Nvidia FX 9800

[radiance]

Hey,

Octane will support using multiple GPU's soon (in a few weeks),
without using or needing SLI.

So a double card like a GTX295 could be good.
you could start using it currently, use the 2nd card (sub-card of the dual card in one) for rendering,
and the first card for display, then you get a responsive display while rendering with octane...

then later on, you can use both when octane supports it.

Radiance

[juan]

THATS SO GREAT!

i have a question, how is it going to handle the Vram ? i mean is it goingo to create the scene twice (in each card´s memory) or is it gong to be distributed in both?

if not , could be this possible? (hope so )

thanks

[YoonKyung]

THATS SO GREAT!

i have a question, how is it going to handle the Vram ? i mean is it goingo to create the scene twice (in each card´s memory) or is it gong to be distributed in both?

if not , could be this possible? (hope so )

thanks

I hope so too, but as far as I know, each GPU must have same scene and data.
If not, data traffics between GPUs will make performance seriously down,
since band width of PCIe(2GB/sec(r/w)) is much lower than that of VRAM(90GB/sec).

Code: Select all

c:\> bandwidthTest.exe
Running on......
      device 0:GeForce GTX 295
Quick Mode
Host to Device Bandwidth for Pageable memory
.
Transfer Size (Bytes)   Bandwidth(MB/s)
 33554432               4908.7

Quick Mode
Device to Host Bandwidth for Pageable memory
.
Transfer Size (Bytes)   Bandwidth(MB/s)
 33554432               4860.2

Quick Mode
Device to Device Bandwidth
.
Transfer Size (Bytes)   Bandwidth(MB/s)
 33554432               93794.1

&&&& Test PASSED

Press ENTER to exit...

[MadMinstrel]

As I understand it, both the cards need only the scene data. It would be nice to split the render target between them, which can get pretty large on a 12MP image.

[YoonKyung]

As I understand it, both the cards need only the scene data. It would be nice to split the render target between them, which can get pretty large on a 12MP image.

Yes, each GPU don't have to keep entire render target, I agree with you.

[reberts2]

So SLI will not be needed, utilized or valuable in an existing or future Octane setup?
Thanks.

[radiance]

So SLI will not be needed, utilized or valuable in an existing or future Octane setup?
Thanks.

no, cuda does not use SLI.
SLI is only for directX and OpenGL games/apps.

Cuda uses the GPUs as separate processors much like multiple CPU cores.
So it can function with a mix of different GPUs and no SLI is needed.

Radiance