OTOY Forums

hey guys, I have a question that hinders me from buying the Xpander until its answered.
my current set up is:
-i7 930
-12 gigs ram
-gtx 470

I want to buy the Xpander with 2x GTX 480 in the near future but I want to know if each graphic card will have reduced performance in octane render like in a SLI system for gaming?

I was also wondering if I could somehow use these extra GPUs for gaming?

THX

If you are asking if it makes the gpu's SLI'd then now. It will look to the system as 2 separate gpu's, just as they woudl if they were plugged directly into the motherboard. There is a little bit of a performance hit from the hardware and cable, but nothing to worry about. They are great units. Keep the gpu's nice and cool and I don't have to worry about my psu keeping up with their power draw.

Ahh ok thx for the quick reply.
Another thing that jumped into my mind.
Can I use the xpander to plug it into a different computer lets say with a low end grapic card like gts250 and then use one of my gtx 480 on the xpander as my primary card for gaming?

As long as you have a secondary pcie slot on the motherboard to accept the xpander pcie card as well as having your gts250 plugged into another slot. Then you should add a second one onto your xpander order so you can easily switch between systems. You would need to shut down the system before plugging the xpander box in. Plug your monitor into the gtx480 and power back up.

thank you very much that has cleared my mind

SLI is not required for octane. (in fact you need to disable it)
octane uses your multiple cards and handles the load itself accross them.

The xpander with 2xGTX480 will work very nice, identical to having them in your PC.
Also, with fermi cards, you get near linear speedup.

Radiance

My problem with the Xpander is the price in comparison to building a whole system yourself. It's price is equal or more than just building a computer. Great idea. Though I think a slight price cut would make it more useful to the majority.

Nichod wrote:My problem with the Xpander is the price in comparison to building a whole system yourself. It's price is equal or more than just building a computer. Great idea. Though I think a slight price cut would make it more useful to the majority.

Hi, The Xpander is a PC system, it's got many of the same parts inside, that's why it costs the same as a budget DIY PC.
However, it's got several advantages, mainly aimed at people who don't know how to screw together a budget PC, and people who are on the road, using laptops, or just want to add LOTS of power to a system and swap it if needed.

Radiance

That is one of the things I love about it. I can take it to work and use the gpu's there and then bring it home to use them there. It really is much nicer than having to deal with bringing a whole PC (especially when I already have a house and office full of them). You also get the added benefit of not needing to worry about your psu and cooling. The CPU in a general PC will generate a lot of heat. Add a couple GPU's and other heat generating components and you are talking about a serious pain in the rear trying to get everything cooled. This put the gpu's in their own house with their own cooling. It really is worth it.

afaik i ran crysis on very high with 2x GTX480 in my PC and i could hardly hear the characters talking, like shouting to your mom to turn off the vacuum cleaner.
when i bring home the Xpander on the weekend for gaming it's pretty quiet, i can play games at normal volume with the same sound as my older PC (a q6600 and a single 8800 GTX)

I think it's due to the good airflow. it's basically got a huge fan (the bigger the slower/less noise) blowing straight onto the 2 cards with the exhaust at the back.
With a PC, a front fan's air is first heated by the HD's then needs to dissipate the CPU heat fan and that remaining air which is like 50+ degrees then gets to cool your GPUs, and the end result = while gaming or octaning the cards run at 90+ fan speed, like a vacuum cleaner.

Radiance