does dual graphic card (SLI/CrossFire) works with 3ds max? n vray?

[DeeteeCG]

Hello guys...

lately I'm planning to make a new rig for my new pc. planning to get GTX460-480 or GTX460-480... (depends on budget)

but my worry is that im afraid 3DS Max doesnt support both graphic card. means it wont fully utilize both GPU power... will it?

there are 2 reasons I wanna use dual graphic card...
1st is for the purpose of 3Dsmax viewport (increase fps rate dramatically), which hopefully can speed up my work flow when comes to very high polygons like 2-5mil or more?
2nd purpose is for Vray-RT. which as we all know currently vray-RT are running at GPU power. im not sure if vray-RT will fully utilize both GPU power or not...

i been hearing some people said cannot, but some said can. but as far as i can remember, chaosgroup used 3 graphic card together in 1 rig to do vray-RT demo in siggraph.

so i assume it can be done? or do i need to install any 3rd party software/plugin to make 3dsmax/vray fully utilize them?

[Donald2B]

As for SLI/CrossFire:
Nothing works with this. This is strictly for gaming.

3DS Max only supports a single GPU for the viewports. It is all kind of irrelevant now that 3DS Max is moving away from Direct3D to the new Nitrous system in Max 2012. Nitrous is already showing some very impressive results on even slightly older hardware.

Now if you would like to use multiple video cards for GPU rendering, then you are good to go. But you are not going to be linking them together via SLI/Crossfire, but utilizing each card as a stand-alone computing unit.

I hope that helps you some, I am just skimming over most of the topics you mentioned.

[R2J2]

great nitrous demo on an older machine
http://www.cgchannel.com/2011/03/vid...roys-max-2011/

[DeeteeCG]

As for SLI/CrossFire:
Nothing works with this. This is strictly for gaming.

3DS Max only supports a single GPU for the viewports. It is all kind of irrelevant now that 3DS Max is moving away from Direct3D to the new Nitrous system in Max 2012. Nitrous is already showing some very impressive results on even slightly older hardware.

Now if you would like to use multiple video cards for GPU rendering, then you are good to go. But you are not going to be linking them together via SLI/Crossfire, but utilizing each card as a stand-alone computing unit.

I hope that helps you some, I am just skimming over most of the topics you mentioned.

thanks for the reply, it definitely helps me for some understanding. so do i need to do any setting after i put multiple graphic card into a machine? just install the graphic card driver and im good to go? without any extra setting/software installation?

great nitrous demo on an older machine
http://www.cgchannel.com/2011/03/vid...roys-max-2011/

nitrous is something new to me. will definitely check it out. thanks for the link bro.

[Morne]

hmmm I think you're missing the "nitrous" point. It's still DirectX9, Nitrous is just their code name for the way the whole lot interfaces. They opted to stay with DirectX9 as 10 has too many "bugs" and 11 is not quite "ready" for THEM yet. Them being Autodesk