Motherboard and PCI-e slots

Quote from james2hunt:

Make sure you have a power supply of at least 450W and if you need to run 8 displays you may need 550W.

Also note the NVS 295 card has been supper seeded by the NVS 300 card. Which comes in PCI 1 or 16 versions and cables for Dual port/DVI/VGA. This card also is only rated at 17.5W. Should be widely
available in a couple of months for around $120 (MSRP $149).
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Hi - Yes i have a 650w PSU. I got my NVS 295 cards for £26 each ($41) brand new off ebay, so quite a saving over the NVS300. Sounds like all I need to do is find the right mobo.
 
Quote from Scataphagos:


One of the potential troubles today is trying to run an x1 video card from either an x1 or x16 slot. That's SUPPOSED to work, but it doesn't always. x1 cards, however, seem to always work from x4 or x8 slots. I have no explanation for this inconsistency.
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Re X1 card not working in X1 slot. From the research I did I got the impression it was because most X1 slots run at max 10 watts whereas cards start at around 12 or 15.
 
Quote from Bolimomo:

2mTrader: you have 2 PCIX16 cards. The motherboard you mentioned only has 1 PCIX16 slot. I am not sure if it will work because the other one is PCIX16 slot running at X4.


Scataphagos: I am not saying mixing slot types won't work. Personally I just will avoid it to save some potential headaches. My own experience: try to mix 3 PCIEX16 cards with 1 PCI card. Couldn't get the PCI card to work. Maybe due to other reasons, I am not sure. And perhaps mixing PCIEX1 and PCIEX4, X8, X16 is a different story than mixing PCI Express with PCI.

From the following description from wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express



It seems that it's by design that you can plug an x1 card into an x16 slot (only go from low to high because of the physical pin-out constraint). Supposedly. I have no experience playing with it.

But that brought in another consideration. Say you want to drive 8 monitors with 4 cards. Would you like to:

Buy 1 x16 card, 1 x4 card and 2 x1 cards and use the above motherboard?

Or buy a motherboard that has >4 x16 slots, and 4 x16 cards?

With cards of the same kind, in the event of hardware problems you can switch cards around for trouble-shooting. If you stock a spare card, you only need to have one spare for all 4. Those are the added advantages.
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Agree on all points, but even as recently as 3 years ago there weren't many mobos with more than 2, x16 slots. Then as now, budget boards often had 1, x16, 1-2, x1s and a PCI or two. I'm sure many a trader bought an inexpensive computer with a budget mobo then tried to run 4-6 monitors.

There never would have been x1 video cards if a few years back mobos would have had more x16s. And it could be that the inconsistencies of the x1 video card could have been the fault of the mobo makers and their BIOS.


There are plenty of mobs today for both Intel and AMD with 3-4+ x16 slots. For the multi-card user, today's hardware is much easier.
 
Serious advice - throw away the card, get an AMD / ATI.

PowerColor has a special 5770 model with 5 (!) output connectors, 1gb RAM.

With this you need only 2 cards to run up to 10 monitors - which will be a lot easier down the line. Motherboards with 2x PCIex16 are easy to find (many gamers use them to run two cards for more power).
 
Quote from PIPMAGIC66:

The best rigs are top dollar. The only way to get a decent MB is build your own.
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Or have a shop build it. Places like ibuypower.com and cyberpowerPC.com let customers configure they way they want, including several choices of mobo.
 
Quote from 2mTrader:

Hi - Yes i have a 650w PSU. I got my NVS 295 cards for £26 each ($41) brand new off ebay, so quite a saving over the NVS300. Sounds like all I need to do is find the right mobo.
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Perhaps it's good you got 295s instead of 300s. While the 300 draws less power and presumably runs cooler, it also has a DMS-59 connector. The 280s, 285s and 290s have that too... I've had 4 or 5 of those cables fail due to wires coming loose or breaking inside the connector.

I switched from 290s to 295s mostly because I thought the DP connector should be much more robust.
 
Quote from bighog:

This will get the job done. Have one "IN TRANSIT" as we speak.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131694&Tpk=asus ws revolution p67

SSD drive, i7 2600K, 1866 memory, .........2 Quadro dual monotor cards, the usual stuff. Kind of overkill for a trading box but i have a bad habit of NOT buying crap. ha :)
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Overkill for trading? For sure. But maybe you can do something else with it also... like surf the net, maybe?

Should have kept this to yourself. Now NITRO will have to get a bigger/faster one.
 
Is any special software or motherboard required to run two (or more) graphics cards simultaneously, for a multi-display?

I thought one computer could only handle one graphics card...
 
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