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4-way SLI on this mobo worth it?

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June 14, 2013 9:29:38 AM

So I'm looking at doing a new build pretty quick. I'd like to point out that I am a programmer and *WILL* find usage for any extra power I put in my system but I don't want to pay an insane amount for diminishing returns. I know pretty well what I'm going to buy and what I am going to keep from my current build but I'm a little curious on my the limits of PCI express 2.0 and how it relates to SLI.

I was initially going to skimp on the mobo and just get what would support a 780 GTX, an 125w AM3+ CPU and a decent amount of DDR3 1600 ram (decent being like 8 Gb sense only sense only like 4Gb is even really used due to current 32-bit software), and that was really all I cared about. But being the power user that I am, and that I am interested in using CUDA for programing, I can and will use extra GPU power if I have it. With that in mind I looked for a mobo that did all this and allowed more GPUs in SLI. I found this sabertooth board which supports quad SLI. It was 3 PCIe 2.0x16 slots and 1 x4 slot. They can be configured, if I understand correctly, to x16, x8, x8, and x4.

My question: Will the bandwidth of the PCI slots limit the extra power of the extra GPUs? If so by how much(if numbers are possible it would be greatly appreciated)? Will 3 GPUs not be limited by this?

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June 14, 2013 9:35:29 AM

4 way SLI?CF is not recommended.
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June 14, 2013 9:39:38 AM

what are the issues with it? power? diminishing returns? is 3-way ok? I had a 2-way SLI rig back when they FIRST came out with SLI and it was somewhat unstable. In my current rig I stayed away from SLI/CF when I built it because of this. I figured SLI might have improved some sense then however.
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June 14, 2013 9:39:56 AM

"Diminishing returns" is the key phrase in your post. There's no doubt you will pay dearly for a few extra fps. Only you can put a value on them.
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June 14, 2013 9:44:13 AM

he said he is a programer that difrent compling code when it suports gpu aceleration will load up all the gpus so i would say 3 way
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June 14, 2013 10:28:30 AM

ram1009 said:
"Diminishing returns" is the key phrase in your post. There's no doubt you will pay dearly for a few extra fps. Only you can put a value on them.


What kind of Diminishing returns are we talking about? I'm primarily interested in what kind of bandwidth limits there will be in SLI with the kind of PCI slots I mentioned above. in interactive applications like games. The reason being that it's very hard to use SLI with CUDA(although it is possible but they have separate memory which really limits what you can do) so an extra chip would be MOSTLY for games, which are interactive.

So I guess the question I should ask now is what kind of returns are seen on game benchmarks at each level of SLI?

he said he is a programer that difrent compling code when it suports gpu aceleration will load up all the gpus so i would say 3 way said:
he said he is a programer that difrent compling code when it suports gpu aceleration will load up all the gpus so i would say 3 way


what? I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to say other than that you recommend 3 way SLI
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June 17, 2013 4:59:21 AM

yes you are likely to get no more then 50 percent scailing from the 4th although the third will scale just fine
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June 17, 2013 7:06:20 AM

sweet, thats what I wanted to hear. thanks!
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