2nd video card to mate with current GeForce RTX 2070 (ZT-T20700B-10P)

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Thinking about a second video card to match up with my current ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 2070 AMP Extreme (ZT-T20700B-10P)

Specs on ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 2070 
GPU 						= GeForce RTX 2070
CUDA cores 					= 2304
Video Memory 				= 8GB GDDR6
Memory Bus 					= 256-bit
Engine Clock 				= Boost: 1860 MHz
Memory Clock 				= 14.4 Gbps
PCI Express 				= 3.0
Display Outputs 			= 3 x DisplayPort (4096x2160@60Hz)
								HDMI 2.0 (3840x2160@60Hz)
								USB Type-C
HDCP Support 				= Yes
Multi Display Capability 	= Quad Display
Recommended Power Supply 	= 550W
Power Consumption 			= 225W
Power Input 				= 6-pin 8-pin
DirectX 					= 12 API feature level 12_1
OpenGL 						= 4.5
Cooling 					= 3 x 90mm fans
Slot Size 					= 2.5 slot
SLI 						= No
Supported OS 				= Windows 10 / 7 x64
Card Length 				= 308mm x 113mm x 57mm (12.13in x 4.45in x 2.24in)
Accessories 				= Dual 6-pin to 8-pin adapter
								Dual 4-pin to 6-pin adapter

System which it will live in (put this together with-in the last couple years).

Current system Hardware

Motherboard: Z390 AORUS MASTER (rev. 1.0)
CPU: Core™ i9-9900K
PS: Corsair RM850x
Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 64GB DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600)
Drives: 6 hard drives, mixed - SSD, mechanical and one M2P

Have two PCI Express x16 slots open (PCIEX8 and PCIEX4) the PCIEX4 is being shared with a SSD M2P. As far as the PCIEX8 slot, manual says; The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot (which current card resided in) operates at up to x8 mode.

Ive never used two video cards before and dont really know the “in’s and out’s” of sharing slot resources and if the current PCIEX16 gets knocked down to x8 with a second card how that will effect things.

  • Looking to spend around 500-600 dollars on a second card.
    The current system is used for music (Reaper) video editing (Davinci Resolve and at times After Effects and Premiere Pro) and on occasions some CAD work (Solid Works) and Blender.

So…
With the current hardware will adding a second card help with Blender (and the other software) ?
What would you recommend in the 500-600 dollar range ?
Any other info or things to watch out for ?

Thanks…

2

Hi there,

You should probably wait at least a month as the next series of nvidia cards will likely be announced by then. And for what you’re willing to spend, I think the 3070 would probably be the card you want (although it might not be among the first cards released in the new lineup).

Read over these recent two articles:

As for the pcie slots, I think it’s not a big issue (for rendering in blender) based on the PCIe bandwidth test video I saw in this thread:

It might be an issue with other applications, I don’t know. Here’s (maybe) a useful article on that:

Finally, although you haven’t mentioned it, from what I’ve read, you’re going to maybe want to consider a new power supply as well to power multiple gpus. Not very knowledgeable in this area, so hopefully someone else can give an answer, but I’ve seen this come up a few times in discussions regarding the new cards because they’re said to use a lot more power.

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Thanks for the info, will look into it over the next coming days.