Just in theory...two graphics cards non SLI non CFX

iyzik

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I am just very curious about what happen if I plugged two graphics cards into my system. On my low/mid-end rig I have a GTX550Ti and I am wondering what would happen if I plugged in... for example a GTX 480 or an HD 6970 or uk any other graphics card, non SLI non CFX. Becuase I have noticed that in some games (Fallout & Skyrim) that in the launcher it seems you can choose a graphics card from the drop down menu.... Im curious cuz I have a couple old cards Id like to plug in just to mess around with if it would even be possible..
My system if needed is the second one in my signature, and @ windows 7 64bit
 
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Yeah that's what will happen if you set the output to the right display. Hybrid PhysX machines which have AMD GPUs doing the rendering and NVidia GPUs acting as dedicated PhysX cards are possible via a few workarounds. Machines which have independent GPUs handling...

fantastik250

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Yes it's possible with windows 7

As wolfram23 has said in this thread:
I'd like to know why people suggest getting 2 cards of the same brand (ie: 2 AMD or 2 Nvidia).

First of all, you can definitely use an AMD card and an Nvidia card in the same PC. I've done this (I use crossfire 5850s and have a GT240 for PhysX). In fact I have even had my main monitor plugged into the CF 5850s and a 2nd monitor plugged into the GT240. This works fine.

The benefit of using an AMD and an Nvidia card is that the workstation cards use totally different drivers than the gaming cards. As far as I know, you can't install both driver sets (gaming+workstation). If you can, then this is irrelevant... but I just think it would be significantly easier to run an AMD FirePro and an Nvidia GeForce with 1 set of drivers each.

As for the single monitor thing, I see no reason why you can't have both cards plugged into it. They will both be "on" and trying to output a signal at startup (POST), but in Windows you can just select the monitor to be displayed on whichever card, and disable the monitor on the other card. There might even be a way of macroing that with windows commands, although I don't know how.

Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/350935-33-cards-computer-possible
 

iyzik

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Ah i see, i figured amd and nvidia drivers wouldnt get along too nicely on the same system. yeah in skyrim it seems like you can choose from the menu but it seemed odd becuase both cards would have seperate outputs.. so idk weird. so for example if i had a gtx580 and an hd 5450 and had two monitors plugged in respectively i could start up call of duty on ultra and it would run perfect on the gtx580 monitor and then get like 2 fps on the 5450?

btw Pinhedd niice systemn
 


Yeah that's what will happen if you set the output to the right display. Hybrid PhysX machines which have AMD GPUs doing the rendering and NVidia GPUs acting as dedicated PhysX cards are possible via a few workarounds. Machines which have independent GPUs handling independent rendering tasks are a lot less common though
 
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