First thing first, I build computers for customers. Usually I build gaming rigs, and regular home desktops. However I have a customer who wants a quote on a dedicated rendering machine. He is a game designer and this will be used to render projects. They are using XSI amongst other tools. He wants a dual CPU (12 core setup) but the thing is he specifically mentioned NOT using workstation cards as he doesn’t want to spend that kind of money. Instead he suggested using high end gaming cards. Now I know that gaming cards CAN be using for GPU tasks so long as the program has been coded to make use of CUDA properly. My question is would it be feasible to run XSI, and other similar Autodesk 3D programs on something like a high end Nvidia GTX 580 setup. Does XSI support SLI? If so what about 2 high end 580s in SLI?

Thanks!

Softimage doesn’t support SLI.

I know some customers run on the GTX 580, but I didn’t see that card on the certified list, fwiw.