Should I buy a second GPU to boost render times?

audacity10

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Jun 12, 2009
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I've recently built a new system:

-Intel Core i7-3930K 3.2GHz 6-Core
-Asus P9X79 LE ATX LGA2011
-Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600
-EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB
-Windows 7 64-bit

It's a brilliant machine, probably the best I've put together thanks to some advice from people here on this forum.

But unfortunately it still isn't fast enough when I want to render scenes for an animation I'm currently working on. My motherboard has room for 3 graphics cards and the one I have is SLI compatible so I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to grab a second card when I have the cash - or would this cause ulterior problems such as bottle-necking the the processing power?

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/stevonatron/saved/31ET
 

jeremyp79

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A second 780 should help rendering times, by effectively doubling your cuda cores. You could also look into doing a step up through EVGA and getting a 780ti, which would mean you spent about 150 bucks, instead of another 500 or so. Make sure and double check your rendering software to be sure that its using the card for rendering first, from what I understand, not all programs are cuda capable for rendering.