Quick help with GPU's question

[jsuarez388]

Hi!

I currently own a PNY GTX 980, performs great but of course I would like to increase my rendering power in Octane. I do some ocassional gaming, but it's pretty much Octane rendering for me.

My question is: What's the best way to go for this?

Should I get the same exact card and SLI? or could I get something like a 970 to spend a little less money and still be able to use both cards?

I am just confused about how this configuration would work, I'm guessing I can have my system run on my 970 (or second 980) and then have one card FULLY dedicated to Octane, is this the case?

Maybe I could get two 970s and then have one of them for my system, and the other 970 and the 980 dedicated to Octane.

Thanks! any help is greatly appreciated

[Chrmez]

Octane does not support SLI, but it does support two (or more) graphics cards. Which means they can be whatever card combination (NVIDIA Cuda of course) you want to have in there.

Personally I went for two of the same, since I also want to use the power for gaming. But if you don't game that often or don't want to spend that kind of money then just go
for something slower and use both GPU's for Octane.

[elihu252]

Just use whatever the most cost effective card is. However, if you can wait until August (when Octane will hopefully support Pascal GPUs), then I'd recommend getting a 1070 instead of a 970 or even the newly announced 1060. Both will be much faster than than 970.

[toto79]

I have two PNY 980ti in my rig, it works great but I had to get a big fan and blow it directly into my rig, the cards were getting REALY hot.
If your motherboard doesn't have a lot of space between the 2 card you might need to get a big fan or maybe got to a water cooled one like EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti HYBRID Graphics Card.

[jsuarez388]

Octane does not support SLI, but it does support two (or more) graphics cards. Which means they can be whatever card combination (NVIDIA Cuda of course) you want to have in there.

Personally I went for two of the same, since I also want to use the power for gaming. But if you don't game that often or don't want to spend that kind of money then just go
for something slower and use both GPU's for Octane.

Thank you everyone for the answers! Yes, I thought about waiting a bit for Pascal support. So, in conclusion, I could wait a bit and get one of the pascals and add it to my rig? will my computer work just fine with these two Nvidia cards even tho they are not the same?

[TonyBoy]

Used together, the one with the lowest VRAM will be your VRAM limiter. Use the 970 with your monitor and the 1070 with rendering.