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Two graphic cards?

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  • ebergerlyebergerly Posts: 3,255

    And the reason we have A/C is because the outside temperature heats the house. When it's hotter outside it heats, and when it's cooler outside it cools. If you turned off the A/C totally, at night the outside temperature would still cool the house right? Not as fast, but it still would happen. Unless your insulation is 3 feet thick. The outside temperature acts like the A/C at night. It sucks the heat out. 

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,730
    swordkensia said:
    dragotx said:
    swordkensia said:

    Thats what the numbers say.

    Its all pretty consistant, which is pleasently surprising.

    Purchasing choices and the why's and where for's of such things, are very much a personal thing.. I bought my pair of 1070's back in march before the price hike and JUST before the 1080 ti was released., I picked up the pair for £680.00, which is comparable to a typical 1080 ti price today.

    MY reason to purchase a pair then, was at the time the price of the 1080ti was not confirmed, nor was its relative render performance, so I took the gamble and got the 1070's. (a purchase which i don't regret at all). Consider this I was getting virtually the same performance as a Titan X/980ti, for HALF the cost..,It was a no brainer.., but this market moves fast fast fast., and the eventual price of the 1080ti was a shocker, considering the titan xp, which is virtually the same card was selling for around £1100.00, it was not in the realms of imbrobabilty that NVIDIA would be asking for figures around £800.00+ for its 1080ti.

    Cheers,

    S.K.

     

     

    One thing I'm curious about:  If I have a 1080ti and a 1070 running in the same machine, do I still get to use all of the vram on the 1080ti, or does the 1070 limit what I can use? (I know it won't use both cards for available VRAM for loading the scene, I'll be putting the 1080ti as primary, but I thought I'd read somewhere that the scene has to be able to fit on either card or it will still fail to CPU)

    You would be limited to the card with the lowest Vram, if using both cards together to render a scene.

    However if you disable the 1070 and leave the 1080ti enabled you will be able to use all of that cards Vram, but of course you will only be able to render on that card. I sometimes have to do this for larger scenes.

    Cheers,

    S.K.

    No, if the lower RAM card ran out of RAM it would drop out of the render (or not start, if it ran out during scene load) but the higher RAM card would continue to work. There have been (conflicting) reports of a faster card being throttled in soem way to the speed of a slower, but memory usage is independent.

  • Gator_2236745Gator_2236745 Posts: 1,312
    ebergerly said:

    And the reason we have A/C is because the outside temperature heats the house. When it's hotter outside it heats, and when it's cooler outside it cools. If you turned off the A/C totally, at night the outside temperature would still cool the house right? Not as fast, but it still would happen. Unless your insulation is 3 feet thick. The outside temperature acts like the A/C at night. It sucks the heat out. 

    I think we've already established how AC works, why are you bringing extraneous factors into the equation? BTW, it's hotter outside here at night than we keep the thermostat. ;) It's simple thermodynamics. All other factors remaining constant, extra heat introduced into your home will require extra energy expended by your AC unit to compensate. We'll just agree to disagree. You can fool yourself, you can maybe fool some people on the internet, you won't fool your power company. ;)
  • dragotxdragotx Posts: 1,138
    Richard Haseltine said:
    swordkensia said:
    dragotx said:
    swordkensia said:

    Thats what the numbers say.

    Its all pretty consistant, which is pleasently surprising.

    Purchasing choices and the why's and where for's of such things, are very much a personal thing.. I bought my pair of 1070's back in march before the price hike and JUST before the 1080 ti was released., I picked up the pair for £680.00, which is comparable to a typical 1080 ti price today.

    MY reason to purchase a pair then, was at the time the price of the 1080ti was not confirmed, nor was its relative render performance, so I took the gamble and got the 1070's. (a purchase which i don't regret at all). Consider this I was getting virtually the same performance as a Titan X/980ti, for HALF the cost..,It was a no brainer.., but this market moves fast fast fast., and the eventual price of the 1080ti was a shocker, considering the titan xp, which is virtually the same card was selling for around £1100.00, it was not in the realms of imbrobabilty that NVIDIA would be asking for figures around £800.00+ for its 1080ti.

    Cheers,

    S.K.

     

     

    One thing I'm curious about:  If I have a 1080ti and a 1070 running in the same machine, do I still get to use all of the vram on the 1080ti, or does the 1070 limit what I can use? (I know it won't use both cards for available VRAM for loading the scene, I'll be putting the 1080ti as primary, but I thought I'd read somewhere that the scene has to be able to fit on either card or it will still fail to CPU)

    You would be limited to the card with the lowest Vram, if using both cards together to render a scene.

    However if you disable the 1070 and leave the 1080ti enabled you will be able to use all of that cards Vram, but of course you will only be able to render on that card. I sometimes have to do this for larger scenes.

    Cheers,

    S.K.

    No, if the lower RAM card ran out of RAM it would drop out of the render (or not start, if it ran out during scene load) but the higher RAM card would continue to work. There have been (conflicting) reports of a faster card being throttled in soem way to the speed of a slower, but memory usage is independent.

    That's more the behavior I would expect, makes it much easier for me to justify the bigger card now

  • outrider42outrider42 Posts: 3,679
    ebergerly said:
    outrider42 said:

    Consider all of this:

    Using one 1080ti will use less electricity than two 1070s.

    One 1080ti has more VRAM than two 1070s.

    Two 1070s will have more total CUDA cores than one 1080ti, but you also have to factor that using two cards is not a full 100% boost. Plus it takes a bit longer to get a scene loaded on multiple GPUs.

    And right now, the cost of two 1070s is greater than a single 1080ti. And they do not offer better performance. IMO the answer is a no brainer.

    I wish we could re-direct our arguments away from the generic, somewhat irrelevant "more, better, faster" and towards the HOW MUCH more, better and faster, and whether that matters to a real person. 

    Your point boils down to " less + more + more + longer + greater = a no-brainer". I'm sorry, but generalities do not equal a no-brainer. 

    Just one example from your list...

    You say one 1080ti uses less electricity than two 1070's. That's probably true. From what I found, at load the 1070 draws something like 150 watts (which is about what I see on my system), and the 1080ti around 280 watts. So 2 x 1070 = 300 watts versus 280 watts. The difference is 20 watts. Fine. 

    However, even if we wanted to prove your point to the extreme, lets say the difference was a staggering 100 watts. In terms of the COST of that difference in actual $$, which is what's really important, consider that a typical cost of electricity in the US is around 10 cents for every kilowatt-hour. That means if you use 1,000 watts for one hour it costs you 10 cents.

    So using our exaggerated 100 watt difference, it takes 10 hours to draw 1,000 watt-hours. So every hour you run your system the cost difference is 1 cent.  

    So if you ran your two 1070's CONTINUOUSLY, AT FULL LOAD (continously doing renders or playing video games), 24 hours a day for 1 year (8,760 hours in a year), that would cost an additional $87 over the 1080ti. And that's assuming our exaggerated watt difference, plus it assumes we're running continuously for 1 year, which I doubt anyone here does.

    Practically, the cost difference over a year for most people is probably negligible. Maybe a few $$ at most.

    My only point is PLEASE, let's focus less on generalities which may have little real-world relevance, and more on actual numbers.  

     

    There are no generalities in that statement. Everything is backed up by a real fact. A 1080ti has 3 GB more VRAM, 50 less watts TDP, costs $150 less. Based on those facts alone, a 1080ti is a MUCH better investment. There is no generalizing to be made about that. The cost difference over a year may not be huge...but there is a big cost difference up front. You seem to overlook that part. Two 1070s for $900 will get you performance maybe slightly better than the $750 1080ti. Maybe I am weird, but $150 is not a small amount to me, and it doesn't even get you better performance! How much more of a no brainer can a no brainer possibly be???

    Your argument might work if market prices were what they were supposed to be. As I said at the start of my post, I was fully in that multi-GPU camp before (and before the 1080ti dropped.) But the mining craze blew that up. And though the mining boom is finally dying down, we now have a world wide supply shortage of the VRAM and RAM that is pumping up prices even more. Sources say to expect 10% higher prices for Nvidia this December, even as the mining fad dies. These price hikes really kill the whole idea of buying multiple cheaper GPUs....GPUs simply are not that cheap right now.

    Back to that more power thing, more power is not just a financial benefit. More power equals more heat. More heat means that the parts inside that computer are more likely to fail over its lifespan. If you are running Daz Iray, the GPUs are most likely running full 100% for very long periods of time. Do you use temp monitoring software? My card hits about max 60°C at full load. That is 140°F. That is 140° heat being ejected into the room, potentially for hours at a time for long renders. That can add up. Even if your room is not somehow not effected, it can have an effect on the PC as I stated. And running two cards will only be hotter. You can do water cooling, of course, but now you are talking about an additional and high expense. Plus more cards and more heat means more fan noise if you air cool. You are going to hear the difference.

    Also, when it comes to gaming, multiple GPUs is not recommended because some games do not even support SLI very well (or at all,) and there other complications that can happen. For Daz, you do not use SLI, of course, but you'd need to for games. And when it come to the whole "can you really see it" thing, I mean, what can I say if you wish not to see it. I played on consoles for years, and switched to more PC years ago. So I have been on both sides of the spectrum. And after playing a game on PC at 60 fps and improved visual on top of that, it is very hard to go back. Its like finding a really great burger joint. After having a really good burger like that, you wont have much desire to back to a chain. That's what it is like to a gamer to play on PC with good hardware. After you get used to that, you don't want to go back. And where once you might have thought "oh, I don't need those pretty things or this or that" you will surely change your mind once you actually have them, LOL.

    One additional perk to getting a 1080ti....it gives you the option of upgrading to multi-GPU down the road because you still have that empty slot. With two 1070's, you most likely will have to pull one of those 1070's out to upgrade. Thus any upgrade would be expensive and small. Of course this all depends on the motherboard in question, but most only support 2 full size GPUs. If you sell your original card, that can take the sting out a bit.

    And that's another issue at play. In order to use multiple GPUs, you really have to plan for it from the beginning. Your PSU needs to have enough juice to run them, your motherboard needs the slots, and your CPU can be a factor as well as a smaller CPU may not have enough lanes to support them fully. You also need to consider the possibility of additional cooling as multiple cards are going to generate more heat. The more GPUs you use, the more diminishing returns you get.

    I see it this way. IF you already have a computer with a decent GPU in it, then it becomes logical to consider buying a second GPU. Or perhaps you take the second hand route and buy things used off Ebay real cheap. I've done that myself and written about the perks of buying used. But the mining craze also blew that up, too, as ebay prices shot through the roof on even average cards. Price is key to all of this. If you can get 2 cards cheap, then by all means go for that if you have a chance. But odds are right now that isn't happening. The 1080ti is one of the very few cards not effected by the price inflation. That is why I am arguing this way. There were times when the 1070 was selling over $500 recently! It was selling higher than a 1080, because miners liked the 1070 (and 1060.)

    If you are building a computer right now, or do not have a GPU and looking to buy, then it is in your best interest to invest in the best single GPU you can afford for what you want to do. Especially right now with how the market is inflating. Iray can be a brutal beast. Some people can make scenes that render in 30 minutes. That's actually very quick, and a 15-30% speed boost will not be felt that much. But many others build scenes that take much longer. People who make promo style renders might take several hours to render one scene. There are people who make renders that take days. Now if you  talk 15-30% speed boost, that boost becomes time savings of hours. And like the saying goes...time is money. I am a hobbiest. But because I have a regular job and life that leaves me with very little time to actually play with Daz. So not being able to render quickly would be a real bummer. I'm also a gamer, and it so happens a decent gaming machine also can be a decent Iray machine.

  • FWIWFWIW Posts: 320

    I want to thank everyone for the input and the fascinating discussion and different points of view. I believe at this time after considering everything I have read on here and on various other threads on the forum here that I will be going with the single 1080 Ti, and probably a slightly less advanced CPU to make up for the difference between that and a single 1070. I will definitely be going with a desktop. I will see what I can do to place it in as well ventilated an area as possible as I live in a very old house with no AC at all. (which btw SUCKS this year). Feel free to continue the conversation. I just wanted to thank you all for helping me make my decision. It will be a couple months before I pull the trigger and buy the darn thing but at least now I know what to get for the most important part. 

  • bluejauntebluejaunte Posts: 1,923

    Wow... completely missed that mining craze.

  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,189
    WinterFlame said:

    I want to thank everyone for the input and the fascinating discussion and different points of view. I believe at this time after considering everything I have read on here and on various other threads on the forum here that I will be going with the single 1080 Ti, and probably a slightly less advanced CPU to make up for the difference between that and a single 1070. I will definitely be going with a desktop. I will see what I can do to place it in as well ventilated an area as possible as I live in a very old house with no AC at all. (which btw SUCKS this year). Feel free to continue the conversation. I just wanted to thank you all for helping me make my decision. It will be a couple months before I pull the trigger and buy the darn thing but at least now I know what to get for the most important part. 

    Make sure the case has adequate or better ventilation; multiple intake and exhaust fans are highly recommended.

  • FWIWFWIW Posts: 320

    I will definitely keep that in mind. I took Kyoto's advice and asked around. If I can't find an off the shelf for what I have to spend I THINK I have a line on a friend of a friend of a friend who is willing to put it together for me. Main problem is he will charge me $200 which means my budget when down by that much. And the monitor I had lined up went to the electronics store in the sky so I need a new one of those as well. 

  • dragotxdragotx Posts: 1,138
    WinterFlame said:

    I will definitely keep that in mind. I took Kyoto's advice and asked around. If I can't find an off the shelf for what I have to spend I THINK I have a line on a friend of a friend of a friend who is willing to put it together for me. Main problem is he will charge me $200 which means my budget when down by that much. And the monitor I had lined up went to the electronics store in the sky so I need a new one of those as well. 

    I would recomend checking youtube tutorials and some of the tech sites (tomshardware.com is a very good one for this) to find tutorials on building it yourself.  Barring any physical impairments, building a PC is actually very easy, much easier than people assume.  $200 is about what I'd charge because of the time involved, but it's a very straightforward process.

  • agent unawaresagent unawares Posts: 3,513
    dragotx said:
    WinterFlame said:

    I will definitely keep that in mind. I took Kyoto's advice and asked around. If I can't find an off the shelf for what I have to spend I THINK I have a line on a friend of a friend of a friend who is willing to put it together for me. Main problem is he will charge me $200 which means my budget when down by that much. And the monitor I had lined up went to the electronics store in the sky so I need a new one of those as well. 

    I would recomend checking youtube tutorials and some of the tech sites (tomshardware.com is a very good one for this) to find tutorials on building it yourself.  Barring any physical impairments, building a PC is actually very easy, much easier than people assume.  $200 is about what I'd charge because of the time involved, but it's a very straightforward process.

    And remember! You have to click the RAM all the way in. Alllllllll the way in.

  • Gator_2236745Gator_2236745 Posts: 1,312
    dragotx said:
    WinterFlame said:

    I will definitely keep that in mind. I took Kyoto's advice and asked around. If I can't find an off the shelf for what I have to spend I THINK I have a line on a friend of a friend of a friend who is willing to put it together for me. Main problem is he will charge me $200 which means my budget when down by that much. And the monitor I had lined up went to the electronics store in the sky so I need a new one of those as well. 

    I would recomend checking youtube tutorials and some of the tech sites (tomshardware.com is a very good one for this) to find tutorials on building it yourself.  Barring any physical impairments, building a PC is actually very easy, much easier than people assume.  $200 is about what I'd charge because of the time involved, but it's a very straightforward process.

    I've learned... no good deed goes unpunished.  If not immediate family and they are a total computer noob, I won't build for them since something WILL go wrong.  And 99% it's user error, but they'll assume it's broke because you built it.

  • dragotxdragotx Posts: 1,138
    agent unawares said:
    dragotx said:
    WinterFlame said:

    I will definitely keep that in mind. I took Kyoto's advice and asked around. If I can't find an off the shelf for what I have to spend I THINK I have a line on a friend of a friend of a friend who is willing to put it together for me. Main problem is he will charge me $200 which means my budget when down by that much. And the monitor I had lined up went to the electronics store in the sky so I need a new one of those as well. 

    I would recomend checking youtube tutorials and some of the tech sites (tomshardware.com is a very good one for this) to find tutorials on building it yourself.  Barring any physical impairments, building a PC is actually very easy, much easier than people assume.  $200 is about what I'd charge because of the time involved, but it's a very straightforward process.

    And remember! You have to click the RAM all the way in. Alllllllll the way in.

    Yeeeeah, back in my dark days doing retail PC repair I had a supposedly certified technician catch a PC on fire because she put the memory in backwards, couldn't figure out why it wasn't sitting level, turned it on, then LEFT IT ON while she came back to find me and ask why the computer was smoking.  

  • dragotxdragotx Posts: 1,138
    scott762_948aec318a said:
    dragotx said:
    WinterFlame said:

    I will definitely keep that in mind. I took Kyoto's advice and asked around. If I can't find an off the shelf for what I have to spend I THINK I have a line on a friend of a friend of a friend who is willing to put it together for me. Main problem is he will charge me $200 which means my budget when down by that much. And the monitor I had lined up went to the electronics store in the sky so I need a new one of those as well. 

    I would recomend checking youtube tutorials and some of the tech sites (tomshardware.com is a very good one for this) to find tutorials on building it yourself.  Barring any physical impairments, building a PC is actually very easy, much easier than people assume.  $200 is about what I'd charge because of the time involved, but it's a very straightforward process.

    I've learned... no good deed goes unpunished.  If not immediate family and they are a total computer noob, I won't build for them since something WILL go wrong.  And 99% it's user error, but they'll assume it's broke because you built it.

    Generally speaking I won't do any PC work fo anyone but my mother, mostly for that reason right there.  Occasionally funds will get tight enough that I'll take some freelance repair jobs to bring in some extra funds, but I really don't like to because dealing with the people always winds up being more trouble than it's worth in the long run.  But I do still have my price list around from when I was having to do more of it, just in case.

  • FWIWFWIW Posts: 320

    I've had trouble with the build it yourself thing before. And my hands are shaky enough I don't trust myself not to break something. 

  • agent unawaresagent unawares Posts: 3,513
    dragotx said:
    agent unawares said:
    dragotx said:
    WinterFlame said:

    I will definitely keep that in mind. I took Kyoto's advice and asked around. If I can't find an off the shelf for what I have to spend I THINK I have a line on a friend of a friend of a friend who is willing to put it together for me. Main problem is he will charge me $200 which means my budget when down by that much. And the monitor I had lined up went to the electronics store in the sky so I need a new one of those as well. 

    I would recomend checking youtube tutorials and some of the tech sites (tomshardware.com is a very good one for this) to find tutorials on building it yourself.  Barring any physical impairments, building a PC is actually very easy, much easier than people assume.  $200 is about what I'd charge because of the time involved, but it's a very straightforward process.

    And remember! You have to click the RAM all the way in. Alllllllll the way in.

    Yeeeeah, back in my dark days doing retail PC repair I had a supposedly certified technician catch a PC on fire because she put the memory in backwards, couldn't figure out why it wasn't sitting level, turned it on, then LEFT IT ON while she came back to find me and ask why the computer was smoking.  

    Oh good lord.

  • Pack58Pack58 Posts: 750
    dragotx said:
    agent unawares said:

    And remember! You have to click the RAM all the way in. Alllllllll the way in.

    . . . .  she put the memory in backwards  . . . .

    But, but, butt .... it's  obvious when RAM isn't seated right, even I've never buggered that up.

  • dragotxdragotx Posts: 1,138
    agent unawares said:
    dragotx said:
    agent unawares said:
    dragotx said:
    WinterFlame said:

    I will definitely keep that in mind. I took Kyoto's advice and asked around. If I can't find an off the shelf for what I have to spend I THINK I have a line on a friend of a friend of a friend who is willing to put it together for me. Main problem is he will charge me $200 which means my budget when down by that much. And the monitor I had lined up went to the electronics store in the sky so I need a new one of those as well. 

    I would recomend checking youtube tutorials and some of the tech sites (tomshardware.com is a very good one for this) to find tutorials on building it yourself.  Barring any physical impairments, building a PC is actually very easy, much easier than people assume.  $200 is about what I'd charge because of the time involved, but it's a very straightforward process.

    And remember! You have to click the RAM all the way in. Alllllllll the way in.

    Yeeeeah, back in my dark days doing retail PC repair I had a supposedly certified technician catch a PC on fire because she put the memory in backwards, couldn't figure out why it wasn't sitting level, turned it on, then LEFT IT ON while she came back to find me and ask why the computer was smoking.  

    Oh good lord.

     

    Pack58 said:
    dragotx said:
    agent unawares said:

    And remember! You have to click the RAM all the way in. Alllllllll the way in.

    . . . .  she put the memory in backwards  . . . .

    But, but, butt .... it's  obvious when RAM isn't seated right, even I've never buggered that up.

    Yeeeeeeah.  And she was "certified".  And as the department supervisor, I wasn't allowed to get rid of her because "at least she's got a certification, and she can sell services".  

  • AgitatedRiotAgitatedRiot Posts: 4,437
    edited April 2021

    Love the read here? Getting ready order a second GIGABYTE Geforce RTX 2060 OC 6G Graphics Card, 2 x WINDFORCE Fans, 6GB for my rig. So what is the best SLI or Independent.

     

    Without looking it up what graphics card first started with SLI? At that time it had a different meaning for SLI. I know because I had them.

    Post edited by AgitatedRiot on
  • gsil247gsil247 Posts: 224

    I would love to get a second GTX 3090, but I refuse to pay 3 grand for one, when I got my first one for $1,800. Maybe later on. 

  • Kaleb242Kaleb242 Posts: 344

    I can't get my hands on a single 30-series graphics card — let alone two of them.

    Here's a good article on NVLink and SLI:
    https://www.gpumag.com/nvlink-sli-difference/

  • mechengineer97mechengineer97 Posts: 116

    GPU chip shortage could last through 2023.

    https://gamerant.com/gpu-chip-shortages-last-2023-manufacturer-saying/

     

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