One Giant Step for mankind....backwards!

[tennyson]

I have been running three high end PC's with three Optoma GT 1080's for the past few years and only recently had major issues with the barrage of new visual software and avionics software.

As many of you guys know, we all hunt for those elusive moments of pure joy when all the planets align and we have realism in the cockpit that takes the breath away.

I had it once.....but alas it's gone.
After trying and failing for months at getting back to a beautiful merge and blend on all three screens, I needed to take action.

So, against my better judgement, I took the plunge and decided to build a new PC that could handle all three video cards and run all three high end projectors with enough grunt to run medium to high graphic scenery, weather depiction, UT Live for traffic and a bunch of additional accessory software that enhanced the experiences in the cockpit.

After doing the research......ahem, this is where it starts going awry!....I came up with the Intel 8700K with a cpu core that can punch up into the stratosphere for a great stable platform.

I then found a top end Asus mobo that had three PCI slots to accommodate the three GTX 1080's that would power the graphics, 64Gb of fast RAM.....(at least I bought this before the bitcoin mining shot the price of ram up), 1000 watt power supply, Corsair liquid cooler and I was in business.

I already had the other few thousand dollars of brand new gear waiting to go in the PC.

I then spent Xmas and the early new year, installing thousands of dollars of software and tested each piece carefully.

It is a jet, quite literally. The fastest and most reliable PC I've ever built or flown flight simulator on. The graphics are just to die for....

So yesterday was the day to install the GTX 1080's in it and get it out in the cockpit room for some installation of Fly-Elise.
I noticed that the second and third PCI slots for the video cards are way too close. When I install the cards, the second one can't even breathe. This can't be right.
So, I go back to the online specs, and.......OH GOD, the bloody board only supports 2 way SLI, which means I cannot run the three cards in it.

After checking with every authority known to man, I have now determined that...I am a bloody idiot.
Just because the board has three PCI slots doesn't mean that the board will support three NVIDIA cards.
In fact, I could not find any 8th Generation Intel CPU boards that support three way SLI. It appears that this is old, outdated technology and Intel do not want us using it anymore.

The only Intel based boards currently on the market that still support three way SLI are the 2066 mobo's for the high end 17 and 19 CPU's.

So, I had to decide whether to scrap all that work, stay with my old three configurations and mobo's and outdated cpu's or upgrade to a 2066 mobo, Intel 17 or 19, new RAM, cooler, etc.

I decided to cool my heels and really think about it before spending another three grand. So, after a soul searching few hours, I raced down to the distributors and bought an Asus Rampage VI, i7 7800X, 32GB DDR4, Corsair 100i Cooler.

Now comes the shuffling around of ideas. I will keep my new behemoth for testing and flying, in the house. I'll also shuffle some PC's around in the house to get the best outcome and the least amount of work needed to get everything back up to speed.

This isn't the start to my new Flight Simming year I had envisaged, but as long as I am sitting in the cockpit in a month kicking off my upcoming UK Tour, I will have very little time to dwell on the recent balls-up.............

Deep pockets and a bad memory, a Flight Simmers best friend!!!!


Frank

[FredK]

Frank

Do not ever fantasize that this hobby will actually provide you permanent joy!

It is much like golf....which just so happens to be my first passion.

Fred K

[XOrionFE]

Frank, I tested my P3D setup with my single GTX 1080 card slightly overclocked.   i7 7700 Overclocked to 4.5, 32 gig of medium speed ram, SSD drive for windows, SSD drive for P3D.     Frame rates are very very acceptable with all sliders up in P3D (except uncheck HDR).   Running all orbx, active sky, Rex clouds.     It really is very nice.   You should be able to get similiar with those projectors as long as running 1080p and 3 views (with viewgroups) of about 50 degree each.   That would match my config.

If you did that and were satisified my next suggestion would be to put your extra 2 GTX 1080 cards up on Ebay.   Likely you could get $1500-2000 each for them right now as those cyber coin miners are going nuts!

Best regards,
Scott

[ifeliciano]

There was a lot of talk back in 2016 that NVIDIA was dropping support for 3-way SLI with their GTX-10 Series GPU.

[tennyson]

I agree with you, I think it's a dying technology, cos not enough of us are using it to justify the expense.

And Scott. I started the build 24 hours ago and I have a flying bullet of a PC. Very impressed, however the work has just begun. I envisage a week of installing, tweaking and testing before I put the PC out in the cockpit for testing in that environment.

I am still happy to go with the three GTX 1080's, they all fit and work...Yeah!

So, I'll plod along with my new idea and hope results equal the expectations.


Frank

[navymustang]

Do you really need to run SLI? I have dual 1070s in one of my sims driving 5 LCD panels. Not using SLI at all.

[tennyson]

Sorry Jim, that's just the terminology.

What I meant was that the slots in the mobo support 4 x sli, but I am just running the three cards without the sli link unit.

All I'm after is being able to run the three cards from the one mobo.

I am also aware that SLi is not supported by general flight simming software.




Frank 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Wow bummer! I didn't know that you couldn't put three cards next to each other until you said it. I would have done it the same way. Thanks for the heads up! Glad I read the whole post. Thanks for sharing the experience.