Mixke?

[tutta55]

Probably a stupid question...

Suppose you have the physical space in your case and necessary slots in your mobo, is it possible to have 2 graphic cards in your PC, an nVidia and an ATI and let both crunch different projects?

[dusti]

I don't see why that wouldn't work since boinc manager detects your gpu's and according to the gpu specs it enables work or not.

I've also been reading that when you do have 2 identical cards one should turn of sli or so cause 2 cards perform better than 1x dual card (sli), so different brands don't seem a problem for me

[UnderGod]

tested with ati 4870 and nvidia 8800gtx: not working...

as long as you only install one of the "drivers" it's ok
what I mean: I have at this moment an ati 4870 and an nvidia 6200 (3 screens ) and the nvidia is installed with the standard windows driver.
If i'd install the nvidia driver (wich you would need for cuda), then you can expect a coctail of bluescreens and instantaneous reboots :-/

Well, I'd say: try it! Maybe with the newer cards there's no trouble, but my experience was far from pleasing, and the 8800gtx was rapidly removed and sold

[dusti]

Well, I'd say: try it! Maybe with the newer cards there's no trouble, but my experience was far from pleasing

Hmz, you might be right that the drivers can conflict, only one way to find out indeed.
A little googling shows that it 2 drivers wouldn't work with vista
but should be possible with XP
this is an interesting topic (Fah)

the 8800gtx was rapidly removed and sold

mjamie, an 88OOGTX, and you sold it?
I Myself have one 8600 GT (ActiveCooling) and one 8600 GTS (PasiveCooling)

[Giorgio]

It should work, naturally as already mentioned before there could be cases where there are conflicts with the drivers.

In my case it works fine with onboard (Intel) graphics and either ATI 4850 or NVIDIA 8600GTS. But in all cases you need to either connect a second screen or put a "dummy-screen" on it and extend you desktop over both screen, if not it is a no-go.

Giorgio

[tutta55]

But in all cases you need to either connect a second screen or put a "dummy-screen" on it and extend you desktop over both screen, if not it is a no-go.

What do you mean by a dummy-screen?

[DevinK]

Dummy plug, a kind of signal reservoir which fools the graphic card.

[Giorgio]

Dummy plug, a kind of signal reservoir which fools the graphic card.

That's correct. If the card doesn't detect a screen it will not work, so either you have to connect another screen either you use a dummy-plug. I use the "dummy-plug trick" on a couple of cards and it works perfect.

All you need are 3 1/4watt 75 Ohm resistors. Here is a nice explanation on how to make one. I just stick the resitors on a DVI to VGA convertor (at the VGA side of course).

The result is something like this:



PS: the above is not my machine just an example from the net

Giorgio

[dusti]

lol, that guy's page is realy funnig, especialy his aqua computer


anyway, ontopic:
seems that some got the different dual gpu working but sometimes the ati WU's are beïng crunched by the nvidia card or reversed?

so: Go ahead and test it
We just need to know, perhaps you have a winner...

[tutta55]

so: Go ahead and test it
We just need to know, perhaps you have a winner...

For the moment my question was just hypothetical. My case cannot take 2 dual slot graphic cards. Interesting to know nevertheless.

I wonder about the cooling aspect of 2 graphic cards place next to each other. Wouldn't the one blow its hot air on the other?