GFX Card Questions

[Deejay]

Hi,

I have at the moment one GTX 280, the price of another 280 isn't much lower than the price of a 480
so 2x280 or 1x480 ?

Also when using multiple nvidia cards do they need to be absolutely identical ?

last question, and i hope not a stupid one i have a second machine, could Octane use the other card over a network? sort of like GPU-X only cheaper (seriously i had to check it wasn't april when i saw the prices!)

thanks

Dave.

[radiance]

Hi,

One GTX480 will be better as it renders faster on low-resolution / directlighting modes.
I'd take the fermi instead of 2x GTX200.

Currently there is no network transparency in octane.

Radiance

[ROUBAL]

At one moment, Gainward produced GTX280 with 2GB of VRAM, it seems that it is very difficult to find them now. It was interesting for big scenes and I was thinking of purchasing two of them before we got informations about GTX 480 release, but if I remember well the images seen, Gainward GTX 280 had big heat pipes on a side, and it is a thing to take in account for Cubix box owners, I think ?

Probably not really a problem for most desktop computers with big towers but in Cubix Xpander there is very few room in the box on top of the graphic cards, and I may be wrong, but I am almost sure that Gainward cards don't fit in the Cubix box because of their vertical dimension.

Just a precision for people who would make this choice before purchasing the Cubix or would have not seen photos of the Gainward GTX 280.

EDIT : Hmm, I got a doubt, and so I have given a look at the site of a hardware seller, and they don't sell GTX 280 any more, so I have only seen Gainward GTX 285 1GB with big pipes. I can't verify if GTX 280 had big pipes too. Anyway, be careful if you want to purchase one.