How much faster should a 2080 Ti be over a1080 Ti?
What if I pack four of the 2080 Ti's in one tower with appropriate cooling? How much slower would the latter gpu cards be if I use 4 as opposed to 1,2 or 3?
I am getting a new computer built next month, so any suggestions, experience would be appreciated.

Thank you,

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You can look at my host https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=8030022 for comparisons between a RTX 2080 and GTX 1080 TI.
Basically my 2080 is ten seconds faster than my 1080 Ti. Mr. Kevvy's https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=8687856 RTX 2080 Ti's are 20 seconds faster than my 2080.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Water cooled you would have no issues of course. Air cooled can be a challenge when all the cards are back to face in the slots. You need to have great case air flow. Also the cards will control their thermals by controlling their clocks to keep TDP under control. You just won't get the kind of GPU Boost clocks that you would get with a single card that is well cooled with adequate airflow.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

39 seconds for each wu is very nice, I think. My 2 1080 Ti's take 290 seconds. So I think there is a tremendous difference, which I would like. It will be water cooled for the 2080 Ti's. Do you know Puget Sound people? They will be doing it.

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39 seconds for each wu is very nice, I think. My 2 1080 Ti's take 290 seconds. So I think there is a tremendous difference, which I would like. It will be water cooled for the 2080 Ti's. Do you know Puget Sound people? They will be doing it.

I know the Puget Sound group by reputation. Very well respected. You will get a top notch cruncher from them.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Thanks for the answers, Keith. I was very busy at work so wasn't able to.

Looks like I'll be #4 soon lol. :^)

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I just heard from Puget, they do not install water cooling. It presents a problem if the computer will overheat being only air cooled, in Florida. Also, if it is going run slower than other similar gpu cards with water cooling.
I know this is not the place to ask, but since this would be the basic computer running the gpu cards, could you tell me if this is a fast, very fast or slow?
ntel Xeon W-2195 2.3GHz 18 Core 24.75MB 140W

Thank you

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could you tell me if this is a fast, very fast or slow?
ntel Xeon W-2195 2.3GHz 18 Core 24.75MB 140W

Very slow, extremely power hungry.*
Any of the current i7 series would outperform that, and use much less power. Or better yet, wait a month and get a Ryzen 9 3900X. Still less power, even better performance.


Edit- Having a look at it's specs, if it has sufficient cooling, it should be able to boost to it's maximum 4.3GHz clock speed, so it's output would be very good in that case. Just needing a lot of cooling & power to do so.

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Grant
Darwin NT

You just can't get a cpu only system, even a mega-core based one, to match the RAC of just adding one mid-range gpu to a modestly priced general purpose computer to the mix with the CUDA 9/10 app.

Case in point. Here is a 32 core 2990WX cpu only Threadripper cruncher that so far has topped out at 37K RAC. https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=8680050

Ideally, you should try and get water cooled versions of gpus, preferably custom water blocked cards, but even AIO based gpus would work. That gets the temps down on the cards even in Florida and the cards will stay up on their highest boost speeds under crunching.
For an example of products, this is EVGA's water cooled RTX 2080 Ti selection. https://www.evga.com/products/productlist.aspx?type=0&family=GeForce+20+Series+Family&chipset=RTX+2080+Ti

There are other brands that do AIO cooled gpus also like Gigabyte Aorus Waterforce RTX 2080 Ti or ASUS ROG Matrix 2080 Ti. You just have to use a large enough case to host multiple 120mm radiators in place of the normal case fan locations.

I can recommend using the Thermaltake Core series cases as being very easy to construct in for either AIO based cooling or custom loop cooling. I have both the X5 case for a custom loop system along with the X9 case for a AIO based system.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Ideally, you should try and get water cooled versions of gpus, preferably custom water blocked cards, but even AIO based gpus would work. That gets the temps down on the cards even in Florida and the cards will stay up on their highest boost speeds under crunching.

I'm finding my GPUs remain at or below 70°c with stock air cooling & default fans speeds- however I don't have them jammed up against each other. And that's with a Corsair Obsidian 750D Airflow case, water cooled CPU to reduce the temperature inside the case, and ambient temperatures in the mid to high 30°s (Celsius).
Just having a good CPU water cooler with a large well ventilated case makes a big difference to GPU temperatures by giving them much cooler air to cool themselves with. But if you have the cards stacked together with their fans up against the back of the other GPU, they are going to struggle. In that situation an open case & making use of risers for a couple of the cards would be the way to go if they are air cooled.

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Grant
Darwin NT

If you are still going to build a system with 4 X 2080 Ti cards, even air cooled ones, you are going to have to find the motherboard that supports that many PCIe slots. The slot spacing would have to be minimum two wide between slots and with air cooled cards, leads to the issue that Grant describes of having the card's back to face of the next card leading to high temps because of inadequate air flow to the tiny spaces between cards. The AIO's can circumvent that with the majority of the heat dissipation taking place in the radiator even with the blower fans for the VRM's and memory getting poor airflow.

The custom water blocks are generally one slot card width but the attached card slot plates normally are still two slot wide to support the output connectors. But they leave a full slot open between the next card. To get a motherboard that supports 4 two slot wide cards, you have to go generally with a workstation motherboard or HEDT platform.

The way to get around this issue of physically installing the gpus directly into the slots on the motherboard is to go the mining chassis route and locate the cards off the motherboard and then connect them via risers to the motherboard so there is no clearance issues.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Thank you Grant, maybe I will wait for the Ryzen 9.

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Thank you Keith for all the information.

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I agree if you can wait a month for the Ryzen 3000 cpus to ship, that would be a very power efficient system compared to high core count Intel i7 or Intel X-series processors. There are several new AMD X570 motherboards launching to support up to three 2 card slot wide gpus. But almost all the Ryzen boards like the Intel mainstream boards won't support 4 gpus without moving at least one off the motherboard via a riser. The one exception I have seen so far is the MSI X570 Godlike which can support 4 double slot cards directly on the motherboard.
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MEG-X570-GODLIKE.html

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

related to power draw on gpus.
my 1950x
with 4 ram slots full
3 ssd and 2 hdd
with 2 power color 580s no oc done on pc
draws 650 watts when running double precision wu from prime grid. seti does not do i think double precision wu thankful. other wise i have to get a beefer psu and battery back up

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That is a lot more work than just refilling. I need to go out to the garage and get the appliance dolly to move it out to the garage to the compressor. Chassis is too heavy to carry that far. I did the X9 chassis a couple of days ago. I agree the X5 chassis probably needs it just as bad.

The first mod I made to my Threadripper chassis was to fit castors, I knew it would be too heavy to carry easily and the castors also give it a greater ground clearance for the air intakes.

Wheeled it outside today and blew out the dust bunnies, also had a mass of dog hair that I had to hoover up from the floor where it usually sits:-)

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Kevin

Castors won't do me any good getting down front porch steps or drainage channels in the driveway. Biggest issue is one of the dolly wheels won't hold pressure now. Had to pump it up and then get right into the house to wheel the X5 chassis out to the garage. Need to get a new wheel, valve stem has a hole in the shoulder and the bead won't hold air either now.

Got it done a few hours ago. Needed it mainly in the twin 360 rads. Almost nothing out of the power supply which is unusual. Then I thought maybe not, pulling only 1000W out of a 1600W power supply, the P/S fan may never have turned on and it was able to shed heat by convection on its heat sinks, never needing the fan. The Corsair AX-1200 power supplies in the twin daily drivers always have a ton of dust in them when I blow them out.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

wow. am surpise nothing super bad happen on ether one. seeing on both you said. should have killed them

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Could you tell me what miracle you are using/doing to get 1 wu done in less than 40 seconds consistently? The best my 2 1080 ti's can do is nearly 300 seconds each. I was told buy the builder of my new system to only expect 20-30% more speed over the 2 1080Ti's with my 4 RTX 2080 ti's. That almost makes it not worthwhile with the very high cost for the system. Instead just put a couple of RTX in my older computer and replace the 2 780 ti's.
Just curious, since I never had a system like this built.

Thank you,

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Could you tell me what miracle you are using/doing to get 1 wu done in less than 40 seconds consistently?

This miracle. Apologies... thought that was already known. The All-In-One Linux client will get about 2.5x the performance out of any compatible GPU hardware.

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