Can I use multiple different GPU's in the same system?

[kami184]

I just swapped the GPU in one machine of my house for a newer one and now I have an GTX 1050 2GB laying around, so I started wondering if it is possible to use 2 different GPU's in my machine, not in SLI or for gaming, but to offload some work of my main GPU, like OBS encoding or others background softwares. NVIDIA control panel has the option to select which GPU each software will use. By the software side I think it would be fine, but I am not sure if my hardware will be enough, mainly my power supply and CPU PCI-e lanes. I do not want to let the 1050 sitting in a shelf, it still works fine, just is not very powerful.

Setup:
I5-10400F (65W TDP)
ASUS ROG STRIX B460-G
PNY RTX 3060 12GB (175W TDP)
GALAX GTX 1050 2GB (65W TDP)
MSI MAG A650BN (650W)
1x 1TB NVME SSD Gen3x4
2x 1TB HDD
2x 16GB DDR4 3200MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX

[Electronics Wizardy]

Sure you can. Both will be fored to use the same driver for both cards. I doublt it will help with encoding as the 3060 is a good amount better encoding quality wise, and the encoder is a seperate unit, and dont' use normal GPU cores.

[Motifator]

OBS is already not done on the GPU's actual side, but rather uses NVENC codec to not override the performance / bog down the card to lowly performance levels.

The only reason I'd keep that on the slot would be in order to have MORE display OUTPUTS.

Otherwise, you might as well pull it out. It'll make no actual difference and will even be worse in other means (adding more load to the PC, machine response times, etc).

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, Motifator said:

OBS is already not done on the GPU's actual side, but rather uses NVENC codec to not override the performance / bog down the card to lowly performance levels.

Not sure what you mean here, NVENC IS the GPU encoder engine.

[Salted Spinach]

5 hours ago, kami184 said:

...2 different GPU's in my machine, not in SLI or for gaming, but to offload some work of my main GPU, like OBS encoding or others background softwares. 

You can do this for encoding and it will absorb the negligible performance impact on the 3060. However I dont see any other benefit besides providing additional video output.

 

Background processes that do not benefit from GPU acceleration will not benefit from addition GPU at all. Those that do, might be tapping into the 3060 instead of the 1050. You may have noticed, many applications that offer GPU acceleration do not present the option of which accelerator to use. Those will more than likely allocate workload to the primary GPU, which in your case is the 3060. Not much you can do about that beside my proposed solution below

 

Graphics performance is not the only thing that takes a toll when recording or livestreaming. The CPU and storage drive are also involved in the writing of the video file and hosting the stream software and data transmission. If already CPU bottlenecked, the additional CPU workload will impact game performance. If the game you play takes a lot of reading from the drive, the addition writing workload can cause hitching in the game.

 

The absolute best solution is a cheap video capture solution and perform the encoding/streaming on a separate device. You can use a laptop, cheap NUC (Intel Quicksync) or mini PC ( H264 for old or AMD processors) for this. There are other benefits to this approach:

• Added streaming privacy. If you host a livestream from a separate streaming PC and execute scene switching correctly, viewers see the desktop and non-game content of the streaming PC and not that of your personal gaming PC
• Offloading of the streaming and background applications to the streaming PC. For example if you have many Google chrome tabs open, you can do that on the streaming PC instead of competing with the game for CPU/RAM resources on the gaming PC
• Ability to video capture the entire boot process and BIOS screen before the OS boots up, on the gaming PC
• Ability to video capture and continue streaming when the gaming device (in this case your gaming PC) malfunctions
• Ability to video capture and continue streaming with Windows applications when there is a change of output device (for example you decide to play a console game mid-stream)
• Separation of the recording/streaming system isolates your recordings and stream configuration from any data loss or corruption on the gaming PC. Changing a component, reinstalling Windows, or changing out the entire gaming PC has no impact on your workflow

There are also other benefits to having a separate PC. For example the power savings for not having to run an exceedingly powerful CPU/GPU when not gaming, function as a spare PC when the main one dies, and it can also work as a more power efficient NAS host

[Brian McKee]

Switch the CPU to one with quicksync and use that to offload to OBS. Much more power efficient and less conflict with drivers. 10th gen intel quicksync will absolutely cream the encoding quality on your ancient 1050.

[Motifator]

10 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Not sure what you mean here, NVENC IS the GPU encoder engine.

It uses a dedicated encoder I mean... which is not in relationship with the other performance metrics of the GPU.