2 different GPU's in a pc?

[Trevor7]

Im going to sound like a potato but Is it possible to have say a EVGA GTX 970 FTW  which is what i have in my pc now paired with EVGA GTX 960 SSC?

[Jobbe03]

Sure, you just can't pair them together for better performance.

[Conan1600]

nope. not atm

[Trevor7]

So could you have like one GPU powering your main monitor and the other GPU powering the extra two monitors ?

1 minute ago, Jobbe03 said:

Sure, you just can't pair them together for better performance.

 

[KE2012]

You could set your 960 as a physX card for the 970 but it can't be SLI'd with the 970. 

[Adreyu]

I think you can use the gtx 960 as a dedicated physics card for your 970 but the gains arent stellar or anything.

[Trevor7]

Just now, KE2012 said:

You could set your 960 as a physX card for the 970 but it can't be SLI'd with the 970. 

what does having it be a PhysX card. Like what does that mean?

[jan-pieter14]

Linus even made a video a few years ago about crossfire (using 2 amd cards together for more performance) and sli (using 2 of the same nvidia cards together for more performance) in one pc. But with nvidia you unfortunately can't use 2 different cards together for more performance.

[Conan1600]

if you use a 960 as physx card you will lose performance not gain

[Joe11221]

2 minutes ago, Trevor7 said:

So could you have like one GPU powering your main monitor and the other GPU powering the extra two monitors ?

 

I think you can, but it wont be in sli

[KE2012]

Just now, Trevor7 said:

what does having it be a PhysX card. Like what does that mean?

 

It means that if you come across a game which uses PhysX (A nividia program which is not used much if at all these days AFAIK) then the 960 will do the physX work allowing the 970 to focus more on the graphics. 

 

But like Adreyu above has said, don't expect much gain from it. 

[Conan1600]

They allow calculation of additional objects and their physical interaction with a dynamic environment. They are likely at this stage to slow a game down, as they enable additional objects that the graphics card then has to render.

It's a seperate card - they're falling in price. And if you have to ask what one is, you don't want one.

a 960 might increase you but it would be a small gain

[Trevor7]

Its just a temporary thing until i upgrade My CPU and motherboard This summer and make a second PC for my movie room or taking to friends houses etc.... and thanks everybody for your help.

[Mad5cout]

There was a mobo company (I think MSI?) that was working on some tech that would allow you to SLI or xfire not only different cards but card from different brands.  Did that project die?

[Oshino Shinobu]

You can have them in the same system no problem, you just can't put them in SLI for better gaming performance. For rendering, editing, modelling, folding and so on, they can work independently, so you still get the performance of both cards, but they're technically not working together.  

You can run different monitors off different cards, yes. The performance impact of having extra monitors running is negligible, though. Running programs such as video players on the other monitors can have a larger impact on performance, but that is also down to the CPU, not just the GPU. If you're just going to be running a web browser or some monitoring software on the other monitors, then there's not much point in using a dedicated GPU for them. Even running an extra 4K + 1080p display has no significant impact on gaming performance. 
 

6 minutes ago, Trevor7 said:

what does having it be a PhysX card. Like what does that mean?

In games that use PhysX (Nvidia feature), one card can be dedicated to only running PhysX. While it can theoretically take some load off the main card, it's generally not worth it for modern cards as they can handle PhysX just fine on their own. In your case, you wouldn't see any performance improvements. 

[TheRandomness]

1 minute ago, Mad5cout said:

There was a mobo company (I think MSI?) that was working on some tech that would allow you to SLI or xfire not only different cards but card from different brands.  Did that project die?

It wasn't a mobo company, it was a game.

[Mad5cout]

No this was a motherboard controller that allowed you to do hybrid GPU combos.

 

[App4that]

5 minutes ago, Mad5cout said:

There was a mobo company (I think MSI?) that was working on some tech that would allow you to SLI or xfire not only different cards but card from different brands.  Did that project die?

DX12 allows any graphics cards to work together, even iGPU and dGPU, or Nvidia and AMD.

[Mad5cout]

I was just poking around for this and can't find anything but I distinctly remember that this was being done by a specific company that was doing some proprietary GPU controller that allowed you to mix and match cards of all types.   I can't find anything on it now so it must've died.  This was quite some time ago - I'm talking maybe 7-10 years ago now.

[App4that]

4 minutes ago, Mad5cout said:

I was just poking around for this and can't find anything but I distinctly remember that this was being done by a specific company that was doing some proprietary GPU controller that allowed you to mix and match cards of all types.   I can't find anything on it now so it must've died.  This was quite some time ago - I'm talking maybe 7-10 years ago now.

It got killed by Nvidia.

[Mad5cout]

Found it.  I was correct about it being MSI.  It was called "Fuzion" technology and it allowed you to combine an Nvidia and an ATI GPU and SLi/xfire them. 

https://us.msi.com/product/motherboard/P55A_Fuzion.html#hero-overview

https://us.msi.com/product/motherboard/870A_Fuzion.html#hero-overview

[Mad5cout]

Just now, App4that said:

It got killed by Nvidia.

figures.

[App4that]

Just now, Mad5cout said:

figures.

At the time it made sense. You have a Nvidia card in tandem with a competitors graphics card using the API and any problem that occurs can be blamed on the Nvidia card. Nividia won't say shit about DX12 though. Not with their poor asynchronous shader performance. And all the tests in DX12 show the best results is a AMD and Nvidia card so as to take advantage of the advantages of both.