Hello,
I'm running scientific applications that require large amounts of CPU cores, GPU power and pretty substantial amount of memory. My PE 2950's aren't cutting it without GPUs. I'm considering obtaining an R900 with 16 cores and 64 GB RAM, and installing a couple Tesla M2090 GPU cards for the training and decoding of the applications I run.
My question is if anybody knows if GPUs would work in the R900, as it's not a 12th generation PowerEdge? Mind you these aren't video cards, so I'm not having to worry about disabling the onboard video. These GPUs will run in the 8x PCI-E slots with little performance degradation, and I'm aware that the slots only provide around 25 watts of power and the cards need something like 75 watts. I don't believe the R900 has external PCI-E power connectors (the 6- and 8- pin types) but I was planning on wiring up a separate power supply for that and soldering a harness to bring that into the R900. I'm an engineer and doing such a thing wouldn't be difficult.
I know there is better hardware suited for running multiple GPUs, but the budget is not very big at the moment, and would support obtaining an R900 and two Tesla M2090's, but not ordering a nice new PowerEdge that's actually built for this. I'm used to rigging things to make them work in ways they were not designed for, so I just need to know if anybody is aware if this *could* work. It's a critical project, and the 16 cores + GPU power would allow decoding to run before my hair goes grey.
Thanks!
RB