troubleshooting Render game on GPU 1, output to display on GPU 2

[RangerLink667]

Hey guys, I have a bit of a unique problem. I'm planning on upgrading to an RTX 3070 or 3080 when I can get my hands on one, but none available have any DVI connections. Normally, I'd just use an adapter, but two of my monitors are 2560x1440 @ 120hz, and only have Dual-Link DVI as input, meaning my only option would be an Active DP to Dual-Link DVI adapter. The only ones I've had any luck with in the past are Bizlink models, but they're very expensive and I've still had disconnection issues with them too, so I'd rather avoid them if at all possible.

 

Rather than replace my monitors (expensive), I figure my best option is to try to get games to render on the 3070/3080 and output from a spare GTX 960 I have lying around (I don't have an onboard iGPU). I believe it's possible to do what I want to do, but I have no idea how to do it, or if I need additional software or driver modifications etc. Does anyone have any idea how to do this or any resources I can read more about it? Thanks in advance! 

[dilpickle]

Not possible

[Electronics Wizardy]

if you got the hardware, try it, ive done this before with mixed gpu setups. You can tell windows what gpu. to use.

[RangerLink667]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

if you got the hardware, try it, ive done this before with mixed gpu setups. You can tell windows what gpu. to use.

That's the problem, I haven't been able to find a way to tell Windows which GPU to render on and which to output display from. When I've tried in the past I can only display from the GPU I'm rendering on. How did you get your setup to work? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

48 minutes ago, RangerLink667 said:

That's the problem, I haven't been able to find a way to tell Windows which GPU to render on and which to output display from. When I've tried in the past I can only display from the GPU I'm rendering on. How did you get your setup to work? 

Does the other gpu has any output for the  desktop ? All gpus should be displaying the desktop. Try this to change the gpu to render https://winaero.com/set-preferred-gpu-apps-windows-10/

[dilpickle]

43 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Does the other gpu has any output for the  desktop ? All gpus should be displaying the desktop. Try this to change the gpu to render https://winaero.com/set-preferred-gpu-apps-windows-10/

That's for laptops. We are not talking about iGPU here.

 

He wants to have his monitors plugged into his 960 and have his 3080 render the image.

 

As I said this is not possible.

[Electronics Wizardy]

40 minutes ago, dilpickle said:

That's for laptops. We are not talking about iGPU here.

 

He wants to have his monitors plugged into his 960 and have his 3080 render the image.

 

As I said this is not possible.

Well I've done this before with 2 dgpus in a system.

 

There is nothing special about a igpu, you can render on a different gpu that your displaying from in windows.

[dilpickle]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Well I've done this before with 2 dgpus in a system.

 

There is nothing special about a igpu, you can render on a different gpu that your displaying from in windows.

For games?

[exhaustedbrit]

What you are asking for is technically a bit of a hack, if it were easy to do and universally supported, the crypto cards with no display output that sell for peanuts on eBay would sell for much more than they do. You could get something like a headless display adapter from eBay - but if you're going to do this you may as well just buy an actual adapter that suits your needs. I could go into detail about why it's not a simple thing to do, but it's not going to help you.

[dilpickle]

So maybe it can work like this?

 

You can skip all the parts about installing a hacked driver. The question is does Windows let you set an Nvidia card for low performance and another nvidia card for high performance.