Was wondering how the cycles performs w dual graphics cards.
I saw some random, probably unreliable, blender benchmark site that had a list of gpu and cpu and at the top of gpu (fasted renders) were a variety of multiple card set ups.
I’ve only had a single card in all my rigs. how would an SLI setup perform in blender, any pros/cons?
also, probs silly, but i’ve always thought you could only run two of the same cards together. I’ve been seeing other benchmarks with two diff cards rendering together. are you saying i can slide my 770 w my 1070Ti in there and render faster?
SLI requires identical cards. However, running multiple cards with Cycles should be done without SLI (in fact, almost everything outside of games ignores SLI/Crossfire connections).
You can render in cycles with multiple different cards, but significant differences between them can impose limitations. For example, if one card has significantly less VRAM then it will limit what you can render; if one is significantly older than the other there may be driver compatibility issues; if one card is significantly slower than the other then the render may be “stuck” waiting for the slower one to finish.
In short it’s usually best to at least have similar cards e.g. rather than an older GTX 770 (I’m assuming that’s a 2 GB card?) and a spanking new 1070 Ti, a pair of brand new 1060s (3 or 6 GB) may be a better option.
What @dgorsman said. There are even some mixed vendor setups out there (Nvidia + AMD) that are working, but I would agree with @dgorsman about getting cards from the same vendor and, if not the same card, at least with matching VRAM.
Pay attention to power supply and air flow. Some power supply companies have web-based sizing utilities so you can figure out minimum requirements but the bigger PSU the better, IMHO, since you will be running the cards full out during a render.
At the very least, you can use the GTX 770 to drive your display and use the 1070Ti for renders.