OTOY Forums

EricNV wrote:

Re: Vista64 running Mac Pro, Xpander is possible to use GTX 480?
I am looking to do this with 3 Mac pro's with possibly 6 gtx 480's(2 each).
Is this possible? I would like to know before I buy the licenses today?
Side note: Are license tied to the machine? Can they also be installed on a laptop?

Which graphics cards are currently running in each Mac Pro, and what drivers are they operating with?

EricNV

There is a geforce 8800 gt in one and a geforce 7300gt in the other. Third machine has a ATI, no longer looking to upgrade that machine. Not sure of the drivers at the moment.

Just noticed one of your earlier posts. Only 2 gtx480's will fit in an Xpander box. The Xpander pro2 box has 4 pcie slots, which could fit 4 of the single wide gtx470's if those come out and if the xpander can support 4 of them. on the pcie bus and if the psu could power that many gpu's. It would be an awesome box if that were possible.

I really appreciate your help, Eric.

My graphic card is Radeon HD 4870 and I am running Vista 64 with the latest Bootcamp installed.
Not quite sure how to find out what kind of driver I am using..probably the latest ATI driver?

Anyway, assuming that xpander will work with window running Mac Pro,
do I have to remove ATI card to use Xpander with gtx cards?
I am pretty much sure that I need to..

also..this might be a dumb question too, but how does the xpander actually connect to the mac pro?
Do I need to buy some kind of external slot for pci ports?

Thanks.

havensole wrote:Just noticed one of your earlier posts. Only 2 gtx480's will fit in an Xpander box. The Xpander pro2 box has 4 pcie slots, which could fit 4 of the single wide gtx470's if those come out and if the xpander can support 4 of them. on the pcie bus and if the psu could power that many gpu's. It would be an awesome box if that were possible.

Thank you for the info.
I think the closest we can get now is to upgrade the main gpu's and get two gtx 285's, and two xpanders with 4 gtx 480's.

The way that the Cubix system connects to the PC is by a small pcie card that sits in your open pcie slot of the motherboard. On the back plate of the card is a slot for the Cubix cable. Those cables come from the Cubix box. It is a pretty easy setup. I took some pics when I was putting my system together, but just haven't put them together in any way. I wish I could have added those details to the renders of the Cubix boxes.

Oh yeah, using the ATI card along with the Nvidia's is pretty hit and miss so far. Some have had no problems, while other have. I don't think there's been enough testing and experience to really say what works and what doesn't. Basically just try it out and see how it goes.

EricNV (cubix) is away from his system used on the forums, so here is the response he sent me:

"In the meantime, could you pass along in that forum conversation that as long as they've got either an open x1 or x8 PCIe slot, we don't care what else is in the Mac Pro motherboard. If they're using Mac Pro versions with PCIe 1.1, I would suggest purchasing x8 units if practical. Bus speed is doubled under PCIe version 2.0.

Also, we did test Mac Pros with both ATI cards and NVIDIA cards in the same Xpander unit. However, I don't know if we tested it while running Octane Render during this particular configuration test. However, we did test a Quadro FXD 4800 for Mac with OR and GPU-Xpander, ran fine."

Okay, solved a possible e-mail server problem that could have been the source of Joseetiger's trouble trying to get in contact with me last week. [email protected] and [email protected] will both work, and all e-mails get copied to 2 additional e-mail addresses on separate servers Josee.

If you do not see a configuration listed at the Online Store at Cubixgpu.com which you are interested in purchasing, please feel free to contact me with your questions and a detailed explanation of what you are looking for. Chances are we can accommodate the request. Improvements / adjustments to the new website are occurring almost daily, and configuration additions or revisions are sometimes part of this process.

I'm going to a revise the Cubixgpu.com contact page at some point this month, which will provide users with an easier and quicker means of communicating custom configuration requests.

EricNV