Hi guys. Im looking at building up a couple of folding rigs and was wondering about using tri sli motherboards such as the Asus P5N-T Deluxe nForce 780i. Do all the cards need to be identical? And also is there some good cheap psus to run them? Any help is much appreciated.
well for psu's you can use this one http://www.tekheads.co.uk/s/product?product=608631 there is also a 100w version if you look around on the same website but i think this one is very good for value and it is a good brand
Setup is easiest if the graphics cards are the same GPU, but (I guess) different manufacturers would be OK. Some cards simply won't mix ~ the critical thing seems to be having the same number of shaders.
Also pay great attention to the amount of PCI-E lanes available on the motherboard. The best way to get the most out of your motherboard is to use 9800gx2's or (if only i had the money) gtx290's, i found though that these would'nt work in x8 slots. So two of the 9800gx2's would'nt work in my P35 motherboard but work fine in a X38 motherboard. So i only have two PCI-E slots and yet get 4 gpu clients working. Also with a 9800gx2 you still get SLI, as the SLI is done on the card, on an Intel chipset motherboard (pre-X58), only SLI though not quad SLI. If you have a new system i7, you could get 6 or 8 GPU clients working as they come with 3 or 4 PCI-E slots, and have SLI. But as i said before check the lane availibilty.
That's interesting. My P5K Premium works fine with a pair of 9800GX2's. P35 and only 4 lanes on the second PCI-E slot, I think. Which P35 board did you have a problem with?
The MSI K9A2 Platinum is the mother of all affordable folding boards. THere's a DFI i7 board sometimes cheap on OCUK but the rest of the kit to build it ramps up the price.
That's interesting too. I wasn't aware that the DFI X58 (full size) mb's had 3 PCI-E 16x slots double spaced. I keep looking longingly at the Asus P6T WS Revolution. It's under the 300 quid mark now - which is still bl**dy expensive for a mb.
That's even more interesting. 'Interesting' seems to be my word of the day! 7 slots - 4 PCI-E 16x slots double spaced. My only problem is ASrock. 2 RMA's and bios engineers that make the folks at Asus look world-class. Buggy ACPI bios and Linux is not a lot of fun. But that's a generalisation. This particular board might be fine.
Just found a review of the ASRock on Phoronix. Latest bios and recent Linux distribution required. Looking closely at this board, I'm impressed by the fact that they have moved the USB and firewire headers from the end of the board to the side, so they are not blocked off when using the fourth PCI-E slot. That's been a bit of a bug-bear for me on both Asus and Gigabyte boards recently.
Cheers for all the replies. Yeh there are some interesting combos. Ive found some XFX 8800gs's 384mbs for £35 a piece. Do they have good PPD rates?
Don't get too excited - if you look at the P2P Asus 'support' forums, you'll find people who cannot run more than 3 graphics cards, or if dual GPU cards, no more than 5 GPUs. That was the situation a few weeks ago, and there may be a new BIOS since then, but would you take the chance at that price... I'm hoping Asus will have learned enough from this board, to make the P6T7 do everything it promises.
Errrr.... That's not good. I wonder if a bios update does sort it out. (ISTR that a bunch of x58 boards had problems running even a pair of 295's. That was 'fixed' with bios updates.) Too late for me, anyway. I hit the button on the ASRock board. I found a posting where a chap did have one running 4x GTX295. Fingers crossed.