Is it possible to run two different SLI setups?

[TheGosuStandard]

I'm looking to confirm whether its possible to run two different SLI setups for similar and even different applications. I currently have the Asus Z10PE-D8 WS motherboard (https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z10PED8_WS/) that supports 4 way SLI with two Nvidia GTX 1080 ti's currently running in SLI. In this setup would it be possible to buy anything other than another pair of 1080 ti's to get the machine more power, i.e. run another set of cards in SLI in addition to the two I have in SLI currently running different programs. I've read that you can run different cards with crossfire, but wasn't sure if Nvidia allowed it with DX12. 

 

[Fasauceome]

You won't have enough PCIe lanes for that

[minibois]

DX12 combining of GPU's in multi-GPU setups has not really evolved much, other than very rare occasions (I believe the benchmark game Ashes of the Singularity supports it?).

Nvidia requires - for SLI - the cards to be basically the same. The same in SKU name (e.g. 1080 Ti) and same memory (if available in different GB amounts). Of course the card must support SLI itself too, some cards just do not (but the 1080 Ti does).

If my memory serves me well, you will also need 1 PCIE x8 per card.

[TheGosuStandard]

3 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

You won't have enough PCIe lanes for that

There are a total of 7 on the board, unless I am mistaking what you are saying. 

 

4 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (dual x16 or quad x8) *²
2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (dual x16) *²
1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (dual x8) *²

[TheGosuStandard]

5 minutes ago, minibois said:

DX12 combining of GPU's in multi-GPU setups has not really evolved much, other than very rare occasions (I believe the benchmark game Ashes of the Singularity supports it?).

Nvidia requires - for SLI - the cards to be basically the same. The same in SKU name (e.g. 1080 Ti) and same memory (if available in different GB amounts). Of course the card must support SLI itself too, some cards just do not (but the 1080 Ti does).

If my memory serves me well, you will also need 1 PCIE x8 per card.

Appreciate the info, thanks. 

[manikyath]

you could, in theory, have a pair of cards in SLI as your "primary" array, running the displays and running games etc. and then have certain applications (that support it) talk to the other GPU's specificly.

 

but the important thing to note is, you'll never have a "dual SLI setup" where each pair of cards is running a seperate game.

 

but all that said.. its probably a stupid idea. you're either better off seperating into multiple machines, or are in one of those niche use cases where virtualization makes sense.

[minibois]

3 minutes ago, TheGosuStandard said:

Appreciate the info, thanks. 

What I am thinking now, by the way.. While SLI might not be practical with different cards, I do often see people run multiple cards when using them kind of seperately.

'Distributed computing' is using the power of many PC's around the globe to solve world's biggest issues. Folding@Home is one of these examples. F@H is most efficiently ran on GPU's, thus having many GPU's in your build will output better numbers.

This can of course also be done with other program that can leverage multiple GPU's.

 

Example of one of these multi GPU builds:

(Combination of 1070 Ti, 2060, 2060 Super, 2070, 2070 Super, 2080 Super)

 

[TheGosuStandard]

2 hours ago, minibois said:

What I am thinking now, by the way.. While SLI might not be practical with different cards, I do often see people run multiple cards when using them kind of seperately.

'Distributed computing' is using the power of many PC's around the globe to solve world's biggest issues. Folding@Home is one of these examples. F@H is most efficiently ran on GPU's, thus having many GPU's in your build will output better numbers.

This can of course also be done with other program that can leverage multiple GPU's.

 

Example of one of these multi GPU builds:

(Combination of 1070 Ti, 2060, 2060 Super, 2070, 2070 Super, 2080 Super)

 

Yes, that's what I am looking for as the two 1080 ti's are currently in SLI, but if we had for example another GPU (2080 ti) if we can technically use it for different/specific programs such as computer vision and machine learning. 

[Gorgon]

On 12/22/2019 at 9:50 PM, TheGosuStandard said:

Yes, that's what I am looking for as the two 1080 ti's are currently in SLI, but if we had for example another GPU (2080 ti) if we can technically use it for different/specific programs such as computer vision and machine learning. 

Yes, you can run multiple GPUs off a single CPU it just depends how much each GPU utilizes the PCIe bus. For Distributed Computing (Folding at Home, BOINC) you can typically get away with feeding a single GPU from 4 PCIe3 lanes without too much of a decrease in performance but Linux typically doe this better than Windows.

 

For most DC apps SLI or crossfire is not required and may in fact reduce performance but a SLI capable motherboard usually is required as they contain the PCIe switches to split the x16 motherboard lanes to x8/x8.

 

In my use case I’m using PCIe bifurcation to split the x16 PCIe lanes to 4 x4 lanes then m.2 to PCIe adapters to split the 2 native m.2 CPU connections, the 4 x4 from the bifurcation and the x4 lanes from the chipset to 7 x4 PCIe connections each driving a GPU.

 

A HEDT x299/399 motherboard with an appropriate Xeon CPU would do this better as would a Threadripper based System as they would provide wider PCIe connections to the GPUs but in my case x4 is wide enough for the applications I want to run.