How can you have a triple GPU setup using dual slot cards and have room for a physics card/sound card?
Only way it might be possible is putting the 3rd card in the 4th PCI-E slot, but that would overlap the USB headers etc. The PCI slot gets covered by the 2nd GPU, so any PCI sound cards can't go in there, either.
The important thing I take away from this preview has nothing to do with the board itself but rather eVGA's expanding custom software and software/hardware efforts. It's really neat to see a company like eVGA make a push in this direction going well beyond other mobo companies with their basic monitoring software and other graphics rebadgers.
You could certainly do it, as stated, by plugging one of the dual-slot cards into that last slot, and having it hang over the edge of the board - requiring an extra big case. But another way is to use liquid-cooled versions of the cards, cutting them all down to single-slot size. In any event, it doesn't matter where you place them, since you can use three of the soft, bendy SLI bridge connectors to make your own triple-SLI connection. You don't have to use anybody's firm, fixed triple-SLI connector. Just Google around to see how to use the three individual, soft, bendy connectors.
Question on this comment:
The slot configuration allows running three dual slot GPUs and a single slot PhysX card or other PCI-E peripheral
In looking at the pictures, this board only has 7 slots total with the x1 being at the top.
If you used 3 Dual Slot GPUs, that would be 3 x 2 = 6 + the x1 = 7
So where exactly are you putting a PhysX card?
The only possibility I see is if you use an 8 or 10 slot Case and stick the 3rd Dual Slot GPU in the very bottom slot such that it hangs off the bottom of the mobo. But in this case, the normal 6 connector Triple SLI Bridge wont reach the 3rd card.
Am I missing something here?
PS: Dont get me wrong, I like the design of the board.
You are right the 3rd SLI card would go in the last PCIe slot, with a dual card overhanging. An SLI bridge supporting this will ship with the retail board.
Board dimensions are 310mmX265mm btw. Big case territory.
Remember the awesome 7X0i series of motherboards? Especially the last one with the NF200 on it? It's called a 790i "Ultra" chipset.
There are only a few people who ever had problems with the 7X0i series motherboards when using multiple GPU's. Not one person ever complained about things like "freezing" or "hard locking" or "data corruption." Especially not at stock speeds.
Just like there is absolutely no sarcasm in my last paragraph.
What fool would by the "Classified" EVGA motherboard? It's got negligible performance increases. Why go through that much trouble for all of the 5 people on earth who would purchase it and use it with 3-4 GPU's + 30" or bigger monitor.
Mark my words. The NF200 addition to the X58 that EVGA already had going GREAT for them, will bring them problems on the level with the last batch of shoddy, Nvidia tainted motherboards.
I am going to put this in all my sigs from now on:
"Nvidia, for the love of god, please stop crippling motherboards and just stick to GPU's."
From what I can tell from sources online, the NF200 bridges 16 PCIe 1.1 lanes to 32 PCIe 2.0 lanes. What is there to gain by using the NF200 over just using four PCIe x8 2.0 lanes of bandwidth from the IOH? With the NF200, you get ~4GB/s bandwidth to the IOH per graphics slot compared to ~8GB/s with a native solution, and the bridge adds additional latency, which further reduces performance, and additional cost. Why would EVGA use it then? Are there any advantages to it?
Question. 920 can be easily o/clocked on most boards to 4GHz and peak under 80C under full load using a good air cooler and be perfectly stable. But how long will that CPU and mobo last at these temps and bumped up voltages if used daily? The temps can be addressed by water cooling but how damaging is running CPU at 1.4V, QPI at 1.5V/7.2GHz for long time?
Well I can testify to this comment, and say that I'm an enthusiast and like to buy top rated tech and push their limits, over 8 months ago I purchased a R2E to be used with my 1yr old 920 only bad part was the 920 was a C0 but nonetheless I was able to get to 4.1ghz for benching and everyday stablity "non prime stable", which did fine until 2weeks ago when the board just blinked at me and nothing more, well thank god for rma! So I did decide to upgrade to a classified 760, well in my case I lost some of the bells and whistles that the asus had but was better greeted with the hardware imporvements and design of the evga has. I'm now at 4ghz and climbing 8hrs+ prime stable where as the r2e only was prime stable up to 3.6. So I think both boards are great but the classy is a hair better and hope it lasts!
P.S. I've been overclocing for about 10yrs and I never had a chip fry on me it's always the mobo from decay I asume, and the 920 it's self has been through 2 powersupplies and three mobo's.
This motherboard costs $400-$450 and it comes with Realtek audio and LAN? Give me a break. I would at the very least expect a dedicated audio card for this price.
And if you load it up with 4x GPUs, I don't think you actually have a slot available for any other expansion cards. They really need to move to some kind of new, longer form factor for boards like this. Something like a 16" x 9.6" 'LATX' form factor.
The only way you'll get 4x GPUs is via 2x GeForce GTX 295 or 2x Radeon HD 4870X2... in which case you would have several expansion slots remaining. But as our SLI/CF scaling articles have shown, outside of bragging rights in a few select titles there's little point in going beyond two-way GPU configurations.
Clearly, this board appears to be for crazy people. You spend $400 and you still get old school Firewire 400? At that price, there should be no compromises. Firewire800, and also somebody's soul. Or something.
Is this all that you have to gripe about? Were you really going to purchase this board, but now suddenly you can't justify it due to this obvious oversight? :eyeroll: Seriously, I bought a 4-port firewire card in the past that sits in a box. Why? Cuz I never EVER used the thing. USB 2.0 will suffice until USB 3.0. Even Apple computers have more USB jacks than Firewire. If you want a function that hardly anyone uses than just buy an expansion card. I am certain the target for this mobo is not one that gives a rats about Firewire. They are gamers. They can always use e-SATA if they need faster transfer speeds in an external.
This board is for people that spend $1000.00 on a cpu and have 3-4 GTX 285's, and have spent a ton on a cooling setup. I really doubt they will notice an extra $150.00 for the motherboard.
While that may be true, said people are becoming fewer and far between these days, and some of those who could afford such machines are probably scaling back their spending (the smart ones anyway). The days of people ordering $3,000+ worth of stuff and putting it on their credit cards and paying it off monthly are numbered. People need to learn to live within their means so we don't get in this huge economic global mess again.
I'm not even sure that's the target market. More likely this is just a dog and pony show that EVGA will give to the top overclockers of the world, who will also get free CPUs from Intel, RAM from memory companies, etc. Then they will take all of that and push their system to new levels of performance and overclocking. The net result is that they hope having their top motherboard in the fastest systems in the world will have a trickle down effect and people will assume that their lower end products are also the "best". Honestly, it's mostly marketing if you ask me. EVGA might only make 500-1000 of these boards and call it quits for all we know.
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rogguy - Thursday, March 12, 2009 - link
this board is mediocre compared to asus ROGEverlong19 - Thursday, March 12, 2009 - link
How can you have a triple GPU setup using dual slot cards and have room for a physics card/sound card?Only way it might be possible is putting the 3rd card in the 4th PCI-E slot, but that would overlap the USB headers etc. The PCI slot gets covered by the 2nd GPU, so any PCI sound cards can't go in there, either.
MadMan007 - Saturday, February 28, 2009 - link
The important thing I take away from this preview has nothing to do with the board itself but rather eVGA's expanding custom software and software/hardware efforts. It's really neat to see a company like eVGA make a push in this direction going well beyond other mobo companies with their basic monitoring software and other graphics rebadgers.MasonStorm - Saturday, February 28, 2009 - link
You could certainly do it, as stated, by plugging one of the dual-slot cards into that last slot, and having it hang over the edge of the board - requiring an extra big case. But another way is to use liquid-cooled versions of the cards, cutting them all down to single-slot size. In any event, it doesn't matter where you place them, since you can use three of the soft, bendy SLI bridge connectors to make your own triple-SLI connection. You don't have to use anybody's firm, fixed triple-SLI connector. Just Google around to see how to use the three individual, soft, bendy connectors.Casper42 - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
Question on this comment:The slot configuration allows running three dual slot GPUs and a single slot PhysX card or other PCI-E peripheral
In looking at the pictures, this board only has 7 slots total with the x1 being at the top.
If you used 3 Dual Slot GPUs, that would be 3 x 2 = 6 + the x1 = 7
So where exactly are you putting a PhysX card?
The only possibility I see is if you use an 8 or 10 slot Case and stick the 3rd Dual Slot GPU in the very bottom slot such that it hangs off the bottom of the mobo. But in this case, the normal 6 connector Triple SLI Bridge wont reach the 3rd card.
Am I missing something here?
PS: Dont get me wrong, I like the design of the board.
Rajinder Gill - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
You are right the 3rd SLI card would go in the last PCIe slot, with a dual card overhanging. An SLI bridge supporting this will ship with the retail board.Board dimensions are 310mmX265mm btw. Big case territory.
regards
Raja
cesthree - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
Remember the awesome 7X0i series of motherboards? Especially the last one with the NF200 on it? It's called a 790i "Ultra" chipset.There are only a few people who ever had problems with the 7X0i series motherboards when using multiple GPU's. Not one person ever complained about things like "freezing" or "hard locking" or "data corruption." Especially not at stock speeds.
Just like there is absolutely no sarcasm in my last paragraph.
What fool would by the "Classified" EVGA motherboard? It's got negligible performance increases. Why go through that much trouble for all of the 5 people on earth who would purchase it and use it with 3-4 GPU's + 30" or bigger monitor.
Mark my words. The NF200 addition to the X58 that EVGA already had going GREAT for them, will bring them problems on the level with the last batch of shoddy, Nvidia tainted motherboards.
I am going to put this in all my sigs from now on:
"Nvidia, for the love of god, please stop crippling motherboards and just stick to GPU's."
Von Matrices - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
From what I can tell from sources online, the NF200 bridges 16 PCIe 1.1 lanes to 32 PCIe 2.0 lanes. What is there to gain by using the NF200 over just using four PCIe x8 2.0 lanes of bandwidth from the IOH? With the NF200, you get ~4GB/s bandwidth to the IOH per graphics slot compared to ~8GB/s with a native solution, and the bridge adds additional latency, which further reduces performance, and additional cost. Why would EVGA use it then? Are there any advantages to it?Zak - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
Question. 920 can be easily o/clocked on most boards to 4GHz and peak under 80C under full load using a good air cooler and be perfectly stable. But how long will that CPU and mobo last at these temps and bumped up voltages if used daily? The temps can be addressed by water cooling but how damaging is running CPU at 1.4V, QPI at 1.5V/7.2GHz for long time?Z.
Agoniesfury - Saturday, January 23, 2010 - link
Well I can testify to this comment, and say that I'm an enthusiast and like to buy top rated tech and push their limits, over 8 months ago I purchased a R2E to be used with my 1yr old 920 only bad part was the 920 was a C0 but nonetheless I was able to get to 4.1ghz for benching and everyday stablity "non prime stable", which did fine until 2weeks ago when the board just blinked at me and nothing more, well thank god for rma! So I did decide to upgrade to a classified 760, well in my case I lost some of the bells and whistles that the asus had but was better greeted with the hardware imporvements and design of the evga has. I'm now at 4ghz and climbing 8hrs+ prime stable where as the r2e only was prime stable up to 3.6. So I think both boards are great but the classy is a hair better and hope it lasts!P.S. I've been overclocing for about 10yrs and I never had a chip fry on me it's always the mobo from decay I asume, and the 920 it's self has been through 2 powersupplies and three mobo's.
CK804 - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
This motherboard costs $400-$450 and it comes with Realtek audio and LAN? Give me a break. I would at the very least expect a dedicated audio card for this price.GaryJohnson - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
And if you load it up with 4x GPUs, I don't think you actually have a slot available for any other expansion cards. They really need to move to some kind of new, longer form factor for boards like this. Something like a 16" x 9.6" 'LATX' form factor.JarredWalton - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
The only way you'll get 4x GPUs is via 2x GeForce GTX 295 or 2x Radeon HD 4870X2... in which case you would have several expansion slots remaining. But as our SLI/CF scaling articles have shown, outside of bragging rights in a few select titles there's little point in going beyond two-way GPU configurations.legoman666 - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
2 8pin power connectors on the mobo? Why?1078feba - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
How about 600W of available power to the proc socket?takumsawsherman - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
Clearly, this board appears to be for crazy people. You spend $400 and you still get old school Firewire 400? At that price, there should be no compromises. Firewire800, and also somebody's soul. Or something.bigboxes - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
Is this all that you have to gripe about? Were you really going to purchase this board, but now suddenly you can't justify it due to this obvious oversight? :eyeroll: Seriously, I bought a 4-port firewire card in the past that sits in a box. Why? Cuz I never EVER used the thing. USB 2.0 will suffice until USB 3.0. Even Apple computers have more USB jacks than Firewire. If you want a function that hardly anyone uses than just buy an expansion card. I am certain the target for this mobo is not one that gives a rats about Firewire. They are gamers. They can always use e-SATA if they need faster transfer speeds in an external.Exar3342 - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
This board is for people that spend $1000.00 on a cpu and have 3-4 GTX 285's, and have spent a ton on a cooling setup. I really doubt they will notice an extra $150.00 for the motherboard.ToeCutter - Thursday, March 26, 2009 - link
Exactly. I'm thinking of snagging one of these just for the simple color scheme that doesn't look like a bag of Starburst.How about just a jet black PCB and some monotone slots.
Skip a sushi dinner and it's paid for....?
Nfarce - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
While that may be true, said people are becoming fewer and far between these days, and some of those who could afford such machines are probably scaling back their spending (the smart ones anyway). The days of people ordering $3,000+ worth of stuff and putting it on their credit cards and paying it off monthly are numbered. People need to learn to live within their means so we don't get in this huge economic global mess again.JarredWalton - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
I'm not even sure that's the target market. More likely this is just a dog and pony show that EVGA will give to the top overclockers of the world, who will also get free CPUs from Intel, RAM from memory companies, etc. Then they will take all of that and push their system to new levels of performance and overclocking. The net result is that they hope having their top motherboard in the fastest systems in the world will have a trickle down effect and people will assume that their lower end products are also the "best". Honestly, it's mostly marketing if you ask me. EVGA might only make 500-1000 of these boards and call it quits for all we know.Jedi2155 - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
Amen to that Soul.