How to set up a PC with 2 monitors that is optimized for cycles.

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1

Hi Guys,

How can one set up a PC with 2 monitors that is optimized for cycles?

Thanks in advance guys. :smiley:

2

Best way is to get an Nvidia GPU that will allow you two or more monitors, and that way you can handle two monitors and render that way as well. Also, you might want to get as much CPU processor as you can afford so that you can also make use of the CPU for rendering features that aren’t on the GPU just yet. Make sure you have a decent power supply for your GPU though.

3

Hey! Thanks for that! Is it also an option to have a motherboard that can handle two graphics card?

4

Many mobos support two graphics cards, though my HP Envy doesn’t. In my case, I bought two different GPU until I got the ability to support three monitors as I wished. The first GPU I donated to a gamer friend so he could have something to do until he got employed.

5

When buying a motherboard, make sure you read the fine print regarding the GPU slots. The cheaper ones will run a single card at 16x, but when you plug in a second, it will run both at 8x.

So make sure you get one that says it will run two graphics cards at full speed. Read online hardware reviews to get the full story.

6

Hey! thanks so much for the replies. I’ll read through these suggestion :smiley:

7

From memory, the 8x and 16x have limited impact on performance, especially cycles… purely because they are the link between cpu / gpu… not the actual gpu computation… this means that it would only impact BVH / image loading onto the card and not the actual rendering itself.

we are talking milliseconds worth of performance impact here rather than seconds / minutes, as 8x pcie3 operates at about 8GB/s… which is the same as 16x pcie2 and 32x pcie1.1 (which never existed, 16x was always the max)… thats 8 gigabytes per second…

TL;DR your not going to run into performance issues running a card at 8x for cycles.