Two cards no sli

[WhatComesAround]

So i have barely ever seen a video of two cards in a system that are not in sli (example), and I am curious why people have these kind of setups. Please feed me with information:)

[WereCat]

For computing performance... not games. Or as dedicated PhysX card.

[Toddwjp]

because in sli the second gpu is a slave to the first, in non sli they can both work independently for rendering or compute tasks

[WhatComesAround]

For computing performance... not games. Or as dedicated PhysX card.

Can I still game but with one gpu?

[WereCat]

Can I still game but with one gpu?

Yes

[WhatComesAround]

because in sli the second gpu is a slave to the first, in non sli they can both work independently for rendering or compute tasks

Can I make one handle one screen and the other handle another screen?

[WhatComesAround]

Yes

what if I leave one without any power nor connect it to my monitor to save energy, will the card be fine?

[WhatComesAround]

Compute and PhysX.

My girlfriend now has a quadro k2000 and 2 GeForce GTX 680's

so you can have two cards in sli and one doing background work

[WhatComesAround]

For computing performance... not games. Or as dedicated PhysX card.

And what do you mean by dedicated PhysX card, one card can process PhysX in game and the other will handle anything else?

[Toddwjp]

Can I make one handle one screen and the other handle

 another screen?

 

yes, its as simple as plugging it in,

 

thats the main us of cheap graphics cards, adding more monitors

[WhatComesAround]

yes, its as simple as plugging it in,

 

thats the main us of cheap graphics cards, adding more monitors

A few more questions 

1. what if I leave one without any power nor connect it to my monitor to save energy, will the card be fine?

2. can you have two cards in sli and one doing background work

[WereCat]

And what do you mean by dedicated PhysX card, one card can process PhysX in game and the other will handle anything else?

Yes though NVIDIA made artificial restrictions on drivers so you no longer can use AMD for gameplay and NVIDIA for PhysX.

[Toddwjp]

A few more questions 

1. what if I leave one without any power nor connect it to my monitor to save energy, will the card be fine?

2. can you have two cards in sli and one doing background work

 

1. theoretically yes however it might just be better to leave it plugged in since at idle a gpu doesn't use that much energy

2. yep, i think. never had to do this my self before but i think it can be done

[WhatComesAround]

1. theoretically yes however it might just be better to leave it plugged in since at idle a gpu doesn't use that much energy

2. yep, i think. never had to do this my self before but i think it can be done

thanks mate