01-16-2016, 11:20 PM
Yes, the W9100 is the same as the S9170. Again, stay away from Firepro, Tesla, Quadro, etc. These cards use the exact same GPU chip as their desktop (Radeon, GTX) counterparts, just underclocked and sold at a ridiculous premium.
Gaming/graphics benchmarks cannot be used to compare GPUs for compute in any way. Not performance, not power, not heat. Apples-and-oranges comparison. It is physically impossible for a 980Ti to be faster than a Titan X for password cracking, as a 980Ti is just a neutered Titan X. Clock for clock the Titan X will always be ~10% faster.
To cluster multiple systems together you need some kind of clustering software like Hashstack or Hashtopus.
If you're asking what motherboard, etc. to use, then you're off to a very bad start -- especially if you plan to run 8 GPUs per system. Building a hash cracking rig is not as simple as "acquire computer, install GPUs." There are a lot of design considerations, corner-cases, and gotchas. You say you have a big budget, you're looking for multiple 8-GPU rigs, and you're looking to cluster them... There are companies that provide off-the-shelf clusters for this type of thing, maybe you should look into going that route instead.
Gaming/graphics benchmarks cannot be used to compare GPUs for compute in any way. Not performance, not power, not heat. Apples-and-oranges comparison. It is physically impossible for a 980Ti to be faster than a Titan X for password cracking, as a 980Ti is just a neutered Titan X. Clock for clock the Titan X will always be ~10% faster.
To cluster multiple systems together you need some kind of clustering software like Hashstack or Hashtopus.
If you're asking what motherboard, etc. to use, then you're off to a very bad start -- especially if you plan to run 8 GPUs per system. Building a hash cracking rig is not as simple as "acquire computer, install GPUs." There are a lot of design considerations, corner-cases, and gotchas. You say you have a big budget, you're looking for multiple 8-GPU rigs, and you're looking to cluster them... There are companies that provide off-the-shelf clusters for this type of thing, maybe you should look into going that route instead.