would it be possible to have a second gpu record a game while the first runs the game like normal?

[IgniVellex]

the gpu I would use for recording is the radeon pro wx 3100 and my normal gpu is the rx 6700 xt

[RONOTHAN##]

Technically yes, but it doesn't really provide any benefit for doing so, especially in the way you're trying to. The encoder is on a different part of silicon than the actual GPU cores, so having the encoder running barely affects GPU performance. It can kinda make sense if the secondary GPU was something like a Quadro P600 or P1000, something with NVENC as Nvidia's H.264 encoder is significantly better than AMD's, but if you're using AMD GPUs for both you really should just use the RX 6700 XT's encoder instead.

[WereCat]

Yes but...

 

28 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Technically yes, but it doesn't really provide any benefit for doing so, especially in the way you're trying to. The encoder is on a different part of silicon than the actual GPU cores, so having the encoder running barely affects GPU performance. It can kinda make sense if the secondary GPU was something like a Quadro P600 or P1000, something with NVENC as Nvidia's H.264 encoder is significantly better than AMD's, but if you're using AMD GPUs for both you really should just use the RX 6700 XT's encoder instead.

Not only it does not help, it actually hurts the performance since now you have to shuffle data between 2 GPUs and a CPU which uses more resources.

Modern encoders on the cards work in a way that the data does not even have to leave the GPU to RAM and CPU and back. It's all contained on the card which is the most ideal scenario (see OBS NVENC new vs old for example).

 

EDIT:

 

There is a scenario where this makes sense though. Let's say you want to use modern codec like AV1 but your card does not support it. In that case getting a cheap card that does support AV1 like Intel A380 for example will make sense... for that sole purpose.

[SorryBella]

26 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

It can kinda make sense if the secondary GPU was something like a Quadro P600 or P1000, something with NVENC as Nvidia's H.264 encoder is significantly better than AMD's

Arc A380 is supported on OBS and it can do stellar AV1 and H.264, so recording games on it would be nice. But really you can go with anything on recording games, the recording delay is not that big of a dealbreaker compared to streaming so really crank it as high as you can in terms of bitrate (resolution stick to native for obvious reason) before you hit diminishing return. For me thats around 8-15mbps.