Does a setup with 3 GPUs, one for the displays and two with NVlink for the rendering, work ?

Hello,

Maybe it is a dumb question, but I could not find a straight answer on the internet :
I am doing GPU rendering with Vray for about 2-3 years, with 2 good old RTX 2080ti paired with NVlink. I renewed my workstation lately and wanted to plug a third GPU, an old GTX 1080 (since I have room for it on my motherboard and on my powersupply unit), only for monitoring (I have 2 display unit to attach), thus dedicating my two 2080ti for rendering only.
But I was told that I could not do it because NVlink can only be activated when a display is attached to one of the GPUs. If so, is there some way around this limitation ? Would a dummy dongle do the trick ? Do recent Nvidia studio drivers allow that kind of setup ?

Thanks a lot for your answer.

That would really help me.

Best regards.

Tristan Vieljeux

Hi @tristan_vieljeux and welcome to the forums,

Yes this setup should work, I use it myself. You will need dummy display port on one of the 2 NVLinked cards, this is necessary for NVLink to work through SLI

Best,
Muhammed