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Need the best Nvidia GPU I can get.

Amazon, newegg, ebay....

I don't really know where to buy stuff in the US, especially not locally. Just search for SATA to Molex and you'll certainly find something.
 
CountlovE said:
I just realized that the 590 splits the Ram in half to 1.5 gigs per GPU.. That's no good, so I guess using two 580's with 3 gig's will definitely be the way to go. Thanks again for all the help.
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1 590 has 3gb VRAM, 1.5 per GPU in the 590. so if you get two 590's ull have 6GB VRAM!! how would that not be enough?? :D :rolleyes:
 
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The-Pro said:
1 590 has 3gb VRAM, 1.5 per GPU in the 590. so if you get two 590's ull have 6GB VRAM!! how would that not be enough?? :D :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Nope. Each GPU in a 590 is allocated to 1.5. If you have 2 cards with a total of 4 GPU's, you only get 1.5 gigs of ram.

That's why I went with two 3gb 580's. You get 3gigs. 1 GPU each card for more memory allocation.
 
CountlovE said:
Nope. Each GPU in a 590 is allocated to 1.5. If you have 2 cards with a total of 4 GPU's, you only get 1.5 gigs of ram.

That's why I went with two 3gb 580's. You get 3gigs. 1 GPU each card for more memory allocation.
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I didnt know there would be that big of a difference of performance due to VRAM that you would choose 1024 cores over 2048. what would be the performance difference of 1.5Gb and 3Gb per GPU??
 
The-Pro said:
I didnt know there would be that big of a difference of performance due to VRAM that you would choose 1024 cores over 2048. what would be the performance difference of 1.5Gb and 3Gb per GPU??
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Well it's not a big deal for games, but for using it under cuda with Vray-RT, it does become an issue for loading of geometry and textures.
 
Transporteur said:
Amazon, newegg, ebay....

I don't really know where to buy stuff in the US, especially not locally. Just search for SATA to Molex and you'll certainly find something.
Click to expand...

Ok. I picked up the correct connector and broke off the little piece so it would fit on the CD-ROM. (Wow thats so jerry rigged btw it barely holds on and will not fit inside the Mac Pro.)

I then plugged in the white to blue 8 pins to the cards, and used the 6 pin from the mother board to power both cards.

I turn things on and black screen but the card fans are going crazy. Then I thought, let me unplug the motherboard 6 pins and just power one card with the PSU you reccomended. Well I get nothing at all. Even on the Stock graphics card the 30 dollar POS 5.25 power supply doesn't work when connected with that adapater to the CDroms SATA.

Is there another way to get this to work? Here is a picture of the extra powersupply, along with the cards plugged in.

Sorry about the quality... Iphone shot on my hands and knees.

Extra Power supply:
http://imgur.com/PBhq1

Single Card plugged in with 6 pin from Mac Pro Logic Board, and 8 pin from extra 5.25 power supply:
http://imgur.com/Y1nuZ

Thanks again for all the help.. I would really like to get this working.. Is there another power-on spot to try from on the Mac Pro?

:)
 
CountlovE said:
Thanks again for all the help.. I would really like to get this working.. Is there another power-on spot to try from on the Mac Pro?
Click to expand...

Not really, just the on-board SATA ports for the HDD bays, but that's the exact same deal as the connectors in the ODD bay.

I'm really baffled that this doesn't work for you. There is loads of threads here that use the exact same PSU with one or two graphics cards and it if you believe the reports, it works flawlessly. :confused:

Doesn't the PSU power up at all? Can you see the fan spinning?
 
Yeah, I just don't get it. I now actually think the PSU is no good. I ordered a more expensive 5.25 Expander psu, hopefully that one works. I tried pretty much everything.

The fan doesn't spin on the 5.25 PSU and I have everything plugged in accordingly.

I will report back once I get the new PSU. I guess you can't expect quality with a 30 dollar power supply.

Thanks for all the help Transporteur. I really, really appreciate your time helping me out on this.

:)
 
Yay!! I finally have a success. The cheap 30 dollar power supply was DOA. Just a reminder. Don't buy something just because its cheap. You get what you pay for. The X booster GPU power supply is what I bought instead and it even fits perfectly in the cradle. The 30 dollar one doesn't fit well at all, and it never worked.

So that being said, I have Two GTX 580's running the most recent drivers along with the SLI 1.42 hack that is floating around. All works great in my 2010 Mac Pro. It does get pretty hot but hopefully it will stay cooler once I have the side panel closed on the Mac Pro.

Thanks again for all the help!!
 
Glad it finally worked out!

I'm not sure about any Windows fan control tool, but on the Mac side, you could use SMCFancontrol or iStatMenus to boost the PCIe fan. That way the graphics cards stay cooler.
There should be a similar one for Windows as well, though.
 
Honestly, if I find myself in the position where I'm using GPU-processing enough to really justify it, I'm probably just building myself a dedicated CUDAbox.
 
Yeah, you can spend about 2k on a cubix pcie expander. I actually have way too much heat and I need to separate the cards a little. If I could do this again I would def use water cooled cards, or if I had more money I would buy the cubix expander. V-ray 2.0 for Maya still has a ways to go in terms of full gpu support. Not everything from v-ray CPU is supported. Example, blend materials, car paint shader, ptex will mot work yet on gpu.

Here's a test:

http://vimeo.com/23921219
 
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CountlovE said:
Here's a test:

http://vimeo.com/23921219
Click to expand...

:eek: Wow, that are really loud cards!

Did you try to increase the speed of the PCI section fan? That might help to keep the noise of the cards down. But then again, the PCI fan itself isn't necessarily silent at high RPMs either.
Still, worth a try IMO.

Placing the second card in slot 3 to increase the gap between the cards might also help to reduce noise.
 
Transporteur said:
:eek: Wow, that are really loud cards!

Did you try to increase the speed of the PCI section fan? That might help to keep the noise of the cards down. But then again, the PCI fan itself isn't necessarily silent at high RPMs either.
Still, worth a try IMO.

Placing the second card in slot 3 to increase the gap between the cards might also help to reduce noise.
Click to expand...

When I shot that video the mac pro was on the desk with the case off right under the microphone. I am going to place the 2nd card in the 3rd slot and see if that gives me more air to cool the cards. While playing games with SLI my first card runs at about 90 and the 2nd one hits a max of 60 so breathing room is a must.
 
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