OTOY Forums

Greetings. I fully understand that you are awaiting CUDA 8.0 to be able work with some GPU. I have two questions:

Is the GTX 1070 going to be supported *for certain* by Octane in the future?

Is there any issue with me getting Quadro M4000 x1 and GTX 1070 x3 installed now and using Octane while waiting for 1070 support later? Or would it be better with 980 Ti x3? I need the M4000 for another application.

Thank you.

i7-6900K
Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
64GB

Hi meshlife,
Quadro M4000 gives a score of 54 on OctaneBench, roughly the half of a GTX 980. But when Pascal cards will be supported, the Quadro card will be very useful not assigned to Octane, leaving the 1070s only for rendering.
Having a Quadro for display and several GTX for Octane is always the best way
So now you can have the first approach with Octane and its workflow with just the Quadro, and then have the big power boost as soon as the Pascal cards will be supported
ciao beppe

Thank you bepeg4d.

bepeg4d wrote:Hi meshlife,
Quadro M4000 gives a score of 54 on OctaneBench, roughly the half of a GTX 980. But when Pascal cards will be supported, the Quadro card will be very useful not assigned to Octane, leaving the 1070s only for rendering.
Having a Quadro for display and several GTX for Octane is always the best way
So now you can have the first approach with Octane and its workflow with just the Quadro, and then have the big power boost as soon as the Pascal cards will be supported
ciao beppe

One more question, please. Is there any issue with a MSI X99S motherboard and being able to exploit all four GPUs?

Hi meshlife,
no problem with 3 dual slot GPU, but for four, I guess that the last two PCI slots are too near, if your case is big enough, you could try to use the m4000 in the third slot and use the other three for double slot cards, but you have to personally verify if it's possible
ciao beppe

bepeg4d wrote:Hi meshlife,
no problem with 3 dual slot GPU, but for four, I guess that the last two PCI slots are too near, if your case is big enough, you could try to use the m4000 in the third slot and use the other three for double slot cards, but you have to personally verify if it's possible
ciao beppe

I have a guy building it who says that GTX 1070 x 4 will work. What I meant, though, is there any issue with SLI that would cause Octane to not be able to use all four? Also, would there be any reason why I'd be better off with an Asus?

SLI must be disabled in the nvidia control panel, so is not an issue with Octane.
ciao beppe

Hello again. I have spoken with Nvidia and they looked at your FAQs and said I should check with you to make sure that Octane can actually use four GTX 1070 simultaneously. I just wanted to make sure since this is a new GPU that is in a transitional stage of being supported by Octane. Nvidia says they do not know how this is possible so I want to make sure.

Thank you.

Octane should work without problems with multiple Pascal GPUs and a Quadro if the drivers support it. We haven't tried it, but I would be surprised if it doesn't work. Here is an older thread about running GeForce and Quadro cards together: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=43965

For multi-GPU rendering we don't use SLI. Having SLI enabled usually doesn't do any harm, but sometimes it produces weird kernel crashes or causes you to have less GPU RAM available than expected, which is why we usually recommend to switch it off.

I appreciate the information. I have decided to use four GTX 1070 and skip the Quadro.

Having said that, in my Nvidia chat, they informed me they weren't sure it would work, but since SLI is disabled then it shouldn't matter. I guess I'm just a bit nervous about getting four GPU since these new ones are not yet supported. I don't want to buy them and find out some strange twist that stops me from using them.

Thanks again.