Old graphics cards and networking questions

[Ibycus]

Hi everyone,

Just curious if any of you had insight into a few things I've been wondering about. I'm relatively new to Octane, a few weeks now, but am really loving it. I recently upgrading my home computer to a 980ti from 2 GTX 580's. So now I have these two old cards sitting around and I'm wondering if theres an easy way to utilize them both that makes sense. I could put one of them back in my machine but I'd like to avoid that. Is there any simple external case that could house them or would the price of doing that just not make sense for the bump in extra processing power?

Second question, I work mostly with C4D at work and here we have a render farm with a mix of machines (MAC and PC around 20 or so) that we use with Team Render. I've been activating octane here (in C4D) from time to time and recently a project has come up that I'd like to use it on. Is there a way I could use the GPU's from the other machines on our network to just crush render times without buying more licences?

Thanks!
Ashly

[whersmy]

2x 580s equal almost exactly the same when it comes to renderingpower as 1x980ti !
So yes, they are old. But gold! If you have a mainboard that supports three cards/slots you could double your speed right there (with the right amount of psu though) because the upgrade is linear

If your mainboard has thunderbolt (like the maximus V extreme for example) you could add them with an external box. It`s not really cheap though.

Networked rendering is possible but with an extra license yes

[Ibycus]

I have a P8Z77-V PRO motherboard which just barely squeezed in the 2 580's when they were in there....and they were super hot and power hungry. A long time ago they talked about making a thunderbolt upgrade for that board but I'm not sure if they ever did. Would be really nice to get to use them somehow but if I have to spend a lot of money I might as well just buy another 980ti.

As for the licences on the network...dang.

[whersmy]

True. They get hot. You could turn up the fanspeed max. I had 4 of them last year and that worked.
I added an extra casefan for the airflow and that seemed to do the job, but still they get hot.

You could use risers though. They are cheap and extend yor cards so they wont be squeezed.
It`s a little tricky though with open cases.

If you would want to add a fourth card (2x580+2x980ti) you would need to put the 4th card on a riser with pcix1.
That works also. Loading times are a bit slower, but speed is the same.

[glimpse]

hi, there, just an option =)

for around 200-300$ You can get splitter from Amfeltec that plug into on x4 slot & allows You to add 4 more cards =) upload speed might be a bit on the lower side compared to cards plugged on x16, but rendering speed is not influenced at all =) however the downside is that You need to think about some sort of housing for the cards..

as an alternative for around 500$ You can get GPU cluster that has not only splinter card, but also frame that can hold Your cards =) I think these two options are one of the best deals available I've seen so far =) other might cost like 2-3 times more =)

[Ibycus]

ah, interesting!

Thanks for the links!

[whersmy]

yeah nice solution glimpse!

Those prices are stil fairly cheap

[Ibycus]

I have a follow up question for you guys.

I tried putting one of those 580's into my machine at home with the 980ti. At first I got an error message when windows tried to boot up but then a restart fixed that, but afterward octane would not recognize the second card. Is there something special I have to do to get a second card thats a different model, to work?