EVGA's W555 motherboard gets a once over, can hold seven GPUs
By Darren Murph 
posted January 28th 2010 8:39AM
posted January 28th 2010 8:39AM
posted January 28th 2010 8:39AM
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The "W" stands for "Why."
@Leindurstit
FASTRA?
@Leindurstit This motherboard + Tesla = supercomputer. Now you know why.
@Leindurstit Why?
Flightsims!
I can imagine forward, backward, left front, left back, right front, right back, up views
Yeeeehaaaa!
@r3loaded Yes, but if you are all about the GPU supercomputer then why run it dual socket as well? One would think a single quad would be more than sufficient on the CPU side. They you get to the processing side of the GPU's. You have 7 single height cards which limits down your options of higher end GPUs unless you are going to water block cool all of them to get rid of the dual height HSF. So all in all I would say 4 dual GPU GTX295's would be a better option since that would give you 8 GPU's that are all higher core count chips for GPU processing..
@Leindurstit - "Why"? Because they can!
**as he blogs via SAT uplink from the top of Mt Everest**
@Leindurstit
I can think of other things outside of GPU's that'll work great with this...
@KAL326 This mobo is not for gamers, but for video editing and 3D rendering. Is a professional Mobo for a very specific niche.
@SewerShark
No it's not - most 3D programs do not take advantage of SLI, so stuffing multiple cards is not going to speed up your rendering times.
@Leindurstit ya "why" as in "why the hell do you want to punish your bank account". Aside from puns, is there even psw out there that can supply enough power for this kind of abusive usage.
Thats better than their first idea, which was "waste"
@KAL326 "Yes, but if you are all about the GPU supercomputer then why run it dual socket as well? One would think a single quad would be more than sufficient on the CPU side."
The general rule of thumb is one core per GPU in the supercomputing world.
@SewerShark Where did I say anything about gamers? I was referring to card options available for GPU computing with single profile versus dual profile Heatsink/Fan implications on the use of all 7 PCIe slots. Given that most single profile cards are lower performing models the use of 7 lower end cards would most likely be out down by 4 higher end dual GPU cards.
@bodydown Good to know. Does that mean only physical cores or will HT quads fill the role with 8 threads?
4 Physical Cores Per Chip - 2 Threads-per-core = 8 threads per chip
Which should be just about enough to push data to those 7 Cards. This thing would make a hell of a parallel-processing or rendering machine.
@Hazdaz Lots of media professionals don't just use Video Cards though. They might have a couple of video cards if they're doing physics sims for PhysX accelleration. They also might have a few hardware decoders for hardware accelerated video transcoding. They might have a break out card for SDI monitoring etc etc. They're also probably going to want a dedicated RAID card and maybe a dedicated eSata controller. You've just used 6-7 highspeed PCI-X slots.
@Leindurstit actually so you can do what those students at MIT did by putting the power of gpu to processing need, with 7 gpu you'll have your own super computer.
@goopy Yes, they sell 2kw PSUs for a low price of OVER 9000 U.S. Dollars.
7 is not enough.
@cashclientel
7 for win 7??
@Prospero
I meant GPUs... or deadly sins. In fact both.
@cashclientel
I wanted 8. And output it to one screen.
(But the 360 multiple monitor idea for flight sims and other immersive gaming sounds good as well.)
W standsfor when the hell can I get one of these mofos?
Badass.
@webmastir
Where the hell do I get a case to fit it in! Thats a big board!
@Jimbob
http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product.php?product_id=2870
i have one...mammoth
@Chroma
LOL. That's not big enough....this board is larger than EATX.
Wow, this thing will be as quick at rendering images and models as I am in... well...bed.
@7egend
why 7 gpu's? why not 3 gpu's + 4 pci-e ssd's for a RAID 10 ? ever thought about that possibility? 7 is now, just right.
@7egend - That's what she sa-- oh, never mind...
for a while I thought I could put GPUs in the socket and put video ram near them.
@htd that actually sounds like it might be super sweet. why do we need graphics cards? couldn't they just sell the GPUs and have dedicated GPU sockets and video RAM slots on the mobo? there is probably a good reason why they don't do it that way but as far as i know that would be better right?
http://digg.com/hardware/EVGA_s_W555_mobo_gets_a_once_over_can_hold_seven_GPUs
This thing will melt your case. Shit is ridiculous!
See, this is what I love about technology: pushing boundaries, innovating!
This excites me more than the iP(h)ad ever could
@groggit
Wow...you just couldn't let this post stand by itself, you had to go and bring something completely unrelated up.
@7egend
Please forgive my venting, I'd just sat down on my comp after watching several TV news segments on how the iPad is the greatest device ever and I took my rage out on the first post I was interested in.
@groggit Good thing you don't have a Wife. I only assume of course.
@Teslanaut
Who needs a wife when I could have Octuple cores and 7 GPU's!
this is all trash they is no way u can use the seven PCI expansion slots one gtx285 will block 2 other PCI expansion slots
@agent47 PCIe slots aren't only used for video, I think that's kind of worth mentioning. Everyone's going off on this "who would want 7 GPUs?" tangent. it also has 8 SATA ports but that doesn't mean you're going to have 8 dvd burners on it.
@agent47
The only reason they are two slots is because of the air cooling the card runs. If you're going to put 7 GPU's on one board your going to run water cooling, which makes it fit into one PCI-e slot.
@SophT
ya no that
but if one card is covering other to slots is the problem
u cant use those slots weather its gpu or any other sdd what were
do cards that small exist?
@tomaskn Low-profile cards
Finally we'll be able to play crysis at 60fps! Seriously though, this is a great addition for anyone who games AND does editing of massive files like HD vids or huge photoshop content.
That looks like a pretty big mobo.
OMG!
where's more specs about the board?
Jesus. Tapdancing. Christ.
That is amazing. Can anyone say "overkill" tho?
@patlennas88
Overkill!
There I did it!
What did I win?