Possible to run 2 different GPU?

[dancook]

So I've just got a GTX 480, I wonder whether it's possible to run my ATI HD 4870 in there with it. One monitor each perhaps?

[katsurahama]

Ive wondered the same thing. I have an nvidia 8800gt sitting in a box and a radeon 5770 in my computer...

[dancook]

Well I couldn't wonder any more.. they're both in and my pc is up

going to do an ATI driver install then see if it's made a difference :)

[dancook]

So far so good, popped my main up to ultra on everything and it's sweet as a nut.

Have yet to try it in stormwind, but i didn't wanna hearth my chars atm.

[katsurahama]

How does isboxer handle switching windows if when different cards are running? Or does isboxer just act as a go-between for the user and the OS? What i mean is, are there settings you have to fiddle with in isboxer/innerspace or is it all handled behind the scenes without any user interaction required?

Because if you have the main window on card one and the four slaves on card two, whenyou switch from toon a to toon b showing up on the main monitor, then at that point card one is handling toon b and card two is handling toons a,c,d,e. This would have to be the case since card two is not connected to monitor one and card one is not connected to monitor two.

Is this even possible without an SLI setup?

[Glenni]

I thought SLI didnt work in windowed mode - yet?

[katsurahama]

I thought sli (nvidia's system) worked but that ati's system (eyefinity) doesnt.

[dancook]

Well the extended desktop is handled by windows so I assume that's doing what's required.

Well I'll be damned.. Stormwind still isn't smooth - but i do have all the settings up on my main and half way up on my slaves.

What do I need to do now to improve that!!!

[ElectronDF]

I might suggest using MSI Afterburner and/or GPU-Z to check the loading of your GPUs. That way you can tell easily what is getting used and how much.

[daanji]

I"ve been wondering the same thing.

I just upgraded from a Nvidia 260 GTX to a Nvidia 560 GTX.


My old card is just sitting in storage right now. I wonder if I could put it back into my system and SLI the two cards togehter.

[Iru]

I thought sli (nvidia's system) worked but that ati's system (eyefinity) doesnt.

Eyefinity is ATI's desktop expansion software. The ATI equivalent to SLI is Crossfire.

And for the record, neither system improves the performance of multiboxing. In fact they can make it worse.

[katsurahama]

When you hook two cards together via SLI, they run at the speed of the slowest card.

[Umbaalo]

I"ve been wondering the same thing.

I just upgraded from a Nvidia 260 GTX to a Nvidia 560 GTX.


My old card is just sitting in storage right now. I wonder if I could put it back into my system and SLI the two cards togehter.


According to Nvidia, you should only connect two cards that are the same model number together. Haven't verified this, just stating what they have up. You can hook together two different makes of the same card and it'll work fine. (a gigabyte gtx 580 and a zotac gtx 580 linked, for example.).

And I'll mention this again - SLI does not improve WoW performance, actually decreases it somewhat. (This occurs with a few other games as well...). I'd recommend buying one single beast of a gpu and rolling with that instead of paying much more for two cards and being very disappointed.

[dancook]

I'm wondering if I should have my more powerful GTX580 power the slaves and have my 4870 on the master - it's pretty hard to consider doing this..

But it might improve performance a bit more :)

[Lax]

You CAN run multiple cards independently; however, regardless of whether they are the same model or not, you should NOT use SLI or Crossfire for multiboxing. SLI and Crossfire are designed for running one game in Full Screen mode and may not do anything at all in Windowed Mode. (though I think one of them recently had a driver update to add windowed mode support?)

I've updated ISBoxer.com's multiple video card guide with new info for ISBoxer 38:
http://isboxer.com/index.php/component/content/article/3-general/21-using-multiple-video-cards

The new Quick Facts section at the top is relevant whether you're using ISBoxer or not, and pretty much covers all the multi-GPU bases. This stuff hasn't really changed since SLI came out, except for the change in Windows Vista/7

[dancook]

And finally before we move on to the instructions, it will benefit you to understand that using multiple video cards is not the same as multiple CPUs. It is a common misconception that "GPU Affinity" can be configured similar to "CPU Affinity." This is not the case. Direct3D windows are tied to a monitor, not to a GPU. This unfortunately means that you cannot have a window rendered by a GPU that is not powering a monitor. As of ISBoxer 38, ISBoxer automatically selects the monitor for your game instances, based on your Window Layout.

Lax, that is perfect - the exact information I needed.

Each GPU will process for it's own screen and not the other - this means it is worth having my old vcard in the machine alongside the new one.

Note one's ATI and one's Nvidia - i couldn't possibly SLI them anyway.

[dancook]

Ok it was JUST this bit I needed to read, thanks Lax for bringing this to my attention.


Selecting a GPU for rendering does not work like CPU Affinity; it is controlled by the monitor assigned to the game, and your video drivers. ISBoxer 38 will automatically render the game with the appropriate GPU.

[alcattle]

never heard of running both kind of gpu's in one system. Always thought the drivers hammered each other. Learn something all the time

[dancook]

never heard of running both kind of gpu's in one system. Always thought the drivers hammered each other. Learn something all the time

I believe it's a windows 7 thing :) earlier ones had certain limitations i believe