Question What NVLINK should be used for 2X3090 Palit 2.7 slot on a X570 MB?

[Twenkid]

I work remotely with the machine. These are the cards AFAIK:

::Palit Products - GeForce RTX™ 3090 GamingPro ::

Palit GeForce RTX™ 3090 GamingPro delivers stunning visuals, incredibly fast frame rates, and AI acceleration for gaming and creative applications. Equipped with Triple A Die Casting Plate Kit and Advanced TurboFan 3.0, the model brings amazing thermal performance. Combining an iron-black and...

www.palit.com

According to this scheme:

3 Slot Vs 4 Slot NVLink Bridge | Comparison Between them - Hardware Centric

As the demand for high performance is rising day by day, using of multiple GPUs is increasing among professionals and enthusiasts. But using multi-GPU isn’t enough if there is no interconnection between them. To get the best performance of GPUs NVIDIA has developed the NVLink bridge that...

www.hardwarecentric.com

https://www.hardwarecentric.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/3-3.webp?ezimgfmt=ng:webp/ngcb1

And these measurements from my colleague and the pictures:

3090 – Google Drive

drive.google.com

It seems the distance between the connectors is about 80 mm, which is like 4-SLOT? That was my guess according to other pictures of sample configurations, such as:

NVIDIA NVLink 2021 Update and Compatibility Chart

Using NVLink requires a physical bridge between two identical NVIDIA graphics cards, but with the new generation of Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 Series and RTX A-series video cards which bridges work with which GPUs?

www.pugetsystems.com

It also looks like 4-slot?

However my colleague told me that a technician from his computer shop suggested that it was 3-Slot, because the distance between them was 2-spacers (but between which parts).


I guess the technician is wrong, but what's the truth?

Thanks

 

[Eximo]

4 slot looks right to me. Even that other picture shows dual two slot cards with a 2 slot gap, so looks like they are using a 4-slot bridge there as well.

If it were three slot spacing you wouldn't be able to see that 1x slot between the cards.

Each card is 2.5/3 slot, you have a gap of one slot, 3+1 = 4.

Now I know Puget says it is supported, but there aren't a whole lot of SLI capable motherboards these days.

 

[Order 66]

SLI is dead.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Unless you are doing ridiculously complex 3D modeling even then it will be questionable benefit, dual cards will do nothing except heatsoak the other.

 

[Twenkid]

4 slot looks right to me. Even that other picture shows dual two slot cards with a 2 slot gap, so looks like they are using a 4-slot bridge there as well.

If it were three slot spacing you wouldn't be able to see that 1x slot between the cards.

Each card is 2.5/3 slot, you have a gap of one slot, 3+1 = 4.

Now I know Puget says it is supported, but there aren't a whole lot of SLI capable motherboards these days.

Thank you for the comment and reasoning! My colleagues who are with the machine also realized it looks more like 4-slot and they have ordered one.

 

[Twenkid]

Unless you are doing ridiculously complex 3D modeling even then it will be questionable benefit, dual cards will do nothing except heatsoak the other.

The purpose for now will be ML and robotic simulations with ROS. The double RAM may be of use for running some huge models or working with many models at once for different tasks. Re 3D-modeling - right now it is not an application except for simple simulations, but I guess in the future it could be for 3D-modeling and game engines for high quality simulations as well, and I guess Omniverse or Unreal Engine 5 may make a good use of the cards.

Currently it is with Gazebo, which alone is known not to use the GPU much for physics simulation and here I agree that we didn't need even a single 3090, however probably we may evolve into Nvidia's Isaac libraries which utilise TensorRT etc., we may dedicate each card for different tasks, e.g. one running simulations, the other one training or running DL models etc.

I also don't know about whether the SLI would give much of an advantage, I personally suggested that we should better wait until we see what we can do without it.

You're right about the heat, my colleagues added water cooling for that reason.

Regards