4x gtx690 system configuration

[sampakinpa]

Hi All
First I must say that I was blown away when I first saw OctaneRender quality and performance, that's a great product! and with your (and our) dedication, its gonna grow and blow away all the competition. I'm in.
I'm trying to build a system config that will give a high Ms/Sec score close to Fooze's config that I noticed in igen's performance Table:
http://render.otoy.com/forum/download/f ... &mode=view
I browsed allot here at the forum and it was an eye opener for me, but I stilll have some questions unanswered.

System config:
Del T620 Server - http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-t620/pd
2x Xeon E5-2603 or E5-2609 processors
32 GB RAM
4x GTX-690
Microsoft Windows Server 2012
OctanRender for Maya Plugin.

questions:
-what video cards brand is recommended?
-what amount of GPU Core Clock is recommended for optimal performance?
-the system is gonna work overtime. does overclocking is safe with the config above?
-does Octane uses the two processors embedded on the gtx690 card, fully?
-does octane will be more optimized and faster using the Kepler series cards in the future?
-can I use gtx690 cards setup and get more than 2 GB?
-does the config above speed-up voxelizing? what setup is recommended for optimizing and speed-up voxelizing?
-how many WATS is recommended for a power supply on this setup?
-does Octane run on 'Microsoft Windows Server 2012'?
-can I build a system that will be faster than Fooze's setup?

I know I have many questions, but I'll be grateful for anybody's help here.

Thanks
Ethan.

[mbetke]

I think the Dell has not enought power in its PSU with 1100 Watts.

Furthermore if you choose 4x 690GTX cards then you only have 2 GB vram avaiable. But a lot of raw power of course. 2GB may be not enought in situations with large resolutions and 3dsmax also using some of your GPU mem.

In my opinion choose a custom made workstation and not a pre-build because you have much more control over the parts and their quality. Most pre build systems suffer from certain parts not in best quality. But its a matter of taste of course.

[sampakinpa]

I think the Dell has not enought power in its PSU with 1100 Watts.

Furthermore if you choose 4x 690GTX cards then you only have 2 GB vram avaiable. But a lot of raw power of course. 2GB may be not enought in situations with large resolutions and 3dsmax also using some of your GPU mem.

In my opinion choose a custom made workstation and not a pre-build because you have much more control over the parts and their quality. Most pre build systems suffer from certain parts not in best quality. But its a matter of taste of course.

I understand what you are saying and I'll check this out. my main reason for choosing a Del pre-build is mainly because I have excellent support with them here.
Why 1100 Watts is not enough?

[gabrielefx]

Dell case doesn't have enough room for dual slots pci cards

You need special cases with 10 pci slots: Cooler Master, Silverstone, Liam-Li, or Tyan-Supermicro systems Nvidia certified

To power 8 gpus you need a minimum of 1500W or a multi hot swap psu (see Tyan barebones)

Medium complex scenes need 2,5 Gb, for professional Octane use you need 4xGTX680 4GB

Regards

[pixelrush]

4x690 needs 1200w for the gpu alone.
2xcpu doesn't help Octane at all. The voxelisation isn't multithreaded. It may change in the future but 2 CPU is overkill.
Over clocking isn't a good idea because it can introduce instability and it increases heat, noise and power use.
690 cards are much of a muchness I think. They all seem to be based on the same reference design. Look for a good warranty and a fair price.
I think Octane is running about as fast as its going to with Kepler series..
Apparently there might be a refresh of Kepler before Maxwell comes out so those would seem to be 18 months away.
Anybodys guess how good Maxwell will be for Octane but you would hope there will be a decent jump in performance.

[FrankPooleFloating]

If you decide that you do not absolutely need a dual xeon (because this is mainly going
to be for Octane) you may be shocked just how cheaply you can put together a screaming
monster of a system. For less than two grand (US) you could build something like this:

CoolerMaster Cosmos II case (perhaps the Rolls-Royce of cases.. or at least a nice Mercedes)
Asus Rampage IV Extreme mb (Quad SLI) has 4 double-spaced PCI-E slots
i7 3930K HexaCore (12 threads!!)
Corsair Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
32GB Corsair Vengeance (quad channel - which the mb supports)
Corsair Professional Series AX 1200 Watt (though you may need a 1500W)

Of course, you are talking about $4000 of GPUs on top of this... but hell, $4000 plus the price
of that dual-xeon... yikes!

I have been pricing stuff myself.. I have used nothing but dual-cpu workstations for the last
4 builds (12 or so years).. and now that most of the work is going to the GPUs, I am completely
thrilled to get away from dual-cpus... too f-ing expensive and often do not have the bells/whistles
that high-end game MBs have. And from what I have read (prolly not the most die-hard builder
or knowledgeable dude here) the 3930K hexa-core shows up as 12 threads and is not a cpu to be
ashamed of. Even if you are rendering some stuff in Maya/3DS/Lightwave/AE etc... you should be fine.

[glimpse]

unless You're going to use Your rig for other stuff..
I would recomend against using Xeons for GPU workhorse..

OC'ed 3570K @ 4.5 will probably load Your scenes even faster
than Hi-End Dual E5 (running stock) - voxelisation is still single threaded..

Z77 MB with PLX PEX 8747 will give You the possibility
to stuff 4 cards (8lanes PCIe gen3) at way lower cost too.

GTX690 has effective 2GB of vRam/per GPU - that's not so much..
considering the price, so..

Stuff two rigs with 4X 670GTX (4GB vRam) - You'll get nearlly the same performance,
more vRAM but cheaper.. (or..with GTX680..if You want..=)


Just an idea to think about,
few facts to chew..

cheers

[FooZe]

-what video cards brand is recommended?

This will be your choice, in my previous post i said we had EVGA's this is not true - they are gigabytes. We get most of our cards from EVGA so i just assumed they were. IMO EVGA, Gigabyte and Asus are all decent.

-what amount of GPU Core Clock is recommended for optimal performance?

I would leave it at stock speeds. It get's hot enough and in the long run you are probably better of without causing additional heat unless you have aftermarket cooling.

-the system is gonna work overtime. does overclocking is safe with the config above?

As above i wouldn't suggest it - you are welcome to try but i don't think many people if any will tell you definitively that it's safe!

-does Octane uses the two processors embedded on the gtx690 card, fully?

Yes - in fact octane sees 4x690 cards as 8 GPU's

-does octane will be more optimized and faster using the Kepler series cards in the future?

It is not on our plan at this stage to do any more specific optimization for only kepler cards.

-can I use gtx690 cards setup and get more than 2 GB?

No, 2GB will be your scene size.

-does the config above speed-up voxelizing? what setup is recommended for optimizing and speed-up voxelizing?

Multi-threading mesh compilation is planned for the future so although at this stage a fast single core is better than many slower cores, this will most likely change.

-how many WATS is recommended for a power supply on this setup?

The PSU for our machine comes with monitoring software. While running octane with all cards going (no CPU load) we were pushing 1000W actual usage. Add at least a couple of hundred for your additional ram and the dual CPU's running at 100%. I would recommend something well over 1000W (ours is a 1500).

-does Octane run on 'Microsoft Windows Server 2012'?

This is a good question as i don't see any GeForce drivers for windows server.
If you could get drivers installed (maybe the windows 7/8/vista ones will work?) then i can imagine octane will work. But this is not something we have tried or can confirm.

-can I build a system that will be faster than Fooze's setup?

I'm sure you can

Thanks
Chris.

[icelaglace]

-does Octane run on 'Microsoft Windows Server 2012'?

AFAIK, it works. Some people tried it on Windows 2012 very fine.

[sampakinpa]

Thanks to all for your helpfull replies. It's defenetly allot to chew on. I'll take everything in and now make the smarter dessison for me.

icelaglace: about the system that worked with server 2012, are they GForce based?

Again, thanks.