I was looking to get (actually ordered it from cyberpowerpc) an Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard and have been told that it will not support four graphic cards although it has four well spaced PCIex16 slots. I would be using GTX 460 (unless I go to GTX 570 but they cost twice as much) cards.

So does anyone know if this mobo would run four cards? I am now looking at a MSI X58A-GD45 mobo (with the 1200w Thermaltake TR2 RX Modular 80 Plus PSU - PN: TRX-1200M) instead.

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

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After a quick search at a german online shop: http://www.alternate.de/html/product/Mainboard/ASUS/Rampage_III_Extreme/153549/?showTecData=true&cmd=none#tabberBox ..it looks like the 4 PCIe slots run at: 16/16/0/0, 16/8/8/0 or 8/8/8/8 lanes.
(scroll completely down, under "Weitere Infos")

So if 4 GPUs inserted, they run all at PCIe 2.0 x8.
This is enough for GTX2xx cards (max CUDA performance).
But I don't know if this is also enough for GTX4xx/5xx cards, if you run 2+ WUs/GPU simultaneously. OTOH, I don't know if there is a mobo out there with 4x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots (all 64 lanes connected/used!).


The MSI board is not available at this shop.

For to be sure, you should look on the manufacturer sites.

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http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=jy0uafxYBCrJwksC&templete=2

Expansion Slots
4 x PCIe 2.0 x16 , support x16; x16/x16; x16/x8/x8 and x8/x8/x8/x8 configurations
1 x PCIe x4
1 x PCI 2.2



On the US site not available? German..
http://de.msi.com/index.php?func=prodmbspec&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=&cat3_no=&prod_no=2205#menu

PCI-Ex16 - 3
PCI-E Gen - Gen2 (2x16), Gen1(1x4)

?

Maybe..
2x PCIe 2.0 x16 (full speed?)
1x PCIe 1.0 x16 (x4 speed?)

..so only well for 2 GPU cards.

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One of the eVGA Classfied motherboard supports x4 PCIe x16, maybe the SR2 not sure which one. However the Asus P6T7 WS Supercomputer "Ultimate Gamer" board supports up to 4x SLi 16x. It has 7 PCIe slots total.

3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (@ x16 or x8)
3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (@ x8)
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (@ x16)
*4 x PCIe 2.0 x16
or
7 x PCIe 2.0 ( 6:@x8, 1:@x16)

Those are the only boards I'm aware of that support it, at least that's my understanding. One other thing to keep in mind is that 8x vs 16x in crunching won't mean much considering you aren't transferring large amount of data from the bus to the card. As far as gaming there will be a difference especially in higher end games with resolutions to match.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

According to what I read before you could NOT run 4 video cards on the Asus Rampage III Extreme (hence the III) in SLI. It doesn't support it and someone did a review on it:

http://www.guru3d.com/news/quad-sli-on-asus-rampage-iii-extreme-is-not-possible/

Also a quote from Tom's Hardware guide's review:

"The Rampage III Extreme adds support for four dual-slot graphics cards, a feature that simply must be present before any motherboard can claim to be the “ultimate gaming platform.” Supporting four x16 cards from 32 of the X58 northbridge’s 36 total lanes is accomplished by dropping the first and third x16 slots to eight lanes whenever a card occupies the second and fourth x16-length slots, respectively.

Yet even though 4-way CrossFireX and 3-way SLI are supported, Quad SLI is not (at least out of the box). Nvidia has decided to require two of its NF200 PCI Express bridges to enable the feature, and Asus includes these on workstation-class P6T7 WS SuperComputer motherboard. Competitive overclockers who love the Rampage III Extreme's other features might be interested in its announced ROG Expander, which adds NF200 controllers to the Rampage III Gene through a daughter board. That's going to be a separate purchase though, adding to the cost of this board."

The rest is up to you to decide.

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I was looking to get (actually ordered it from cyberpowerpc) an Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard and have been told that it will not support four graphic cards although it has four well spaced PCIex16 slots. I would be using GTX 460 (unless I go to GTX 570 but they cost twice as much) cards.

So does anyone know if this mobo would run four cards? I am now looking at a MSI X58A-GD45 mobo (with the 1200w Thermaltake TR2 RX Modular 80 Plus PSU - PN: TRX-1200M) instead.

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

Thomas

i have a Rampage III and yes it will run 4 GPU's quite happily - others run this board as well and they will probably chip in

Yes its at x8/x8/x8/x8 and this will be fine for 460's - we are way off saturating the PCIe bus yet even if it was x4 for each slot

See here

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/08/23/gtx_480_sli_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x8x8/1

other sites have reported the same results from their own testing

I have four GTX295 in mine (one switched off at the moment) and your 1200w supply will be fine a i have a similar PSU and the 295 draw more power than the the 460's

Just make sure you connect up the extra two power (molex) feeds to the board to keep the power stable to the slots

Happy Crunching

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Tim

Thank you all

Thank you brother Tim; that's what I was hoping for.

The Asus website said 4 PCIe x16 slots ready for 4 single PCB graphic cards but you can not beat experience and community.

I've had the itch for a year and now I am going to scratch it.

Happy Crunching to us all

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No Problems here with the R3E and four GTX295.

Helli

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A loooong time ago: First Credits after SETI@home Restart

Thomas

one last thing

SETI does not need / support SLI

and 460's only support up to three way SLI by design

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Tim

Only heat could be a problem... ;-)

Helli

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A loooong time ago: First Credits after SETI@home Restart

According to what I read before you could NOT run 4 video cards on the Asus Rampage III Extreme (hence the III) in SLI.

Actually it's called the Rampage III because it's the third Rampage series produced. IE I have a Rampage II on the 775 chipset.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

I was looking at doing something similar using the Evga X58 Classified. It is rated as Quad-SLI.

However unlike you I was looking at putting 6 or 7 GT240's in it. Not the fastest I know but I can use all the slots. They are fairly cheap, only need a single slot and don't need an extra power connector. My concern was the GeForce drivers are limited to a maximum of 4 cards as far as I understand. EVGA couldn't confirm this.

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BOINC blog

I was looking at doing something similar using the Evga X58 Classified. It is rated as Quad-SLI.

However unlike you I was looking at putting 6 or 7 GT240's in it. Not the fastest I know but I can use all the slots. They are fairly cheap, only need a single slot and don't need an extra power connector. My concern was the GeForce drivers are limited to a maximum of 4 cards as far as I understand. EVGA couldn't confirm this.

Hmm...7x GT240? How long does one WU will take? 1 hour? And needs 65 Watt?
Well, that means possible RAC of 18k and over 400 Watt Power Draw. Not the
best investment. ;-)

[edit:]
Oopsie...no. I see, 26min. Is this with one Task or can this GPU do more
than one Task at a time?

Helli

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A loooong time ago: First Credits after SETI@home Restart

I was looking at doing something similar using the Evga X58 Classified. It is rated as Quad-SLI.

However unlike you I was looking at putting 6 or 7 GT240's in it. Not the fastest I know but I can use all the slots. They are fairly cheap, only need a single slot and don't need an extra power connector. My concern was the GeForce drivers are limited to a maximum of 4 cards as far as I understand. EVGA couldn't confirm this.

With 7 cards in that motherboard you would be limited down to 4x on all the cards. The forceware drivers are limited to 4 cards in SLi. Each card handles it's own drivers so you should be ok, Windows merely picks them up as separate devices like everything else.

One thing you should be concerned about however is the investment vs. power / work production. There are several different versions of that card, and you would want at least the 1GB one since it generally has faster clock speeds and a die shrink involved I think. With those cards you would be looking at about $70+ for the cards. That's $490 plus all the shipping and any tax incurred. So round it out to about $500.

Like Heli said that would be 65w a card and 455 watts at IDLE. The 512mb card will consume about 110 watts at load and the 1GB will consume 86 watts at load. So 602 - 770 watts on the video cards alone! For about the same money and power consumption I would think you would pull more work units with 3 GTX 460's. At ~$170 a card you would be only be ~$10 more, about the same power consumption, and producing more WU's.

If you are looking for bragging rights on having 7 video cards, doing it with GT 240's isn't the way to go. If you want to save even more power and money and have about the same production look into going 3x or 4x with GTS 250 1GB! Strong performers. Either way you go it looks like you will need a 1200 watt+ psu.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

Some info for you guys that might aid the discussion:

I am running two dual quad Opteron machines each with 4 GT 240s; I seem to be getting about 4500 RAC per GT240 (best guess - I'm doing mid-40K for the 2 machines combined, and the CPUs run roughly the same RAC as one GT 240 on each).

All GT 240s are 512MB except one is 1GB; some are 1 slot designs, some are 1.5 slot (but that doesn't matter for this discussion). I got them at around $40-50 each (sales + rebates).

I'm using a used HP XW8400 PSU on one (725watts?) and having no problems; the other was going to have one also, but the HAF 932 case I have won't fit the PSU (it's HP proprietary, and is taller than a standard PSU), so in the 2nd one I am using a 750watt PC Power & Cooling PSU, also with no probs.

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Some info for you guys that might aid the discussion:

I am running two dual quad Opteron machines each with 4 GT 240s; I seem to be getting about 4500 RAC per GT240 (best guess - I'm doing mid-40K for the 2 machines combined, and the CPUs run roughly the same RAC as one GT 240 on each).

All GT 240s are 512MB except one is 1GB; some are 1 slot designs, some are 1.5 slot (but that doesn't matter for this discussion). I got them at around $40-50 each (sales + rebates).

I'm using a used HP XW8400 PSU on one (725watts?) and having no problems; the other was going to have one also, but the HAF 932 case I have won't fit the PSU (it's HP proprietary, and is taller than a standard PSU), so in the 2nd one I am using a 750watt PC Power & Cooling PSU, also with no probs.

Interesting, I need to do some additional reference searching indeed it seems. I looked through about 4 sites for the material above but maybe their testing methods were off a bit? Even though they seemed about the same. However I will say that your setup using opteron and only 4 of the cards would only need about 600 watts max for your setup. He's talking about wanting to add another ~300 at max load!

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

I would not choose, any of the 200 series, they aren't build for 24x7 and usually get too hot!
I would go for GTX470's as the CUDA possebillities are fare better and have a reasonable pricetag, useage would be the same, when using 3 (or 4), also don't matter much if the cards run in 4x mode.

My main cruncher, has a Mobo that refuses to put a 470 & 480 in 16x mode, it runs the 480 in 1x mode and the 470 (2nd slot) in 2x mode and differences in time increase are neglectable.
A same board doesrun an ATI 4850 and a 5870 in 16x mode?!
All according to GPUz 0.49 and also 0.5.
[ADDED]
This difference in bus speed, is very noticeble in the form of screenlag,
the FERMI host has no screenlag and the ATI has no useable screen,
at all...............
Seems to me, BUS SPEED isn't [b]that[/b important, if card-memory is used by the app.
Time for a new Mobo, I think, ehh dream..............
Would be nice if GPUz has an actual figure on PCI-E BUS speed!

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... I was told the GTX295 used 288w which looks like 144w per gpu to Me.

Not overclocked GTX295 with Lunatics APP needs 220 Watt. Have measured
with a high accurate Power Draw Meter (Christ CLM 1000).

My 4 GTX295 Rig with a i7@3.8Ghz (idle) needs 950-1000 Watt.

Helli

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A loooong time ago: First Credits after SETI@home Restart

Well since HEAT is a major problem, those waterblocks will solve the heat issue.
I've read on an ASUS WEB-Site, 5000 hours @ 105C and 500,000 hours @ 65C, for their Mobo's, IMO the same applies to other hardware s.a. CPU, VIDEO/CUDA, etc.

The single PCB 295 are OK with waterblocks, IMO.
Still use 1 GTS250, in a HP Pavillion Desktop, but had to remove one side and
have a external fan blowing (cold) air from ousite in 2 rigs for cooling, other is the ATI host.

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Whoa! :-)

Will have, will have! LOL

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/20206


Helli

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A loooong time ago: First Credits after SETI@home Restart