Suggestions for best 1080 TI for ML

[T_Minus]

IT's been a few months, ok maybe a year since I've looked into this, and discussed with @Patrick briefly based on his frontpage articles...

I currently have an EVGA Founders card, and want to purchase a couple more 1080 TI for ML.

These are going in SUperMicro 4U chassis, so 'top power' is acceptable.

Should I stick with Founders Edition cards for the improved blower\configuration?

Any specific Brand to avoid?

I'm planning on running 2 cards per-chassis total, so would a 3-fan version work too or smart to avoid these in sealed\one way air server chassis? I never considered them before, but maybe they're OK ?

If anyone has any they're selling\trading too feel free to message me.

Thanks

 

[Patrick]

Which chassis are you using? How many per?

 

[T_Minus]

Which chassis are you using? How many per?

I'll have to digup the part #... it's SuperMicro 4U \ similar to CSE-743TQ but with GPU power.

Only want to run 2x GPU in the chassis.

 

[i386]

I'll have to digup the part #... it's SuperMicro 4U \ similar to CSE-743TQ but with GPU power.

Probably a version of the 745 chassis

I would use the founders edition or other cards where the heatsink fins are aligned with the airflow so that the chassis AND the gpu fans can provide cooling.

 

[zer0sum]

As far as I'm aware the Founders cards should be physically identical, and will perform very close to each other.

I have MSI, EVGA, Gigabyte etc. and there's absolutely no way I've found to tell them apart except for the serial numbers.
There might be a way using GPU-Z, or some sort of Vendor ID codes, but I haven't worked that out yet.

I've run up to 7 x next to each other in a Rosewill 4U chassis with good cooling in a data center with low ambient temps and they worked fine and stayed at decent temps even working hard

 

[T_Minus]

As far as I'm aware the Founders cards should be physically identical, and will perform very close to each other.

I have MSI, EVGA, Gigabyte etc. and there's absolutely no way I've found to tell them apart except for the serial numbers.
There might be a way using GPU-Z, or some sort of Vendor ID codes, but I haven't worked that out yet.

I've run up to 7 x next to each other in a Rosewill 4U chassis with good cooling in a data center with low ambient temps and they worked fine and stayed at decent temps even working hard

Awesome! Good to know.

I have one of those chassis too may have to use it These GPU chassis are hard to come by used for a deal.

 

[funkywizard]

Buying a ton of 1080ti's, I found the EVGA cards to be slightly better than other brands. I particularly like their water cooled cards, but I doubt those will play well with your rackmount chassis.

For your application, blower fans are a big plus over triple fan arrangements.

 

[zer0sum]

I'm actually thinking of selling 6 of mine if anyone's interested

I'd consider swaps for larger NVME or SSD drives, or 16G/32G DDR3/4 ram sticks, because I need some of those for my lab systems.

I'll put up a for sale post soon

 

[StevenDTX]

I'm actually thinking of selling 6 of mine if anyone's interested

I'd consider swaps for larger NVME or SSD drives, or 16G/32G DDR3/4 ram sticks, because I need some of those for my lab systems.

I'll put up a for sale post soon

I may be interested in one.

 

[Monoman]

@T_Minus ram for 1080ti???

 

[T_Minus]

I'm actually thinking of selling 6 of mine if anyone's interested

I'd consider swaps for larger NVME or SSD drives, or 16G/32G DDR3/4 ram sticks, because I need some of those for my lab systems.

I'll put up a for sale post soon

PM me when you're ready, I may have RAM and Large NVME available

 

[BackupProphet]

Why not 2080ti? They have much improved machine learning capabilities over the 10xx series

 

[funkywizard]

Why not 2080ti? They have much improved machine learning capabilities over the 10xx series

For 2080ti, blower fan models are few and far between, and the cost is dramatically higher. A used 1080ti is around $550, even for closed loop water cooled ones, which are nice as they're super easy to keep cool.

But yes, the tensor cores are a big improvement, so if cost and cooling are not major concerns, the 2080ti is the better card.

 

[T_Minus]

For 2080ti, blower fan models are few and far between, and the cost is dramatically higher. A used 1080ti is around $550, even for closed loop water cooled ones, which are nice as they're super easy to keep cool.

But yes, the tensor cores are a big improvement, so if cost and cooling are not major concerns, the 2080ti is the better card.

This.

In addition there’s a lot of speculation they will drop price a good bit here soon. I’ve seen them already drop in the last week on some sales.

 

[vv111y]

I'm actually thinking of selling 6 of mine if anyone's interested

I would have liked to get 1080ti's as they are in my budget and I don't need the absolute fastest. But the problem is the RAM. The 2080ti's can work with fp16 effectively doubling to 22gb RAM. That's the bigger bottleneck.

I hope you're right @T_Minus, they are expensive

fwiw I am looking at Zotac blowers since they will be packed in 4U case
Zotac - GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB Blower Video Card (ZT-T20810A-10P) - PCPartPicker

 

[T_Minus]

I was able to get antoher 1080 TI Founders, and almost another for $400!! Those Super releases helped drop price at least some
Thanks to @Patrick and @William article here I also ordered a 2060 Super to try out.

The next couple months we'll see how they all work