Double 2-Way SLI

[HexagonIi]

Hi LTT forums! I recently got a ASUS P8Z77 WS motherboard, which supports 4 way Nvidia 4 way SLI and Crossfire as well. I put a spare Core i5 2320 and put 2 GTX 670 in 2 way SLI for now. I have a pair of GTX 580s, and wondered whether I could run them on the board together with the GTX 670 SLI. And if it is possible, should I use individual SLI bridges for each pair or use the included 4 way SLI bridge? I plan to use this as a render farm of some sort, or use it for any computer intensive activities. Advice would be appreciated Thanks 

[Rolling Potatoe]

Nope,

you could run a 580 as a physx card, but thats it.

[l__T__l]

I don't know too much about render farms but through virtualisation you would be able to use all 4 GPUs in the motherboard in SLI (580s together, 670s together) you would just need to use at least 2 virtual machines. But you cannot put all 4 in SLI.

[Stefan1024]

It could be possible to run limetech virtualisatio (but take care, getting SLI running is tricky) to run two seperate desktops on one PC. But your CPU is way too weak to do this.

You can use all GPUs wothout virtualisation for SLI independet tasks like folding at home, but for gaming nvidia does not (and will not) write the drivers needed.

[Stefan1024]

Do you even have a PSU powerful enougth to runn all cards? The 580s are extremly powerhungry.

[HexagonIi]

19 hours ago, Rolling Potatoe said:

Nope,

you could run a 580 as a physx card, but thats it.

I do not plan on running games on this, but thanks anyway 

[HexagonIi]

15 hours ago, Stefan1024 said:

Do you even have a PSU powerful enougth to runn all cards? The 580s are extremly powerhungry.

What about tasks like cloud rendering? Can I use the cards for this purpose? Like SLI independent or do I need it to run as a virtual machine? I plan to get a  1500w PSU in the near future when I find one that suits my needs, so the power should not be a problem. 

[Stefan1024]

Speeding up one programm is difficult. But running four instances and use one GPU per instance schoulb be fine. But you need to be able to tell the pprogramm what GPU to use. Not all rendering programms have this option.

[Stefan1024]

Also the performance per watt is very poor, if you use them 24/7, the electricity bill is higher than buying a new card.