Can Real 4 Way SLI of x16/x16/x16/x16 PCIe Support Accros From Dual Xeon?

Herbrata Moeljo · Jun 18, 2015

A Supermicro X9DRG-QF has 4 a real PCIe x16, two lane from each Xeon CPU.
Picture like in this site:
http://www.kaskus.co.id/post/558384fdc2cb1710388b456b#post558384fdc2cb1710388b456b
Can this setup support 4 way SLI?

Herbrata Moeljo · Jun 18, 2015

According to Supermicro site:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DRG-Q.cfm

It can ....

MarkW · Jun 18, 2015

I checked the boards user manual. The letters "SLI" are not in it.

Nor do I see any other references to SLI anywhere on their web page for that motherboard.

I would think that if it supported SLI, it would say so somewhere.

Kraszmyl · Jun 18, 2015

MarkW :

Sadly yes. Very few C20x boards have consumer sli but work with quadros fine. Found this out myself the hard way and the sli cert emulation methods are pretty hit or miss these days.

Wolfshadw · Jun 18, 2015

Herbrata Moeljo :

I would point out, this link is to the X10DRG-QF and not the X9DRG-QF.

The X10 says yes, the X9 does not say at all. Which board are you looking for?

-Wolf sends

MarkW · Jun 19, 2015

Based on my google searches, there is no X10DRG-QF. Only X8DRG-QF and X9DRG-QF.

I did see a X10DRG-Q that says it supports 4 way SLI though.

Wolfshadw · Jun 19, 2015

My bad. The OP asked about the X9DRG-QF (no mention of SLI) and in the next post, linked to the X10DRG-Q (states Quad-SLI capable).

-Wolf sends

MarkW · Jun 19, 2015

Guess we wait to see what he meant.

geofelt · Jun 19, 2015

What might you be planning?
For gaming, once you go past two cards incremental performance improvements get smaller and may actually decline at 4.
If a board manufacturer pays the nvidia sli license fee, I would think they would advertise it.

Herbrata Moeljo · Jun 19, 2015

I think the x9 and x10 build on the same architecture,
but why x9 can't adn x10 can sli .... ???
Is there a bios issue or hardware issue ... ???

MarkW · Jun 19, 2015

Those are questions we cannot possibly answer. We did not design those motherboards.

Wolfshadw · Jun 19, 2015

X9 CPU Support: Dual socket R (LGA 2011) supports Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 and E5-2600 v2 family†
X10 CPU Support: Dual socket R3 (LGA 2011) supports Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v3 family; QPI up to 9.6GT/s

That could very well be the difference as to why one supports SLI and the other does not.

-Wolf sends

Herbrata Moeljo · Jun 19, 2015

Is 4 way sli from single cpu in the same perfomance as from PCOe Switch and infiniband card - combination like in this picture:
http://www.cirrascale.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/PCIe-Block-Diagram-2-CPU-8-GPU-1-IB.png

Herbrata Moeljo · Jun 19, 2015

@Wolf
Thanks for your information.

Now I wonder why Asus with the same E5-2600 v2 family† can support 4 way sli .... ???
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z9PED8_WS/specifications/

MarkW · Jun 19, 2015

Asus is a gaming/consumer focused company.
SuperMicro is a server/workstation focused company.

Very different priority sets.

Herbrata Moeljo · Jun 22, 2015

It can according this site:
http://forum.techinferno.com/desktop-motherboards/3544-supermicro-x9drg-qf-r-1-1-bios-nvidia-sli-support.html

X9DRGQF5_325.zip is the latest R 3.2 BIOS with nVidia SLi support

Herbrata Moeljo · Jun 22, 2015

But according to this site:
http://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/benchmarking-gpudirect-rdma-on-modern-server-platforms/

GPUs performance that spread accros into different host / CPU, will drop severely because of the platform and connection.

But I don't know in SLI mode since SLI has it own bridge.

MarkW · Jun 22, 2015

Well, that article is talking about moving data around on a multi-chip Xeon based systems with Tesla or Quadro-class GPUs. Those cards are very different beasts from the consumer based graphics cards we have been discussing here. Very different.

I would believe that having a pair of 980Ti's in SLI on one Xeon, and another pair of 980Ti's in SLI on a second Xeon, even on the same motherboard, would slow things down. Especially when trying to generate 4K resolution graphics.

There is always latency when jumping from one massive CPU to the next. And I do not believe that will be eliminated until we get optical channels that run from the CPU through a motherboard and to a second CPU. And we are years away from that still. My guess is probably 5 to 10 years, at a minimum.

Can Real 4 Way SLI of x16/x16/x16/x16 PCIe Support Accros From Dual Xeon?

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