2nd graphics card

J

Johnbathusrtbathurst7

New member
hi i was wondering if its possible to add a second 3080ti to my pc....

Use the pc for a variety of things from gaming to 3d animation work,

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE 7 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16 Core CPU (3.4GHz-4.9GHz/72MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG STRIX X570-F GAMING (USB 3.2 Gen 2, PCIe 4.0) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
12GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3080 Ti - HDMI, DP, LHR
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SEAGATE FIRECUDA 520 GEN 4 PCIe NVMe (up to 5000MB/R, 2500MB/W)
1st Storage Drive
2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair iCUE H115i ELITE CAPELLIX RGB Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
 
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Aza

Aza

Rising Star
I believe the board has the slots to do it, but it will depend on your wider spec.
I think theres also a big factor of use case to consider, I think gaming tend to avoid it but not massively sure about the rest.

I'd post your full specs up and give some details of what you use the machine for, it should help people work out the answer for you and also if its something worth doing.

As to the port on the motherboard...if you have a GPU installed it wont, you need to use the ports on the GPU (short version, having a GPU makes it redundant)
 
J

Johnbathusrtbathurst7

New member
Aza said:
I believe the board has the slots to do it, but it will depend on your wider spec.
I think theres also a big factor of use case to consider, I think gaming tend to avoid it but not massively sure about the rest.

I'd post your full specs up and give some details of what you use the machine for, it should help people work out the answer for you and also if its something worth doing.

As to the port on the motherboard...if you have a GPU installed it wont, you need to use the ports on the GPU (short version, having a GPU makes it redundant)
Click to expand...


Thanks. I've edited the post to included the full build...
I've had a proper look and it looks like it can fit, just going to be a tight fit to the fan of the other 3080ti
 
Aza

Aza

Rising Star
If you're gaming with it, im not sure theres any benefit... 3D animation is something I know nothing about, but worth saying what programs you specifically use as i'm sure it will be relevant when people with greater knowledge give you some info.
 
S

Steveyg

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
I'm honestly not sure how ok I'd feel trying to run two 3080Ti's on a 850W PSU, Nvidia recommend a minimum of 850W for one of them never mind running two SLi

The case should be big enough to fit them but it will be really snug and it will absolutely push the temps of the case up drastically. The Fractal Define 7 is absolutely brilliant but it does favour sound dampening more than airflow and cooling so adding another GPU into the mix it'll get toasty in there

What are you expecting to achieve by adding another GPU do you have a specific idea in mind for it?
 
steaky360

steaky360

Moderator
Moderator
I didn't think the 3080Ti was SLi capable? No mention of it here: https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/graphics-cards/30-series/rtx-3080-3080ti/ for either the 3080 or 3080Ti (I'm 100% certain the 3080 isn't SLi capable).

Besides that for gaming at least no games these days support SLi, so if it was gaming, there is zero benefit.

If you want to run 2 cards and gain the benefit of additional performance for other purposes (you mention 3d animation) you'd need 2x 3090s... but I'd seriously consider whether its required, I don't know what the performance gains are but its a MASSIVE cost premium. You'd be better off getting a single 3080Ti and upgrading to a 4080 when they're available.

You can run two 3080Ti's independently, but this is quite a niche solution (I've no idea why you might want to do that for 3d animation...) and in reality you don't actually need two 3080Ti's to do this, you could get a single 3090 and a 3080Ti or a 3080Ti and a 3060 or whatever (the second card doesn't need to be identical to the first).

EDIT: Before making this decision @Johnbathusrtbathurst7 its worth finding out if the software you're using for 3d rendering supports SLI (might be called NVLink which the replacement for SLi and is used on the 3090/3090Ti only) because if it doesn't then there is really no point in even considering it. Its of zero benefit to gaming.
 
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D

DarTon

Well-known member
The 3080 Ti die is SLI/NVlink capable (as it's just a downbinned 3090 with half the memory). It's not supported though as it would cut into the 3090 and A series market. As others have said for gaming there is virtually no benefit.

For compute heavy tasks, and if you have the right sort of software, the 2x 3080 Ti can be more effective than a single 3090. At work, we use multiple 3080 Tis as a cheaper way to run simple, high compute overhead, but low memory tasks than can be easily broken into serial runs with no precedence issues. It does require the software to allocate the tasks intelligently across the two GPUs and I have no idea whether 3d animation software can do this.

The value of NVLINK on the 3090 (and A series cards) it that it pools the memory space together, allowing the compute not to have to reside in their cards own individual memory footprint, and the sharing of partial calculations across cards.
 
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