Two different GPU, for two monitors?

[Selzmultibox]

Hey

(I kinda lost my login information to my original DB account "Selz")


I need to know if I can use two completely different GPU's in one PC

GTX 770 and ATI 4870

I pretty much just want to take the load of my gaming card, playing from primary monitor.
Could I use the other GPU to watch twitch or netflix, on my 2nd monitor, simutaniously?

I am not sure if its possible, or what could happen - "driver inteferrence" perhaps?
I am using windows 8.1

[mbox_bob]

You can use onboard Intel and dedicated card, so the precedent has been set for different manufacturers.

Other than that, it is generally a yes, you can do that.

[Selzmultibox]

Thank you, mbox_bob

:)

Have a great day.

[Selzmultibox]

Okay I got this to load, but for some reason I don't think its doing what I wish to do.

It's almost as if they are still being shared, my old 4870 shows it has 2gb vram, as my GTX 770 got.

and I tried with world of warcraft, running 4 clones on my old card, and main char on the GTX770, just to crank up graphics on main

However I dont feel I gained any performance boost that way, to the graphics of my main char

Running around stormwind my CPU is at 50% and Memory at 40%

Im running all DX9, clones at 15fps and I tried to put my main char at 120fps "locked in isboxer" just to see.

But I don't gain anything, feels exactly the same as running a single GTX 770

Any ideas ?

[mbox_bob]

Adding a second graphics card comes with a whole new set of potential issues. It also may not fix any perceived performance issues if they aren't stemming from the graphics subsystem, but rather CPU, Memory, Network etc (yes I saw your percentages, but if my cpu is running at 13%, I usually double check what's going on, because it usually means that a single core is pegged at 100% on some single threaded process. percentages are ok, but not totally useful).

Now if you have introduced Cross Monitor Swapping, or essentially have your window layout setup so a game is initialized on one graphics card, and then displayed on a monitor powered by the other graphics card, then you will get even worse performance than before, because the card that the game is initialized on will be the card the game is rendered on, and then all that data has to be pushed across the bus to the other graphics card and then displayed. This will be a highly probable result if you have not changed your ISBoxer configuration to make sure that anything displayed on a given monitor is initialized there too (ISBoxer usually has a RESET region in the Window Layout Swap Groups. This is what is used to initialize the game window and will determine the rendering graphics card).

More detail on that can be found on this page. http://www.isboxer.com/wiki/GPU_Management#Powering_separate_monitors


ps. Just thought I'd add that Cross Monitor Swapping and it's deficiencies are not an ISBoxer limitation. This is a Windows things, for which you can find all over the MS forums if you search for it..
Actually it is more a driver/hardware thing and a rather complex one; swapping the rendering from one card to another as you drag the window from one monitor to another is just rather tricky framebuffers and the like have to swap over from source to destination, and at which point should you attempt it? then there is the synchronising of the displays and the ramdac/lvds/tlms.
Imagine if you were watching a video with half displayed on each graphics card/monitor, which card is doing the rendering. And the portion being shunted to the other card for display, it needs to be on the same Frame that the render card is, otherwise you have half your video lagging behind the other half. This means that there has to be a whole lot of synchronisation going on, and this in turn will cause frame rates to plummet. It works better when the output is not spanned between the different displays because then it is up to the displaying card to output the complete set of pixels on it's own, but then on a video you then have Audio Sync too, so it brings in a load more variables. etc. It gets rather complex as you get into it..

[Selzmultibox]

Okay so disabling that Cross Monitor Swapping did it.

Clones at 2nd monitor, in DX9, 50% render, everything absolutely low, and locked at 30fps /perfect

Main, on main monitor, in DX11, 200% render, everything ultra, except shadows and liqud details running at 60+ FPS in stormwind /perfect

Now, do I need two copies of WoW to have different game executeables, because otherwise I have to set the details everytime.

so I make one copy of wow, for my main, with super quality
and one for my clones with.

I think this would be good, ive been looking for changing the game executable in isboxer, but I can't seem to find that anymore.

Can you gimme a hint to where I just change the executeable? :)

Cheers for ur help

[Selzmultibox]

Perhaps

This is not actually required, it seems low the game remembers which chars are running in low quality and which is in high.

[mbox_bob]

Settings for WOW are in the Config.WTF file (from what I can recall anway). ISBoxer will create separate copies of this for each character if you have select WOW as the game when you configured the characters in the Quick Setup Wizard. If you created the characters manually, then you should run the Virtual File Wizard, select WOW and then add all the characters which do not have the 3 WOW virtual files.

The Virtual Files that are created (the per character copies) should then be used to save the individual character settings, so you can have different settings per character. The redirection all happens behind the scenes.

This also saves you from having multiple installations of WOW, which does nothing but chew up disk space, and prevents Windows from optimizing memory usage when you run the games. Multiple game installs should be avoided (sometimes you just can't, but where you can, avoid it).

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Don't forget the macros for swapping detail levels. https://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Adual-boxing.com+farclip

[Farmay]

Don't forget the macros for swapping detail levels. https://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Adual-boxing.com+farclip (http://www.loveandbuyit.com)










Yeah i remember this and totally aware of it's working. Thanks for recalling.