2 different sli setups in the same rig

[thePh@r@oh]

Thinking of building a rig for 3D modeling and such. I was curious if I could put 4 Video cards in a rig and set it up as two different sli setups. ie sli1 (Card 1 &2) sli2 (Card 3&4)? Would I notice any performance boost from OPENGL dependent programs because of the sli configuration anyway?

[ShyguyXPC]

Most if not almost all 3D modeling programs don't use SLI or Crossfire, so it'd be a waste.

The only exception I can think of would be if you used something like an Nvidia Quadroplex setup, where its an external box with 2 or 4 Nvidia Cards, that run in an SLI setup in the Box, then connects Externally to a PCI Express Daughter Card in the Workstation or PC that your Using.


NVIDIA Quadro Plex VCS – Advanced visualization and remote graphics


the down side is the Price tag of the whole setup.


As far as I know, I've never heard of any 3D modeling programs that use SLI, there may be one or two out there, but most of the big well known programs don't.


I just know that SLI is usually not supported with these programs, from my own looking into it.

As I use Carrara and other related Daz Products, in my spare time, playing around with them.



As I found out with most, More CPU power is what really helps, more CPU cores, Clock Speeds, even Multi Socket Systems, or additional independent PC's on a network (as network nodes, to help with rendering). While using a Single Powerful Card for the OpenGL, Preview and Test renders in Draft Mode (Carrara)


For OpenGL, I'd probably just look into getting a single powerful card for the one system.



Cinema4D may use SLI by now, hard to say, I know I read somewhere that it may support it soon, but that was a long time ago.


And I know Cinema4D was one of the few that Used GPU's for Final Renders as well.


I'd love to see more programs Support that. Its a lot easier adding in an extra GPU or two, or building GPU Farm based PC's and setting them up on a Node like network to help with Renders, than it is to Build dedicated CPU based Network nodes, not to mention cheaper too.

a couple hundred tops for a good powerful PSU, and 100 to 300 per video card (even if their not Quadro or FireGL cards), some additional Case cooling if needed.

Versus

100 to 300 bucks for a good CPU, plus decent Mobo at $50, plenty of RAM, your looking at another $50-100. a Hard drive, now your sitting at $20-50. An OS (unless your program supports Linux Nodes, you'll have to buy a Windows OS), so add another $100. PSU, Case, etc...

in the end it gets more expensive, even more so, if you grabbed a Dual or quad socket motherboard with that many more CPU's, and RAM expenditures.

but I'd love to see additional Programs support GPU processing in Test and Final Renders, rather than mainly OpenGL based Previews.


Myself, I need to add some more RAM to my current system, as I've run into a few snags running out of RAM with some of the stuff I've been doing lately, learning and what not.

But also for me, I'm using version 8 of Carrara Pro, which is the first version of that program to natively support 64-bit which helps a lot, not only in RAM usage, but processing, and they improved the Efficiency of the Carrara Render engine as well, so adding all that together, helps reduce render times by a fair amount compared to versions 6 and 7 I've used.

Now if they could just add GPU Final Render, or test render ability, that'd be sweet.

[thePh@r@oh]

I use 3dsmax, maya, and zbrush. And from what I've read Memory is possible the most important component. I was just curious if anyone had experimented with a setup like what i was thinking about. Is the double sli setup even possible. The idea is running a multimonitor setup with individual slis.

[ShyguyXPC]

I doubt it, at least I've never heard of doing that with SLI, running 2 separate setups, not even for gaming.