Which 7980xe motherboard supports the most GPU's ?

[delineator]

I think we need to be honest and represent accurate information - if you have any please share and we can have an information based discussion. However, lets not represent opinions as facts and vice versa. Benchmarks serve a purpose: normalize and provide context to disparate hardware and we should not so lightly toss them aside in favor of our anecdotal experience.

[Ivan1982]

Please feel free to consider you are right and i am wrong, in fact i am willing to tell you right now that i am wrong and that i consider this interaction anecdotal experience for myself.

Take care

[ripe]

JezUK - did you build the "I just purchased an x299 Sage by Asus - and will be building over the next few weeks."

Interested as i'm looking at boards with 4 GPU support and cannot decide if I should go AMD Threadripper or Intel CPU / MB?

[JezUK]

Yes I did - I bought it because it could potentially support 7 GPUs (I have also a x99-e ws and that supports 7 as well - the intention about a year ago was to build an open rig with 7 gpus on).

Very happy with the new machine, but was a little disappointed that the sage doesn't have a 2.0 USB header on it - only 3.x gen 1 and gen 2. (so you have to buy extra cables / workarounds to get around that, for example the front panel on many pc cases will have usb 2.0).

You get around that by using one of these (I always put these in pretty much any new machine I build)

https://www.nzxt.com/products/internal-usb-hub

[JezUK]

Spoke too soon....

I can't seem to fit 4 GPU's (double width) on this Sage x299 without the 4th one blocking the only USB header on the mobo (the 3.0 at that)...... A real shame.....

[ripe]

Hey Jez - thanks for the reply.

The USB header fouling the 4th card is exactly what I want to avoid! There must be a board / boards out there that allow a double width card to fit into the 4th slot!

[JezUK]

I'm hoping there might be a cable out there to fix this, but the head of that cable would need to be L shaped - the only other option, though I don't think this will work (I've yet to investigate) is if I can put my internal USB cable into a USB port on the back of the mobo rather than onto the USB header on the mobo. I'm guessing that won't work but I don't really know - either way I'm a bit disappointed right now to be honest.

As far as I know, the Sage is the only one with 7 slots, and for my open rig (which I've already fabricated), then it will work. But I wasn't planning to complete that build just yet..... (have you tried getting an NVidia card lately ?)

[JezUK]

4 cards in a Sage is looking up again.......

https://www.moddiy.com/products/90-D...Connector.html

[ripe]

Good find that JezUK!

I do keep looking at various boards - mainly the Thredripper boards as they are designed for 4 has SLI - so one would image they have thought about cables / cards etc!

I simply want to put 4 x GPU's into 1 machine - I have 4 x 1070's and would like to use them all

Any reason you went Intel over AMD - other than the 7 card board?

[JezUK]

Nothing other than not wanting issues (read that as 'rumours') with heat, or incompatibility across what is now my now small network of two machines, that I'd read somewhere that images were coming out slightly different (though I think that's now addressed). Basically, preferring to keep it all same/similar tech etc.

[ripe]

Understood JezUK - i'm thinking along same lines. I already have a slightly older Intel 9560X render node PC that's great and I want to update my 'work' PC that runs an even older i7 4970 - I just want to be sure it's nice and quick in Apps and also in After Effects as well as simply rendering.... oh and I want to get 4 GPU's in it too.

I am wondering if I should play safe and go Intel - but it's 10 cores as opposed to 16 - and for more money!!

[JezUK]

I think it's great that Intel have competition and the Threadripper seems a great buy.

But the 7980xe has come down a bit I think.

I just prefer going with what I know - i.e. Intel, NVidia, as I know it'll work, and the 7980xe is plenty fast for me.

My last job, we used Dual Xeon E5-2697v3 (the machine to have at one point) and the 7980xe is as near dammit as quick rendering as one of those (my benchmark speed is just over 32s......).

[ripe]

JezUK - cheers for info
How do you find the 7980xe working day to day as opposed to rendering? I'm just worried of the lower clock speeds on the multi core CPU's and I need to be sure the PC will feel fast and responsive in other apps like After Effects / Photoshop etc....

[JezUK]

I don't use AE, but PS opens nice and quickly, the machine feels no less responsive than my previous machine (a 5960x).

I have moved also to W10 (from W7) and have noticed issues which were present in W7 are no longer present in W10 (things which would annoy me in W7 like window scrolling with mmb wouldn't work in W7, now does in W10 etc). Also W10 boots up in silly record time (for me, previously in W7 it'd be something like over a minute) - takes this machine around 15 seconds.

So I really like W10 - should have made the transition a lot sooner

I have overclocked the 7980 (automatically via AI Suite 3) - Benchmark went from 40s (no OC) down to 32s afterwards. I still think there might be a little more OC'ing possible, but will leave it there.

[ripe]

Good stuff Jez - I was considering moving my 5960x machine to my main PC and then getting a bare bones thread ripper system as a render node - but I cannot get 4xGPU's onto my Asus x99 Deluxe board
My 5960x does the CPU benchmark in 1.29 and it's overclocked to 4Ghz - so 32 seconds is silly fast!!!!