OTOY Forums

princedragoncok wrote:Though slightly off topic now, I am interested in installing a second gtx 570 to connect in sli with my current card. I'm a noob when it comes to this, but even though I have another pci slot the gap looks super tight - so just wondering is that perfectly normal to run two cards so tightly together?

Bottom view with PCI visible underneath the current gpu.


Top view

That 2nd slot looks like a standard PCI slot, not a PCIe x16 slot that GPU's use.
Take a careful look for the differences between the current one and that one. Most likely if you want another GPU you will need a new motherboard

Thanks
Chris.

FooZe wrote:That 2nd slot looks like a standard PCI slot, not a PCIe x16 slot that GPU's use.
Take a careful look for the differences between the current one and that one. Most likely if you want another GPU you will need a new motherboard

Thanks
Chris.

Chris you were right, it appears I only have one PCIe x16 slot - could have sworn it was advertised with two! Anyway bought a new second hand EVGA gtx 580 with 3gb of vram and ALL my rendering woes are gone!! Octane is utilising 2.4gb of memory which is truly awesome and I can now render whatever I want, albeit it somewhat slowly.

Thanks for clearing up what was specifically wrong with regard to vram issues btw, I don't know a huge amount about computers, but I do know that octane is king!

princedragoncok wrote:Thanks for your replies Karba and Bicket. Makes more sense now!

in addition it should be noted that running 2 cards side by side with such a fan configuration (2 front fans) will always melt down the upper card; at least true for 5xx cards which run pretty hot already in a single config; only way to run two cards so close together would be water cooling or another fan configuration (like that: http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/9023/gtx580evga.jpg )...