Two different GPU's in one tower?

[Shanhara]

So i recently started a thread for a new build that I'm working on, and one member suggested that the same system could have two different graphics cards, one being a geforce gtx and one being a quadro. I would like to if this is possible and if there is any guide/tutorial for this kind of a setup. 

 

Original thread: 

 

[Bambi]

I just posted in the other thread, but TL/DR

It can be done, when it works it's great but you are in for a world of driver issues and will have to rebuild the system. 

I'm just running the Quadro now as it's easier. 

[Shanhara]

4 minutes ago, dieegoperi said:

Instead of spending a lot of money on a Quadro AND a GTX, wouldn't be better if you just bought some GTX Titan? Just take a look at benchmarks to see its performance in the task you want to be done

in my country, a p2000 and an asus strix 1080ti cost as much as a titan, so this would give me more value since the p2000 is much better for cad and the 1080ti has similar performance to the titan xp. 

[Bambi]

If you want one card to do both then traditionally you've been better off going AMD. The first generation Kepler based Titans were good for 2D and light 3D workloads, but the switch to Maxwell signified that they were pure gaming cards. You may not think much of double precision floating points until you have errors crop up in your drawings from them (suddenly seeing a 0.0001mm on the end of a measurement will make rage-quitting seem like a soft option)

You also need to remember you won't get driver and software support for Geforce cards in supported version of most packages, intel integrated graphics will get support first. 

 

And when you can get a decent SLI setup for the price of your yearly software licences, why would you waste the money on gaming performance when those dollars can be spent on improving your workflow and cashflow.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, Bambi said:

You may not think much of double precision floating points until you have errors crop up in your drawings from them (suddenly seeing a 0.0001mm on the end of a measurement will make rage-quitting seem like a soft option)

3d CAD doesn't use double precision, and cards like the p2000, p4000 and p6000 have the exact same fp64 as the geoforce card(basically none).

 

The difference is drivers and they limited geoforce cards to be slow in these programs.

 

Quadros have ecc on some models, but that doesn't make a huge difference and is disable by default.

 

 

[brob]

The answer doesn't change because the question is being asked in a different thread.

 

• It is possible.
• Geforce driver set needs to be used when running Geforce and Quadro.
• Most of Quadro performance benefit in modeling software like Solidworks comes from Quadro drivers, not hardware.
• GPU to which monitor is attached does processing for the display image.

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, brob said:

The answer doesn't change because the question is being asked in a different thread.

 

• It is possible.
• Geforce driver set needs to be used when running Geforce and Quadro.
• Most of Quadro performance benefit in modeling software like Solidworks comes from Quadro drivers, not hardware.
• GPU to which monitor is attached does processing for the display image.

Or you run a single system with two copies of Windows inside a KVM solution like UNRAID and just pass through each GPU to its own dedicated VM, install the respective drivers, and use network sharing to share files between the two virtual machines.

[Shanhara]

3 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Or you run a single system with two copies of Windows inside a KVM solution like UNRAID and just pass through each GPU to its own dedicated VM, install the respective drivers, and use network sharing to share files between the two virtual machines.

This can also be done in a dual boot setup right? Because that's what I'm looking at right now. Also, don't know if unraid would be in my budget since then i'd even have to get a better processor because right now i'm planning to get an 8700k I'd only have two cores per system as two would be assigned to unraid

[brob]

26 minutes ago, Shanhara said:

This can also be done in a dual boot setup right? Because that's what I'm looking at right now. Also, don't know if unraid would be in my budget since then i'd even have to get a better processor because right now i'm planning to get an 8700k I'd only have two cores per system as two would be assigned to unraid

Cores can be shared.

 

But if you are going to get a GTX 1080 Ti, why not start with that and see if it provides satisfactory performance when doing CAD work. A Quadro gpu can always be added later.

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, Shanhara said:

This can also be done in a dual boot setup right? Because that's what I'm looking at right now. Also, don't know if unraid would be in my budget since then i'd even have to get a better processor because right now i'm planning to get an 8700k I'd only have two cores per system as two would be assigned to unraid

Yeah, you can do it dual boot.

 

The benefit of running UNRAID is that then you don't have to reboot. You just keep both GPUs plugged into your monitor and switch the monitor input and keyboard/mouse usb port (I use two hubs on top of my desk to make unplugging/plugging easier) to switch between machines. Or you can even use something like synergy to share the keyboard/mouse without having to unplug anything.

 

Additionally, because both machines are live at the same time it simplifies file sharing between them, in case you need to access any of your work stuff from your personal system or visa versa.

 

P.S. if you dual boot, make sure you disable the card you won't be using with that image in device manager, otherwise you can get weird driver problems, especially on Windows 10 where it might try to automatically download GPU drivers for you.

[Shanhara]

2 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Yeah, you can do it dual boot.

 

The benefit of running UNRAID is that then you don't have to reboot. You just keep both GPUs plugged into your monitor and switch the monitor input and keyboard/mouse usb port (I use two hubs on top of my desk to make unplugging/plugging easier) to switch between machines. Or you can even use something like synergy to share the keyboard/mouse without having to unplug anything.

 

Additionally, because both machines are live at the same time it simplifies file sharing between them, in case you need to access any of your work stuff from your personal system or visa versa.

I'm gonna think about it. Just out of interest I want to know more about UNRAID since I don't know anything about it. Firstly, Will i definitely need a separate gpu and does it have to be a powerful one?

also out of interest, hypothetically speaking, is it possible to have SLI for both the VMs? 

[Sniperfox47]

3 hours ago, Shanhara said:

I'm gonna think about it. Just out of interest I want to know more about UNRAID since I don't know anything about it. Firstly, Will i definitely need a separate gpu and does it have to be a powerful one?

also out of interest, hypothetically speaking, is it possible to have SLI for both the VMs? 

The whole benefit here to UNRAID is passing through two different GPUs to their own independent OS. Yes you would need to pass seperate GPUs to the two OSes. If you're not running two seperate cards with different drivers (a Quadro and a GeForce for example) then you might as well just install Windows on bare hardware. If you're asking if UNRAID itself needs a GPU, technically no but it can be useful to leave the iGPU (if you have one) dedicated to it for configuration.

 

SLI and even Crossfire passthrough causes issues. I'm not sure why this is, something to do with the way the SLI chipset and VT-D interact. It's not something the UNRAID devs can fix. So if in the future you decide you want to run 2 1080s in SLI you'd want them on the bare hardware.

[Shanhara]

52 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

The whole benefit here to UNRAID is passing through two different GPUs to their own independent OS. Yes you would need to pass seperate GPUs to the two OSes. If you're not running two seperate cards with different drivers (a Quadro and a GeForce for example) then you might as well just install Windows on bare hardware. If you're asking if UNRAID itself needs a GPU, technically no but it can be useful to leave the iGPU (if you have one) dedicated to it for configuration.

 

SLI and even Crossfire passthrough causes issues. I'm not sure why this is, something to do with the way the SLI chipset and VT-D interact. It's not something the UNRAID devs can fix. So if in the future you decide you want to run 2 1080s in SLI you'd want them on the bare hardware.

So how do you go back from UNRAID to running windows as you generally would?

[Sniperfox47]

49 minutes ago, Shanhara said:

So how do you go back from UNRAID to running windows as you generally would?

Easiest way is to just do a full backup, reinstall Windows, and then reactivate your lisence key.

 

Alternative is to clone the virtual drive to a physical drive and then just boot off that, repairing the bootloader if needed. You might need to fiddle with some firmware in the Device manager too. And then reactivate the lisence.

[Shanhara]

On 3/2/2018 at 5:08 AM, brob said:

The answer doesn't change because the question is being asked in a different thread.

 

• It is possible.
• Geforce driver set needs to be used when running Geforce and Quadro.
• Most of Quadro performance benefit in modeling software like Solidworks comes from Quadro drivers, not hardware.
• GPU to which monitor is attached does processing for the display image.

So there is no way to run geforce and quadro using quadro drivers?

 

[brob]

5 minutes ago, Shanhara said:

So there is no way to run geforce and quadro using quadro drivers?

 

I don't believe so, but I have not tried it.