Refractive Software® is discontinuing Cubix Xpander support

[Carl S.]

I added almost the same thing for $3,800 to a existing machine. Plus I have a display card.

For a $3,800 budget, one could buy interesting computers with such motherboards as this one:
http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=n0goz6KAhlPOk1kF

If anyone knows good company for building one's computer online, i'm personally interested in the info.

Now that I look again I think those are single wide slots.

[Chris_TC]

I don't build my machines either (and they're certainly not sitting in a basement). I just pick the parts, and the store puts them together, with full warranty of course.

Hello Chris, do you speak about a future computer setup that you expect to build or do you have already built a machine specially designed for GPU rendering ?

I don't have a machine specific to GPU rendering. But whenever I buy a machine, I like to pick all the parts myself.

If I wanted to go GPU full steam ahead, I'd obviously choose a motherboard with plenty of PCIe slots and populate them with powerful GPUs.

[bob30]

Well, i didn't know what was Crysis 2 until today, i'm not really a gamer, but building a computer for GPU rendering may be interesting, so i'm looking at what one can do actually

Now, it is a question of reliability: i saw a config with seven GTX260 on an Asus supercomputer motherboard, but what about the cooling system and also the power supply. Two or three power supplies would be perhaps needed for such thing:

http://detail.zol.com.cn/picture_index_ ... 8584.shtml


The advantage of placing directly graphic cards on the system is that the cards don't share the same input connexion into the computer, so it will be faster, and also they are twice more faster with PCIe 2.0. I think the configuration of boxes are in fact wasting a lot of the hardware power, by the fact it is an external thing.

Now, those motherboards support quad-GPU SLI, right, but SLI has to be disabled for Octane render, so the configuration is just to put separate cards which would be use separatly by octane render.

Carl, what do you mean by single wide slots ?

[bob30]

Anyway, Carl, the EVGA Classified Super Record 2 (SR-2) Motherboard is also 4 way SLI and supports 3x nVidia® EVGA® GeForce® GTX 480 in PCIe 2.0.

[ROUBAL]

Carl, what do you mean by single wide slots ?

Hi, I think that what Carl meant is that some motherboards have up to 7 PCIE slots, but the gap between them allows single width cards (basic graphic cards). If you put cards like GTX 260 to GTX 480 or Tesla cards, which are double width cards, you will be able to put at best 4 graphic cards on this mobo.

[Jaberwocky]

Hold on chaps -- GTX580 is just around the corner according to rumours on the World Wide Wibble - over 500 Cuda Cores per card.Imagine 4 of those on a 4 slot board.2000 cores + for the machine.That is if the whole lot does not melt under the heat of course...

[matej]

Something like this would come in handy...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZRjj2-hQvs&feature=&p=363C2162199A8418&index=0&playnext=1[/youtube]

The Tube is full of gaming PC rigs, which can apply perfectly for our needs also...

[ROUBAL]

Currently, I know very few PSU able to provide more than 1200W, and as a safety margin is required, I'm not sure that it would be possible to build a system with 4 GTX 580 able to run safely. The GPU aren't the only devices to feed on a workstation, even if it is dedicated to rendering with minimal other peripherals.

Obviously there are some machines able to run 4 big GPUs, but their price is very high.

The best machine I know (My dream machine) is from Carri Systems (Nvidia partner) :

http://www.carri.fr/html/config_complet ... ?id=126814

This machine (2 Intel Xeon) is provided with a 1500 W PSU and 4 x NVIDIA® Tesla™ C2050 and costs 14938 Euros (VAT included). As Each Tesla C2050 costs currenty 2338 Euros, the 4 GPU cost 9352 Euros. So the Config without the GPU can be estimated at 5585 Euros. Add 4 GTX 580 (Assuming that this GPU will cost at least the price of the GTX 480 = 515 Euros minimum here in France), and you get a workstation at 7645 Euros with two CPUs and four GPUs.

They also have one solution with only one CPU, at 4162 Euros, but only 2 of its PCIE slots are 16x, and the power supply is a 850W...

So, without a huge budget, external solutions like Cubix boxes remain imho the best thing.

[ycarry]

GTX 480 = 515 Euros minimum here in France

Find GTX480 = 430e TTC at rueducommerce...

[ROUBAL]

Well... too late !

When I searched for my purchase, they were available nearly nowhere on the web.

I found them between 515 up to 570 Euros ordered in local shops...

I purchased two at 515 Euro each, without having to pay for shipping fee fortunately.

Well, even with 4 x GTX 480 at 430 Euros, the workstation still costs 7305 Euros... not really affordable for anybody ! I fear that this kind of machine will remain a dream for most of us !