Trouble with getting two 460 2GB cards working`

[sypa]

Hi Everyone, I am having trouble getting two Palit GeForce 460 2GB cards working for Vray RT GPU. Vray GPU works fine with one card installed but doesn't work with two cards. I used both the nvidia 258.96 and 260.89 drivers. Any ideas? please help!!!

[freiformgestaltung02]

Hi Sypa,

in my workstation two 460 with 2GB are working really well. I had installed both, the 258 and the 260 beta drivers, and both are working really well. I can`t tell you, which one has the better performance, but both are really fast (4.5 times faster, than my old Geforce GTX 275).

[vlado]

Hi Everyone, I am having trouble getting two Palit GeForce 460 2GB cards working for Vray RT GPU. Vray GPU works fine with one card installed but doesn't work with two cards. I used both the nvidia 258.96 and 260.89 drivers. Any ideas? please help!!!

How do you know that it doesn't use the two cards? Does Windows see the two cards? If you start the V-Ray RT GPU selector in the Start menu, how many GPUs do you see?

Best regards,
Vlado

[Alan Iglesias]

Do you have a dummy plug on the one you are not using for the display?

-Alan

[Alan Iglesias]

...in my workstation two 460 with 2GB are working really well. I had installed both, the 258 and the 260 beta drivers, and both are working really well.

Hi,

I'm thinking of adding another 460 to my system, so I have a couple of questions:

Are you using one of the 460s for display? If so does the display get slow when GPU rendering? If it did, did you make any adjustments to fix it?

Thanks very much,

-Alan

[freiformgestaltung02]

Hi Alan,
I`m using the two 460s for my two screens. Yes they get slower, when Vray RT Gpu is working, but navigating with my spacemouse and the perspective view only visualising boxes, it is o.k. (the result of your movements you can see in the active shade view). I`m using RT mostly for the material, light and camera setting tweaks, so it is not necessary to orbit through the scene. The only "problem" is the slowdown, when I`m creating new materials in slate editor. You can specify with the "Select OpenCL devices for Vray RT GPU" how many cards Vray RT GPU shall use. I haven`t tried it yet, but maybe, when you don`t need the full power the whole time, you can switch one off and can achieve a better performance for the viewports.

Greetings Sascha

[Alan Iglesias]

Thanks very much, Sascha, I appreciate your reply very much.

Kindest regards,

-Alan

[Nicinus]

I know this is kind of an impossible question, but what kind of speed do you see from the 460 compared to using RT on CPU only?

[freiformgestaltung02]

Hello Nicinus,

I have some test renderings... test scene rendered 3 minutes long, please compare the samples/pixel reached. I have also tested how long the two 460 must work, till the samples were the same as my cpu rendering.
The cpu renderings were made on my dual Xenon 5520 with 2.26 GHz, 12 GB DDR3/1333 workstation, not a really slow computer...

CPU 3 minutes
http://img219.imageshack.us/i/cpu3min.jpg
GPU geforce gtx 460 3 minutes
http://img844.imageshack.us/i/gpugef...60halfmin.jpg/
GPU geforce gtx 460 3 minutes
http://img714.imageshack.us/i/gpugeforcegtx4603min.jpg
GPU Geforce gtx 275 3 minutes
http://img827.imageshack.us/i/gpugeforcegtx2753min.jpg

Hope you will like the speed...

Sascha

[Nicinus]

Thanks a lot, man, greatly appreciated. These tests are with both your 460's but with one 275, right?

I'd like to try that test scene to see how my system compares with yours on CPU, could you upload it?

Out if curiosity, which motherboard are you using? Almost sounds like a Skulltrail but I though the 5520 had a different socket?

Thanks again,
Nicinus

[freiformgestaltung02]

Hi,

here is my test scene for max design 2011:
http://rapidshare.com/files/42713997..._testscne4.rar
Yes you are right, for the gpu gtx 275 benchmark, there was only one gtx 275 in my system.
I have a supermicro mainboard (like in HP workstations used), wich is a little bit more expensive and professional than the skulltrail...
Please post your result and your specs...

Sascha

[Nicinus]

So my system was considerably slower than yours, I got about 36 samples in 3min and 12 sec, about half the speed of your CPU's. It took me 5 min 35 sec to get to 64 samples. The good news for me is that I will see the same kind of speed increase from one 460 as you see from your dual setup (although yours will of course still be twice the speed.)

Either way a very interesting and promising test. Now if we could only get ATI working as well (I have a 5870 for the viewport) and why not in combination with the CPU.

[Nicinus]

Ok, I'm officially confused. I never really looked at your test scene, just put it to work in RT, but just for comparison I rendered it and that only took 2 min 51 sec with the same settings? I can imagine it would take less than 2 mins on yours, effectively making it much faster than your dual 460's. Am I missing something here?

[freiformgestaltung02]

Hi Nicinus,

no, you are right, the scene will be rendered really fast (on my workstation 2 min 3,8 sec), but you cannot tweak the materials or lights or change the cams. You have allways to keep in mind, that vray is no production renderer! For tweaking a scene you have not to wait 3 min. When you look at my pictures, you can see, that 20 seconds or so, will give you a impression of the scene and this is sufficiant for tweaking colors, lights and so on. Also you have to keep in mind, that also bigger and more textured scenes with more complicated stuff (refelections refractions of multiple objects) in it will work as fast... My benchmark scene is really not achallange for RT.

- Sascha

[Nicinus]

So I got a 460 as a complement to my Radeon and I do get exactly the expected speed, which in my case is just over 5 times the speed I get from RT with cpu. In comparison to your setup it took me 1 min 11 sec to reach 64 samples, or just about twice the time of your dual 460's.