2nd GPU Use Case

[Slackdog82371]

So recently I scored a 3070 ti from evga. I still have my Msi Ventus OC 1660 ti, and I was wondering if there was any use for my 1660 ti in the same system. I am well aware that my 3070 ti can handle everything I need, but I think it would be funny to stuff the guy in there too. Could it be used to be a dedicated obs encoder while the 3070 ti is used for games. Is it possible to use both cards in one pc like that?

[Fasauceome]

1 minute ago, yelowww said:

Could it be used to be a dedicated obs encoder while the 3070 ti is used for games.

the 3070ti has a dedicated nvenc encoder already on it, same as the 1660 ti, and it's better to boot

 

you really won't have a way to leverage both cards together to improve anything

[Shimejii]

Honestly its probably good just to keep it as a backup incase something happens to your current card, or setup a system for a family member or w/e, or a NAS system?

[RONOTHAN##]

There really isn't a point to having it in there for any sort of performance reasons, the 3070 Ti will be able to handle encoding and everything just fine with very little performance loss. TBH the only reason I can think to have both GPUs in a system like this is to have the 1660Ti dedicated to mining, but that's the only thing I can think of. 

[Alireza]

1 hour ago, yelowww said:

So recently I scored a 3070 ti from evga. I still have my Msi Ventus OC 1660 ti, and I was wondering if there was any use for my 1660 ti in the same system. I am well aware that my 3070 ti can handle everything I need, but I think it would be funny to stuff the guy in there too. Could it be used to be a dedicated obs encoder while the 3070 ti is used for games. Is it possible to use both cards in one pc like that?

you can mine the 1660 ti

i don't know the hash rate but its better then nothing

[RONOTHAN##]

1 hour ago, Alireza said:

you can mine the 1660 ti

i don't know the hash rate but its better then nothing

With the couple miners I know, they tend to really go after 1660 Supers, since apparently they're some of the most effective $/Hash that you've actually got a chance at buying (according to them). I'd assume that the 1660Ti will basically be the same but slightly more expensive.

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, yelowww said:

So recently I scored a 3070 ti from evga. I still have my Msi Ventus OC 1660 ti, and I was wondering if there was any use for my 1660 ti in the same system. I am well aware that my 3070 ti can handle everything I need, but I think it would be funny to stuff the guy in there too. Could it be used to be a dedicated obs encoder while the 3070 ti is used for games. Is it possible to use both cards in one pc like that?

You're probably not going to get much usage of a second GPU.

 

There's three decent options, keep in mind that these are not viable in many cases.

1. Use the 1660 as a PhysX card. This would of course, only help if a game was very intense PhysX, which hasn't really been the case for a while.

2. Use the 1660 as an encoder card for streaming. The encoder in the 1660 can do h.264 and h.265, though setups (eg OBS) don't really let you use two separate GPU's in this way. Basically there is no reason to use a second nvidia card as an encoder when the first card can do this with less overhead.

3. Use the 1660 as a ML card (eg TTS) The problem here is that ML software tends to grab all GPU's. So if you can adjust the settings to only grab the 1660, you can viably get away with using something that would otherwise glom onto the the entire GPU. 

 

That said, if I had a workstation board that I could stick 3 pre-owned 2080's in, I would use that as a ML system, with each card doing a different part of the ML pipeline. When you mix cards of different generations and capabilities, you get a lot of undefined behavior in software. 

 

So for gaming, no your best use case is probably going to be using the encoder/decoders for hardware acceleration (eg OBS, NDI HX), or driving a 3d avatar on top of a video so it doesn't impair the main GPU's performance. 

 

[Heats with Nvidia]

If you can use some heat, just let it run folding@home Its not as good for your wallet as mining, as bad for the environment, but much better for humanity.

[Rysters Tech]

Having a second GPU in your system, particularly one that doesnt match the first, isnt all that useful for most people. If anything keep it as a backup or give it to someone in your family who could really use a GPU as a 1660ti is certainly better than intel or even AMD's iGPU's. 

[Slackdog82371]

6 hours ago, SiliconMagician said:

Having a second GPU in your system, particularly one that doesnt match the first, isnt all that useful for most people. If anything keep it as a backup or give it to someone in your family who could really use a GPU as a 1660ti is certainly better than intel or even AMD's iGPU's. 

Yea I tried to lend my gpu to my friend for 50$ where I would give him 25$ back when he got a gpu finally, but he declined. Another person suggested folding at home. I may try that