only 4x7990 per Tyan B7015F77V4R ?

[john99]

Hello

in an earlier post, 4x7990 are recommended per 1 Tyan B7015F77V4R.

Is the 7990 larger than other GPUs, because it seems this Tyan server does support 8x7970?


Thank's a lot for any feedback!

John

[radix]

if someone recommended a dual gpu card to you they were wrong or you misread. dual gpu cards have heat issues, and unless you plan on watercooling, will not be able to keep under reasonable control.

[ati6990]

its also possible with the old ud7 for about 110 dollar , never try the new ud7 am3+ one.

[epixoip]

well, that's not necessarily true.

yes, the 6990 draws an insane amount of power, and is unbelievably hard to cool. but the 5970 was a fantastic card, and was quite manageable. i have four running right now that have been under 100% load for a couple months straight, and their temps are staying right at 74-77C with the stock coolers.

the reference design 7990 seems to be a lot better thermally than the 6990. it draws about 75W less watts than the 6990, and because its heatsink spans the entire length of the card and features five copper heat pipes, it seems to run a lot cooler as well.

in fact, every benchmark and review i've read so far shows the 7990 actually running cooler than a 7970. now i have yet to verify these claims, as newegg can't seem to keep them in stock long enough for me to purchase one, but it does in fact look quite promising.

that said, there's two reasons why you can only run four 7990s in the tyan chassis:

1. driver only supports 8 devices
2. not enough power

now, #1 may not be true anymore, but no one has yet to successfully verify. i tried a few months back, and the driver recognized 12 devices, but x11 crashed every time it tried to load.

with #2, the tyan chassis has a maximum output of 2400W @ 240V, or 2000W @ 120V. if #1 were no longer true you could potentially put a fifth card in there, but that would be pushing it.

[radix]

in fact, every benchmark and review i've read so far shows the 7990 actually running cooler than a 7970. now i have yet to verify these claims, as newegg can't seem to keep them in stock long enough for me to purchase one, but it does in fact look quite promising.

This is also testing against gaming which the 6990 faired well on. When computing, the GPU's are stressed much more than just rendering textures.

I could be wrong though, maybe it will be fine, but as a general rule of thumb, dual GPU cards are hard to cool.

[epixoip]

there are some benchmarks out there that do compute in addition to games, it's becoming a lot more popular to do so. but in addition to this, there are several bitcoin/litecoin miners posting their experience with Malta on the forums with similar results. so it's looking promising.

i really think (hope?) the problem is localized to the 6990. i think it was just a poorly designed card. it's also the only card that has a centrifugal fan in the middle, so that there's no air flowing over the rear heatsink.

[KT819GM]

Regarding 6990 centrifugal fan - it takes air from it's top and blows inside into both directions, so front and rear heatsink gets cold air. AMD thought that it will solve problem like in HD5970 one gpu always hotter than other because front gpu already getting warmer air. But it was just too hard to make free airflow for 6990 rear part and because of that this 450W tdp monster heated whole chassis with trapped hot air.

[powderspecial600]

Has anyone tried the 7990 yet? I would think it would be pretty hard to keep cool especially if you have 4 of them side by side.

[epixoip]

we have 16 on order, we'll report back on them soon.

[thorsheim]

we have 16 on order, we'll report back on them soon.

That's just friggin' rude. And awesome. ;-)