I want to give myself a Xmas present early. I currently have an AMD 8 core proc with a Gforce GTX 660Ti. Love this rig but what if I did the following?

Upgrade to an i7 with 4 core and hyper = 8 core
Get this motherboard with 3 PCI express slots.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131977

Will this motherboard run 3 GPUS? Looks like it. I know I will need to work out spacing and heat. Probably need to go with enclosed heat sink GPUs so they push the heat outside. I will look at getting 2 660ti and a lower end sub $100 card that generates less heat.

Any problems with trying to run 3 cards? I have a 700 watt modular Cooler Master power supply. Any advice would be appreciated.

It depends what you want to spent and what you want to achieve.
The new GTX970 is at least twice as fast as a 660Ti and consumes less energy.
And if you need to buy a new CPU, MOBO, a 66Ti you pay more or less the same.

This MOBO will work with two and three GPU's but there is almost no space between the 2 lower slots. You will get then two using 8 lanes and one using 4 lanes. That is no problem for crunching here. Someone who is better in English can you explain better about the lanes of the PCIe buses. Also the CPU has to support those lanes otherwise they don't work at maximum. This however is mainly influencing bus speed.

I guess you will also get several advices and read them all and decide what you feel best. If more questions arise later, then you will get an answer.

Two 660Ti's on a 700W PSU will work. Three perhaps or perhaps not. Other components use energy as well and then you might have to little head room which may result in errors while crunching. Even to much heat may cause errors.

I myself will only use GPU's with one fan that blows hot air out the case. This is based on experience with a GTX770 and a GTX780Ti both with two fans and several measurements in and outside the case.
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Greetings from TJ

Thanks for the quick response. The Gigabyte board, AMD proc and GPU consume about 325W at full power. I have a new laptop from work that has an i7 in it and it is completing WCG Cancer work 50% quicker with 700MHz less speed. I figure I can do twice the amount of WCG work and at least twice the amount of GPU work (add another GPU) with 50-75 more watts. Not bad.

I hadn't though about replacing the 660 with a 9xx. I am getting worried about the total cost though. Newer GPUs can cost a lot. So many options here.

Will this motherboard run 3 GPUS? Looks like it. I know I will need to work out spacing and heat. Probably need to go with enclosed heat sink GPUs so they push the heat outside. I will look at getting 2 660ti and a lower end sub $100 card that generates less heat.

I want to give myself a Xmas present early. I currently have an AMD 8 core proc with a Gforce GTX 660Ti. Love this rig

I want to give myself a Xmas present early. I currently have an AMD 8 core proc with a Gforce GTX 660Ti. Love this rig

Rereading your post, apparently your current AMD MB doesn't support multiple GPUs well. Here's an inexpensive one that has 2 properly spaced x16 slots that will run any GPU at full speed. There is also the bottom x4 slot that would be OK for a slower card (although as in the Intel example above would compromise cooling). I'm running this exact board on one of my latest builds and it works great. FWIW you'll gain NOTHING in GPUGRID crunching speed by switching from your AMD X8 to an Intel CPU. You would gain a little in CPU project processing speed on most but not all CPU projects, but not on the GPUGRID NVidia WUs.

Also if buying GPUs for GPUGRID now, I'd suggest sticking to the 750Ti, 970 and 980 for efficiency's sake.

Whilst technically correct, The difference running in x4 vs x8 in GPUGrid is so low that it is not worth talking about.

depends on how much money you really want to spend.

Minimal --> get a 970 or 980 and plug it into your existing rig.

More --> you could get new motherboard that uses your existing CPU/RAM etc, but also supports proper SLI/3 slot. That way you can install your existing 660Ti in the secondary slot and use it to play games surf web watch videos etc while your new card crunches in the Primary slot.

That's actually how I have mine set-up.

Linkhttp://www.modsrigs.com/detail.aspx?BuildID=31030

Whilst technically correct, The difference running in x4 vs x8 in GPUGrid is so low that it is not worth talking about.

This has been very helpful. I will probably just upgrade to a GTX970 for now. My wife needs a root canal which will cost $1000. Fun.

The new GTX970 is at least twice as fast as a 660Ti and consumes less energy.

I run my 660Ti in PCIE2 x4 and last time I checked it was less than 4% slower than running in in X8.

To get almost twice the speed for the same watts is compelling. I upgraded from my Phenom X6 to an FX X8 and got two more cores for the same wattage. But the fan noise is starting to annoy me. When I get more money, I may replace it with an i7 at 3.6Ghz and 8 cores. Twice the amount of WUs for 50 less watts.

To get almost twice the speed for the same watts is compelling. I upgraded from my Phenom X6 to an FX X8 and got two more cores for the same wattage. But the fan noise is starting to annoy me. When I get more money, I may replace it with an i7 at 3.6Ghz and 8 cores. Twice the amount of WUs for 50 less watts.

Ok, I altered my plan a bit. I purchased an i7, motherboard and GTX 750. I will be able to still run 8 cores at 3.6Ghz but will save 45-55 watts. The GTX 750 uses 55 watts. So I will be net 0 for power usage. I will run both the 660ti and 750 on my new board.

After I get some more $$$$, I can replace my 660ti with a 970 and my new rig will process twice as many WCG WUs and three times as many GPUgrid units. Roughly for the same watts.

Oh and I will have less fan noise. If the Gigabyte 750 fan is as quiet as my Gigabyte 660ti, I should be in good shape.

Thoughts????

Ok, I altered my plan a bit. I purchased an i7, motherboard and GTX 750. I will be able to still run 8 cores at 3.6Ghz but will save 45-55 watts. The GTX 750 uses 55 watts. So I will be net 0 for power usage. I will run both the 660ti and 750 on my new board.

After I get some more $$$$, I can replace my 660ti with a 970 and my new rig will process twice as many WCG WUs and three times as many GPUgrid units. Roughly for the same watts.

Oh and I will have less fan noise. If the Gigabyte 750 fan is as quiet as my Gigabyte 660ti, I should be in good shape.

Thoughts????

After I get some more $$$$, I can replace my 660ti with a 970 and my new rig will process twice as many WCG WUs and three times as many GPUgrid units. Roughly for the same watts.

Ok, I altered my plan a bit. I purchased an i7, motherboard and GTX 750. I will be able to still run 8 cores at 3.6Ghz but will save 45-55 watts. The GTX 750 uses 55 watts. So I will be net 0 for power usage. I will run both the 660ti and 750 on my new board.

After I get some more $$$$, I can replace my 660ti with a 970 and my new rig will process twice as many WCG WUs and three times as many GPUgrid units. Roughly for the same watts.

Oh and I will have less fan noise. If the Gigabyte 750 fan is as quiet as my Gigabyte 660ti, I should be in good shape.

Thoughts????

Thanks to all for the replies. I have a new Lenovo laptop with an i7 running at 2.9Ghz. The WCG WUs run twice as fast as my FX 8320. Even with hyperthreading. After 2.5 years of 24x7 crunching I want to be as efficient of I can with one rig. The fan noise is at 50db for the rig and it puts out some heat. Frankly, I can live with the heat, it is the noise that gets old.

I will sell my 8320 and motherboard on ebay and get my money back or more. My Phenom sold for $10 more than I paid. Interestingly when I switched from an ASUS motherboard(AMD) to a Gigabyte one, the power dropped by 30 watts. I was surprised.

Forgot to ask this question. The 8gig Ram mod that I have in my motherboard is rated for 1600. The Giga board will only let it run at 1333. Will I see much of a diff running at 1600 in my new motherboard?

Forgot to ask this question. The 8gig Ram mod that I have in my motherboard is rated for 1600. The Giga board will only let it run at 1333. Will I see much of a diff running at 1600 in my new motherboard?

if you are CPU bound, and 750s you have got 2Gb, you can try running 2 WUs at once - this will mask out the CPU. that's the only way for me to get above 90% on a 970.

if you are CPU bound, and 750s you have got 2Gb, you can try running 2 WUs at once - this will mask out the CPU. that's the only way for me to get above 90% on a 970.

if you are CPU bound, and 750s you have got 2Gb, you can try running 2 WUs at once - this will mask out the CPU. that's the only way for me to get above 90% on a 970.

Thanks for the suggestion but as mentioned above, they're in the mid 90s with the FX-8310. On the X4 910e the WUs were running at 89-90% and about 30 minutes slower. Trying to run 2 WUs on a 750 or 750Ti would miss the 24 hour bonus deadline as the current long WUs are running at 12 hours - 13.5 hours on my 750Ti GPUs depending on the WU type. There's a reason for the deadline. The project wants a fast turnaround.

Which WCG CPU subproject WUs are you running?

Mapping Cancer and Genome. I do AIDS on my Androids.

I saw a GTX 760 Dual (2304 cores) with 2GB for $220 on Newegg yesterday. It is gone today. I was really close to getting one. I didn't cause of power concerns. I couldn't find how much it takes. I estimated it will use 300 watts. Even at 250 watts I thought it would be best to save for the 970.

I was very tempted.

Wonder if and when the GTX 960 will come out. I seem to be a x60 guy. First the 560ti then the 660ti.

I upgraded to 16gig of 2133 XMP memory but it is crashing the display driver and blue screening the PC. If I suspend just GPU activity it runs fine. If I turn it down to 1600, it runs fine.

What is the issue here? I wanted faster memory for WCG but it is killing GpuGrid.

Any ideas or help would be appreciated.

It is 2 modules and XMP sets all of the settings including the 1.65v. My BIOS is also up to date. Not sure about this one. Need to do more research.

I fixed it. Silly me for trusting the Asus update GUI. I clicked on check for BIOS update and it says I am current (1/14 dated BIOS). Go to the ASUS website and there are 3 more since Jan 2014. Some update GUI's are worthless. I downloaded the latest one from Sept 2014 that referenced system stability fixes and so far it is running great.

Does anyone know if increasing the RAM speed by 600Mhz while still maintaining a CAS of 9 and 1T will speed up GPUGrid?

Thanks for any replies. Working my way to 100Million credits.

Does anyone know if increasing the RAM speed by 600Mhz while still maintaining a CAS of 9 and 1T will speed up GPUGrid?

CPU is 40x100=4GHz. I turned boost off as the cpu fan was running loud.

The RAM is 2133Ghz 9,11,11,28,278, 2T all settings came from XMP

Interestingly I downloaded EVGA Precision and overclocked the GTX 750 from 1225Mhz to 1300Mhz and the memory from 5000Mhz to 6000Mhz. I need more time to see how much faster WU will get done but the card only went up 3 degs and seems quite stable. This is a great little card for $80. Glad I bought it.