Rig setup, GPU limits, etc

[bahnfire]

Hi All,
I am a newbie at this and had some questions. I did not see the answers to the questions below, if you know where they are please direct me to that area - apologies in advance :-)

• What is the GPU limit in Windows 7 64-bit? (not worrying about power or cooling)
• What is the GPU limit in Linux (any version)? (not worrying about power or cooling)
• If the limit is high (GPU wise), can you use a PCIe expander like http://www.magma.com/16slotpcix.asp?

Thank You,
Paul

[1715671946]

1715671946

[Inaba]

1. 4
2. 8
3. No, that expander creates PCI ports out of PCIe ports.  You need PCIe ports.

[bahnfire]

Thank you for the reply. Is the amount of RAM a concern, or just GPUs (quality/speed, etc)?

[Inaba]

The only thing you really have to concern yourself with is the speed of the card and the number of shaders.  Everything is pretty much functionally irrelevant to mining bitcoins.

All my miners are 1 GB of RAM, could go lower but there might be some disk thrashing because of the requirement of X.  CPU speed is irrelevant and drive space can be less than 2 GB with the right distro, all the way down to less than 640 MB and fit on a CD if you're so inclined.