Run two different video cards simultaneously for five projectors/monitors.

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VC0081

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We have a nVidia Quardro card containing 4 video output (2 displays and 2 DVIs) that are connected to 4 projectors for each screen of the CAVE wall (front, left, right, and floor).
Now we need to add 1 additional screen. We actually have a spare GeForce card available to install. My questions are:

(1) Can you run two different graphic cards (quadro + geforce) at the same time without the SLI on the same PC?
(2) If question (1) is possible, I am assuming we have to install two different nVidia drivers? How is that gonna work? Will those two nVidia drivers overlap with each other if I install them together on the same PC?

Thank you for your help in advance.
 
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giantbucket

giantbucket

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1 - yes. sli is an option, it's not mandatory. gamers have no clue about NON-SLI stuff.
2 - sometimes you manually have to use an older driver that spans both types of cardssee above. usually not that hard.

0 - might be easier to just use the motherboard's / CPU's single VGA output, or run two identical cards for those scenarios.
 
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VC0081

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Thank you for your fast response. It's good to know that at least it's possible to enable two different video cards simultaneously for the same PC. Now I guess installing two different drivers and making sure they work at the same time would be challenging. Unfortunately we cannot use the onboard/CPU's VGA output because the iGPU option is not available in the BIOS(the Xeon CPU model we have does not have integrated GPU). So the only option is to use another dedicated video card.

 
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giantbucket

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ah. yeah, that's a bummer. some mobos have a separate VGA chipset even for non-iGPU Xeons, though those are primarily server boards (VGA is used for local config of server)

in the past, i've run a GT610 + 9400GT on the same board, and went fine. then i ran a GT640 + 9500GT and that was mostly OK as long as i used an older driver. now i just run dual GT640s to make life easy and for visual balance when i take the case side cover off.
 
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VC0081

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Thanks for sharing your experience with running two different cards. I also thought about having two identical quadro cards. But then again, buying another quadro would cost so much more xD. Since we have a spare geforce, so I thought why not just utilize it.

Would you provide more info on the "older driver"? What driver versions should I look into?

 
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giantbucket

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i can't recall which specific driver, but i know that each time my Win8.1 wanted to (and i let it) install the latest nvidia driver, i lost some of my screens, so i had to roll back to an older driver and then everything worked.

the nvidia site is pretty good at telling you which driver version (342.88 or whatever) works on which range of cards. find a version that covers your quadro and geforece, and run that version.
 
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Ah i see. I guess its a trial-and-error of which version works the best. I'll just install the update-to-date drivers for both the geforce and quadro card for now and see how that works. If that doesn't work then I'll try your method of finding an older compatible driver from the nvdia site. I'll keep this post updated. Thanks again!

 
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Thanks for the tips. Will definitely give that a shot.
 
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