Using different Video Cards 970 & 560ti

[WilliamA]

Currently I am folding with an Asus 970.  I have, unused in a box, an old 560 ti that's currently doing nothing except getting older.

 

Is there any way that anyone knows of where I can fold using both? I tried installing the 560 (and updated all of the drivers to the most current available for it) and while Windows recognizes that it's there Folding doesn't see it.

 

I realize it's not the best card for folding...but even a couple extra projects a day is a couple extra a day.

[D3L3T3D]

You could also use it as a PhysX card when gaming.
 
Edit : Whoops. Irrelevant, sorry.

[Enderman]

You could also use it as a PhysX card when gaming.

"folding"

[thatguyyouknow75]

You could also use it as a PhysX card when gaming.

 

Edit : Whoops. Irrelevant, sorry.

What exactly does having a physx card do? How does that work?

[petem]

Currently I am folding with an Asus 970.  I have, unused in a box, an old 560 ti that's currently doing nothing except getting older.

 

Is there any way that anyone knows of where I can fold using both? I tried installing the 560 (and updated all of the drivers to the most current available for it) and while Windows recognizes that it's there Folding doesn't see it.

 

I realize it's not the best card for folding...but even a couple extra projects a day is a couple extra a day.

 

That's a pretty power hungry card for what you can expect to get ppd-wise.  As long as energy is cheap (or free ) where you are, go for it.

 

Where I am, that card power would have to be paid for at Tier 3 rates, about $.36/kWhr - a new GTX 750 ti would pay for itself in less than a year, and would produce roughly twice the amount of PPD or more in the process.

 

Note that that is a rough approximation because, while there are many sources of PPD for various cards, I have found no source of information on how much power cards use while folding.  For the 5 NVidia cards I have worked with, I have noticed that folding does not use as much power as is posted in GPU reviews for their typical "loaded" gaming power usage, somewhere between 50% and 75%.  As my AMD card is so old I haven't bothered to try it out, I have no idea whether this applies to all cards in general, just NVidia, of just the newer NVidia cards.

 

As they say, YMMV 

 

As for getting them to work together, I'd install just the 560 to see if the client will work with that.  The GPUs.txt file has an entry for it (well, mine does, anyway), but that doesn't always mean the client will be able to use it.  I have read that they keep adding new cards to it, but are not so good about removing the old ones that are no longer supported by the client.  I have an old 460 SE I may check out some day out of curiosity, but that will have to be a *very* slow day... :lol:.

 

If your 560 works, they *should* be able to work together, but no guarantees.  The best accepted way (per the experts at Pande Group) to normally get 2 cards to coexist is to:

• Use "Finish" to make sure all slots complete their work and don't start new ones.
• After all the slots have finished, uninstall the FAH client
• Install both cards at the same time
• Install a single set of drivers that works with both of them
• Then reinstall the client.

The client may confuse which card is which, but you can manually change their ID numbers (if that bothers you: configure/slots/(select slot)/edit/gpu-index).  They'll still work OK (if they *are* working), it's just that the "slower" card will be posting the faster results  .

 

- Pete