External Graphics Over PCIe 3.0? Netstor's NA255A, Reviewed
Netstor sent over its TurboBox NA255A, an external enclosure capable of accommodating four dual-slot graphics cards across one 16-lane PCI Express 3.0 connection. Is this thing fast enough for general-purpose GPU compute workloads? How about gaming?
Results: Medal Of Honor Warfighter
With those two compute-oriented tests out of the way, let's have a look at entirely different type of use case: gaming. Again, this isn't what the TurboBox was intended for, but application's demands are going to tax the TurboBox in a different way; perhaps we'll be able to see where available throughput affects scaling, and how that compares to a native motherboard-based solution.
Interestingly, the fastest results are achieved by two graphics cards plugged into our X79-based motherboard. Adding a third card adversely affects performance, either due to a platform limitation or an unoptimized three-way CrossFire profile, both of which could be indicated by a lower minimum frame rates. The TurboBox performs well, but does fall behind the motherboard-attached cards.
With a single card installed, all three configurations perform identically.
Again, the TurboBox performs almost identically as the motherboard-installed cards. At this resolution, we see three cards slightly outperforming two, although they suffer lower minimum frame rates, too. In all cases, scaling is sub-par, to be sure.
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