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ASUS Z97-A/USB 3.1 motherboard, is it worth it to use 3 GTX 970s for Iray rendering?

l_riefkohl_ferrer_1923365ed0l_riefkohl_ferrer_1923365ed0 Posts: 166
in The Commons

Actually I have that board with a i7-4790K cpu and GTX 970 video card. I want to reduce my rendering times and I'm thinking about adding two additinal GTX 970s. When I cheched the specs of the board I learned that it has 2 PCIe 3.0 slots running at 8x and one PCIe 2.0 slot running at 2x. Will it be worth it to add the two additional video cards knowing that they will run at 8x8x2? I'm a little bit confused because most of the Z97 boards that I checked run at 8x4x4 and I'm thinking there's a typo in the Asus website. Can you confirm that as well?

Comments

  • outrider42outrider42 Posts: 3,679

    I got the same board! But only a 4690k instead of an i7.

    From what I've read on the forums, the PCIe slots are not a huge deal with Daz. There will be a small difference, but not one that is worth seaking out another motherboard for. And with 970s that difference is likely even smaller. The performance of your cpu, how many lanes it can drive, can make a difference, but again, not huge. There is no way to make that up no matter how many lanes the motherboard has. So in other words the only way to get any noticeable performance increase would be getting the newest Intel i7 chips that have a lot more lanes to drive for multiple gpus. And again, that's probably assuming you have Titans in there. You still might not see any big gains with just 970s.

  • hphoenixhphoenix Posts: 1,335

    Just remember that 970 GTX cards can draw up to about 300W at full load.  Three of them would be 900W, not counting CPU/Motherboard/drives/fans/etc.  You'd need at the very least a 1200W power supply.

    Also, on some motherboards the PCI-E lanes on some slots are 'shared' with certain other peripherals (like M.2 controllers and such) which if they are being used for those peripherals will NOT be available for the slot.  Double-check the Motherboard manual.

     

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 42,407
    edited August 2016

    ...I'm looking at an X99 MB with a LGA2011-3 socket so I can use Quad Channel memory (more efficient).

    As I just learned, apparently CUDA 8 and the Iray SDK are now out so it shouldn't be long before people can start rendering in Iray with the new Pascal cards.  The one benefit, with the 10x series is they consume much less power.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • boisselazonboisselazon Posts: 458

    I'd go for 2 same used 980ti:

    - more efficient more iray power

    - less power consuption

    - still some room for a 3rd card

    - used 980ti are pretty new (far less than a year, even just 1 or 2  month old)

    - used 980 ti are really cheap (compared to initial price and actual power/usability)

    In fact, I'm just thinking myself "will i buy a 2nd 980ti or wait until daz support pascal iray (wich means for me end of this year, not sooner)

  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 7,001
    boisselazon said:

    I'd go for 2 same used 980ti:

    - more efficient more iray power

    - less power consuption

    - still some room for a 3rd card

    - used 980ti are pretty new (far less than a year, even just 1 or 2  month old)

    - used 980 ti are really cheap (compared to initial price and actual power/usability)

    In fact, I'm just thinking myself "will i buy a 2nd 980ti or wait until daz support pascal iray (wich means for me end of this year, not sooner)

    I would highly agree.

    With three 970 cards you would still only have 4GB of video ram and 4992 cuda cores between them.  With two 980TIs, you get 6GB of video ram and 5632 cuda cores between them.

    With two or three cards the PCIE lanes will be shared so with two cards you will have an even split of PCIE 8x each.  Also, while the base clock speed of the 980TI is only 1000 mhz, with proper cooling, they can be boosted as high as 1400mhz or higher.  My two Zotac AMP Extreme 980TIs come oc'ed at 1400mhz

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