrong, the 1080 Ti is still a very powerful card, but tech is moving ahead at a staggering speed, and personally, I'd get a newer generation GPU for that monitor. 

But it depends on your needs, demands and budget.

[DGroves]

thinking and knowing if a setup configuration meets the required power specs is what usually separates a stable working system from a unstable system

the z800/820/840 systems use whats called "multirail" type power supply instead of the more common "single rail" type power supplies found on most consumer and home built computers nowadays

multirail supplies have independent subsections for each output and that wattage is fixed for each subsection, and you can not draw more than the subsections  listed wattage and the total of each subsystem equals the supplies listed wattage

common rail supplies have only one output rail that is the sum total and as such the GPU aux connector can use any free watts up to the supplies stated wattage

next the z series of workstations have a wide range for cpu's ram config and installed storage drives

while a minimally configured z800/820 with a 850 watt supply will most likely work powering up a "TI" card it will exceed the 850 watt supply's GPU rail when using the 3d section of the card

FYI the 1080 TI card can draw  250 watts (or more if overclocked)

and the official HP quickspecs states that the nvidia quadro 6000 card with a 205 watt draw, REQUIRES the Z820 with the 1125W Power Supply Option so your guess that the 850 watt supply is fine is incorrect according to HP

and being "IT" i prefer to follow the mfg. specs and eliminate a known problem

HP quickspecs (page 10)

https://www.dectrader.com/docs/set06/499677/c04111526-ver19.html

as to the video card model, FYI a rtx 2080 TI is severely bottlenecked due to the z820's xenon v2 cpu's

even the fastest 3.0ghz cpu's for this model workstation can't process data as fast as the 2080  TI can resulting in the video card being unable to reach it's full speed

[Macrero]

I knew there was something I was missing. Thanks for the extensive clarification.

Yeah, it is a fairly old model. And yes, although at this resolution most of the work falls on the GPU, there would be a bottleneck.

OP, disregard my previous comment.

[--ies--]

Thanks for all the feedback!!!

To further focus the discussion, my machine has the following power supply:

HP Z 800 Workstation 1250 W Switching Power Supply Delta DPS-1050DB 508149-001

It replaced the original 1250 W supply in 2017 when it failed. I have since repaired the failed supply

(by replacing the failed electrolytic capacitors) and keep it as a spare.

Finally, I bought and installed a 1080 Ti and got it running stably full-screen with Linux (Fedora 38) with help from the "Ask Fedora" website.

I now am dealing with configuring the software to map windows better.  It defaults to full-screen windows by stretching orignal height and width to fullscreen size giving a distorted appearance.  Any suggestions on how to do this in Fedora appreciated.

Maybe I need to make this the subject of a follow-on discussion.  I

I

It's all fixed: I'd forgotten to run the script for the Nvidiea 1080 Ti  Linux driver that I'd downloaded.  Thanks again to all  contributers here for a valuable discussion.

[Macrero · Accepted solution]

What CPU/s do you have installed? What do you use the PC for? 

To be honest, I don't think you can get a full advantage of such monitor on that machine. 

It needs a powerfull GPU, which would be bottlenecked by an oldish and slow CPU (and potentially idem for the RAM).

The 1080 Ti suggested by DGroves seems like the best price/performance option.

if you use GPU-demanding software, you'd still get performance boost by using a powerfull GPU even though the CPU is not up to par.

[--ies--]

CPU's are: Intel Xeon X5670 x12

My immediate need is to be able to drive the full screen resolution of th Omen 34 C display.  My current graphics card is the Nvidia Quadro FX 4800.  It can only stably refresh the Omen 34C at about 3/4 of its available width of 3440 pixels.  My machine has 2 possible interfaces to drive it:

The one that works is a DVI that I was advised by the sales tech to use with a DVI to HDMI cable.  The other one is a display-port.  I tried the  The display-port cable that came with the OMEN on it.  It drove the full 3440 x 1440, but  was NOT stable.  It would put up a full frame and then flicker before putting up the next full frame.

My longer-term goal is interactive volume-rendering of 3D volumes  having  RGBA  voxels,  having up to 64 bits.

My interest is in  false-color display of multi-parameter co-registered MRI datasets. I'm still searching an appropriate existing volume renderer - which I will probably need to modify for this purpose.   

[Macrero]

This makes things much clearer. 

That's a totally outdated, low-performance GPU, inadequate for driving such monitor.

Both, the 1080 and 1080 Ti would meet your immediate needs. They both are vastly superior to your Quadro.

They would meet your longer-term needs as well, though there are better (and more expensive) options, (not fot your current PC though).

Now, CPU's aren't the bee's knees either, they would bottleneck a fast/powerfull GPU. Tbh, for your longer-term goal I'd look for a better / newer machine.

But you can get the GPU first and try and see how it goes for GPU-based rendering on your machine. It might do just well. 

[SDH]

It's always a bad sign when you have a $450.00 monitor running off a video card that currently, today, goes for $14.99 USD on eBay, shipping included.

Do you know if your Z800 is a v1 or a v2? You can read up on that via this forum and google. Use the boot block date in BIOS to tell. The v2 can run faster processors and faster memory. The fastest that a Z800 v2 can ever run is 1333MHz but there is specific recycled 1866MHz memory it can run at 1333MHz which could later be used in the faster ZX20 v2 workstations at full speed.

Sounds like you want to keep costs down but do some real work... not so much toy gaming play. In my world we use expensive medical monitors, and the most expensive are used for mammography work. Those are FDA-certified, "5 megapixels" in screen resolution, and are used as a pair. Their resolution is 2048 x 2560 = 5,242,880. Your monitor is 3440 x 1440 = 4,953,600 so nearly the same number of picture elements (pixels). Then, each pixel needs shades of gray and color detail thrown in... that is a lot of processing going on. Are you aware your fastest PCIe bus speed in the Z800 is Generation 2? You don't get to Gen3 (twice the bandwidth of Gen2) for your video slots until the Zx20 next generation workstations.

So, I agree with the sentiment that a more modern HP workstation would be worth looking at. For example, a Z640 or Z840 or even a Z620/Z820 v2 running two fast processors. The Z800 QuickSpecs v56 is attached below and you can find the same HP documents for those newer workstations. The later versions show the newer faster processors for each family. The Zx40 generation of workstations does not have the v1 vs v2 issue to deal with.

However, say you want to go inexpensive and just try a video card upgrade? Here's one I like for running a 5MP monitor... try the nVidia K2200, about $35.00 USD from US eBay. nVidia still is releasing updated drivers for that (which also are for their M and P series cards). The low profile K620 is the only other K card that gets these newest drivers and I'd not use that. You need to use a true dual link DVI digital-only cable attached to the single DL-DVI port on the card. You don't need a DVI-I cable (which also includes analog wires). A DP-to-DVI adapter won't work... those drop the bandwidth in half to single link DVI. Or you can use a DP-to-DP quality cable that would give you slightly higher bandwidth... you'd attach that to the DP port on the card that is just above the DL-DVI port, and I'm sure your monitor has a modern DP port for the other end.

See attached, and it is easy and inexpensive to upgrade processors in the Z800 workstation... that is a whole other story. Two X5670 get you 10977 on CPU Benchmarks; one gets you 6089; those now cost about $8.00 USD on eBay. Hopefully you're already running two. The only processor upgrade I'd consider would be to two X5690, but I'd rather try one of the video card upgrades mentioned above first.