Worth putting in old 970?
FBR
Posts: 15
I run Windows 7
I recently upgraded my NVidia 970 to a 1070ti
Been using it for a month and very happy with the increased render times in Iray.
Having read the mother board manual, if installed in the second PCI-E slot
The 1070 will still run at x16, but the 970 will be limited to x4.
I have an 850 watt PSU so it should ok but it will require moving some of the internal cabling and possibly removing a Hard drive cage.
Is any help in render times going to be worth it?
My thinking also is that with the scene having to be sent to both cards one of which is slower and limited to a PCI speed of x4 could it even have a negative effect on performance?
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I would try it. You might get good results. Set up a scene(or maybe a few to avoid a fluke)similar to what you would normally do, and render it as is, then add the card and render again. Unless it is difficult for you to put the cards in, might as well give it a shot.
If you do This you will be limited to the vram for the smaller card. When either card runs out of memory you will drop to CPU rendering.
That being said I have a GTX 1060 and a GT 640 installed. I the !060 does the rendering and the 640 basically does everything else.
That way I can do other things while rendering without slowing anything down.
In a multi GPU setup, you do not drop to CPU rendering if one card does not have enough VRAM.
The card that does not have enough VRAM for the render will not paricipate, while any GPUs that do have enough VRAM will render normaly.
CPU rendering only happens when there are zero GPUs with enough VRAM for the render job. (Or if you have CPU checked as one of the render devices)
I have two 970s. I’ve rarely dumped to CPU, and it usually doesn’t take much to push the scene under the limit.
use the 970 to drive your monitors; i have one to drive 3 x 2560x1440, and it does ok
Well thanks for the advice and I do think I like the idea of using the 970 for running everything leaving the 1070 to do the rendering as the machine slows and even stutters a little if I try to watch a documentary or such while rendering.
I know in Daz studio I can tell it to render on just the 1070 but in other windows aps such
As web browsing or VLC player and such do I need to change settings or anything so it will use just the 970 or is the fact I have my two monitors plug into in enough?
But it sounds like a good idea to have the 970 do the day to day while the 1070 does the heavy lifting so to speak.
I will run a few test renders before and then after and post the results.
all you have to do is plug the monitors into the 970 instead of the 1070, windows will handle the rest
Well to report back
Decided as I was going to do this I’d upgrade to Windows 10 as well
So installed windows 10 with just the1070ti and got it all upgraded and working(Lots of problems !Big job!)
Ran render tests with just the 1070
Then I installed the 970 as well.
Had to do some rewiring, added another fan to the case as I was concerned about the heat with the two cards so close to each other.
Both monitors plugged into 970
Still have my rift plugged into the 1070ti (Rift is part of reason for buying 1070)
Results both done on a fresh boot, retendered the scene 3 times to get good comparison
Scene was well below the max 4 gig of the 970 but I have never run created a screen came close to maxing out the card memory.
Redering with 1070ti
1st 4.15 min
2nd 3.43 min
3rd 3.47 min
Rendering with 1070ti + 970
1st 3.00 min
2nd 2.37 min
3rd 2.37 min
So well worth it
Thanks for the advice
FBR, You should download MSI Afterburner and turn the fans on your video cards to 100% before starting a render. These cards are soo expensive now (due to bitcoin mining) that keeping them from burning up is just a good idea. Video card manufactures don't set fan profiles for rendering but for gaming. So you need to manually adjust your fans to keep the card from failing.
It’s good advice
I’ve been keeping an eye on all the temperatures using Speedfan
To make sure thinks are staying cool
Did a test render using both cards
Cranked up render settings so it would take awhile
Room temperature about 20C
24 min render
CPU maxed at 35C
970 at 54C
1070 at 64C
That’s with the case fans turned to medium the GPU and CPU fan on auto
The CPU cooler is controlled by the bios and internal sensors so I left it alone.
Cranked the GPU fans and case fans to FULL SAME RENDER
21 MINS (HAVE TO SHOUT SERIOUSLY NOISY J )
CPU 32 C
970 at 41C
1070 at 46C
If I was away from the PC doing a long render maybe but to loud for beside the PC
But the Asus utility that comes with the 1070ti card is very good and allows profiles so I’ll set one up for AFK renders. Also it allows me to control the 970 as well and considering it’s a MSI card I think that’s great.
What is your CPU type? LGA 1150/1151?
I think these CPU types only give 16 lanes. So, if you install two cards, it will split your bandwidth into two, x16 -> x8/x8.
That’s true of most of the LGA 1151 Chipsets
But the Q170 & Z170 have 20
Its why I chose a Z170 board that and I wanted to use a m.2 drive as my primary drive and that has proved blisteringly fast.
I don’t know about the Q170 or all Z170 boards but the one I have allows
For a x16 and x4 GPU card configuration
and some a x8 x8 x4 if you wanted to run 3 cards
Just to add (because I’ve just been told)
The LGA 1151 Q270 has 20 as well and the Z270 has 24
But, for all these newer chipsets (Z170, Z270, Z370, etc...), that support more than 16 lanes, they only make 16 lanes available for the x16 slots. That's why I don't think a x16/x4 configuration is possible for dual x16 graphics cards. It must be x8/x8?
But, anyway, if you're comparing results, I would compare the Daz logs too, and look for lines mentioning a second CUDA device.
Well all I can say is I have an MSI Z170A MB and my 1070ti /970 ARE at 16/4
it's in then specs and not just for the MSI as I considered othe MB
Expansion Slots
● 2x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (support x16, x16/ x4 modes)
Plus I just varified it with HWinFO64
Ah, I guess that's true. I read the CPU is limited to 16 lanes, but these new motherboard chipsets also have their own lanes, so, that extra x4 lanes must be coming from the chipset, and not the CPU.