GTX 580 and Radeon 7850 in the same machine. Is it possible?

[ibycus]

Hi everyone!

I recently came to own two GTX 580 3GB cards though I was currently running a Radeon 7850 2GB. In the short time I've experimented I've found that one 580 has performed for me the same as my 7850 on most games. With the 580's sli'ed it kicks some ass but gets super hot! My i5 was up to around 75 degrees with settings maxed out on Crysis 3.

Anyway, the real reason I wanted a 580 was for rendering 3D in blender which requires CUDA. I find my GUI is a little laggy when I'm rendering on the 580's though, and I really liked my quiet cool 7850.

I was curious if I could use the Radeon 7850 as my main card and have one of the 580's in my machine just for rendering? Not sure how I would set that up, if its even possible, or maybe its very simple. I have a p8-z77 pro motherboard and am running windows 7. Anyone tried anything like this?

I'm also not sure what I want to do exactly just yet; keep the 580's together or try this other set up and sell one of the 580's. Any thoughts about benefits one way or the other?

Thanks for reading!

 

[thdarkshadow]

Keep the 580s in sli. To keep it cooler just underclock a little if need be or get better case airflow. 76c for an i5 is hot but not so hot you should worry. Just keep it under 80c if you can. The GPUs keep under 100c but if they go a little over i dont think it will hurt them. Is your i5 overclocked? Is it on stock cooler?
Btw i envy your build

 

[ibycus]

No, the i5 isn't overclocked but I'm considering it. As for the cooler I have an Evo212 but I must say I was getting cooler temperture with the stock cooler I originally had on it. I even reapplied thermal twice just in case but it didn't help temps. The stock idle was around high 20's to low 30's and the evo is always in the mid 30's and up. Yeah I guess running the i5 hot isn't the worst thing in the world but damn those cards where loud when pushing them in crysis 3, and it was the first time I've felt my machine so hot. I don't play a lot though it's more for rendering.