DirectX 12 duel graphics cards without sli/crossfire?

[PS3toPC]

Hello,
I was searching on the internet today to find out more about DirectX 12 and it's features and I noticed that one guy said that with DirectX 12, you can run two graphics cards without any SLI or Crossfire, and the main card will carry out heavy loads and the secondary card will carry out background operations... Is this true?

I have a MSI GTX 970 4GB in my system as my main card, but i also have my previous card the MSI R7 250 2GB OC Edition... Could i connect my R7 250 and run perfectly with the added benefits mentioned??

Cheers!

For the record, i don't believe this at all...

 

[JimmoR3M]

Check out this article mate. http://wccftech.com/microsoft-confirms-directx-12-amd-nvidia-multigpu-configurations/

It's a pretty interesting read but basically they confirm it's definitely possible but it has it's challenges.

"Architectural differences make it hard to use graphics cards from different vendors for real-time latency-sensitive rendering, like in the case of contemporary 3D engines. Multi-GPU technologies used for real-time rendering require two GPUs to be synchronized not only in terms of feature set, but also in terms of performance and memory latency. All of these limitations make it really questionable whether such a technology could eventually take off."

There's also a potential bandwidth issue with PCI 3.0. I wouldn't hold your breath for this though.

 

[4745454b]

I wouldn't worry about bandwidth. The new cards from AMD all use PCIe over a CF link.

Possible yes, but I'd wait for demos before planing on this.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

It's being heavily speculated that you can run two GPUs of different models in DX12. You could even run a GTX 970 with an R9-390X if you want to, but there's no telling how both NVIDIA and AMD drivers will get along in the same Windows install. You should wait until all the details are finalized. I'm waiting to get a GTX 980 Ti myself until I can find out how all of this will work.

 

[PS3toPC]

Wow, this looks very promising indeed, MY motherboard (MSI Z97 Pc Mate) hasa PCI x16 3.0 and 2.0... Think it will be all good to mix and match two cards still?

 

[migronesien]

I dont think that the Nvidia card will work together with the AMD card in any DX not even in future DXs. The R7 250 wont be a big help to the 970 anyway.

But it will be possible to finally add the VRAM of SLI/CF settings together. So if you get a second 970 in the future you'll be able to use 8gb of VRAM instead of 4 like in DX11.

 

[JimmoR3M]

If, theoretically, you could do that with DX12 the potential issues of having one card running on PCI 3.0 and one being limited to 2.0... I hate to use the word bottleneck but you'd definitely see that it won't run well.

 

[PS3toPC]

Cheers migronesien! I think i'll be getting another in the future! xD

I've never thought about this but how does overclocking work with sli? Can you over clock the second card, and will DirectX 12 work this way?

 

[migronesien]

Cheers migronesien! I think i'll be getting another in the future! xD

I've never thought about this but how does overclocking work with sli? Can you over clock the second card, and will DirectX 12 work this way?

You'll need to OC both cards to the same clock rates. If one card is clocked higher it will just work on the same clock rate as the other lower clocked card. So either get the exact same card again or get any 970 and do the OC by yourself. Pretty easy to match the OCing of two different cards.

 

[PS3toPC]

Thanks again, that's all my questions answered, thanks everyone!