AMD and Nvidia same computer

[FastGunna]

I recently upgraded from a Sapphire 7970 GHz to an EVGA 980 FTW, there are a few games such as battlefield and grand theft auto which seem to disagree with the nvidia drivers. My experience as a nvidia user has not been good and I frequently joke about buying a fury and ditching the 980, today I was joking that i should just slap the 7970 in the second pcie slot and use it in all the games the 980 gives me issues in, but now I am curious if thats a viable solution?

So would it be practical to add the 7970 in addition to the 980 and just switch display adapters when I want to play one of the problem games? How would I switch between the two, just select one as primary adapter or physically plugging the monitors into the other card? Would this be likely to introduce instability or performance issues?

Specs:
i7 5820k
ASRock X99 Extreme4 ATX
16GB G. Skill Ripjaws 2400 (4x4)
Corsair HX1000i
WD Caviar Blue 1x 1TB 2x 500GB
Samsung 840 Series 120GB SSD

 

[Darkbreeze]

So long as the monitor you are gaming on is the one attached to the card you wish to use during that event, then yes, you COULD do that. With your PSU model you would probably even be ok as far as power requirements for both cards is concerned. You would either need dual monitors and move your game to the screen connected to the card you wish to game on or switch the display input manually by moving the cable from one card to the other before firing up your unit.

 

[FastGunna]

I already use 2 monitors daily, 1 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236313 and 1 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824025122. So I could just plug one monitor into each card and it wouldn't give me issues if I launched problem games on which ever monitor the 7970 plugged into? I kind of assumed that if both were actively displaying than there would be a driver conflict. I suppose it probably wouldn't hurt anything to just try it and it beats setting up my second computer just for 3-4 games the 980 hates.

 

[MarkW]

My guess is that you did not uninstall the AMD drivers before you installed the Nvidia card, and those games remembered that the last driver they talked to was an AMD driver, and its still loading, so they keep talking to it.

 

[FastGunna]

My guess is that you did not uninstall the AMD drivers before you installed the Nvidia card, and those games remembered that the last driver they talked to was an AMD driver, and its still loading, so they keep talking to it.

There are no remnants of the AMD drivers on my system, I have had 3 980 FTW's because the 1st was unstable which I verified by using Display Driver Uninstaller as well as deleting MSI Afterburner, after which I want through 5 driver revisions, the 3 latest at the time 1 from a year earlier and one from 2 years earlier. Every time I changed drivers I used DDU to uninstall AMD, Intel (once) and Nvidia drivers just to be sure. The second card was DOA and the third works and has had 4 different driver versions on its own, all with DDU used in between on both AMD and Nvidia. I have also gone through all my drives manually and checked for any AMD drivers and found none. The issues I am experiencing which I have googled specifically have all been nvidia driver related which is why my next GPU will not be nvidia.

Edit: I'm not intending to bash nvidia at all, not everyone experiences the issues I have but the fact is I am a gamer who is having issues with gaming because i chose team green this time around even after never having a single issue on team red.

 

[Darkbreeze]

It will work. Or it should, so long as the drivers play nice on the same machine. People use adversarial cards for PhysX use all the time.

 

[FastGunna]

It will work. Or it should, so long as the drivers play nice on the same machine. People use adversarial cards for PhysX use all the time.

Alright thanks, I'll give it a shot tomorrow then.

 

[Paul17041993]

A couple things to keep in mind with mixing AMD and nvidia cards in the same system;
- PhysX will always be forced disabled/minimum-only unless you patch it with a hack that allows it to work again, this only occurs if both cards are present in the system. When only either one of the cards are in the system PhysX can be run at high settings normally.
- If you were to say, uninstall nvidia drivers or software while the AMD card is present or in use, the procedure can corrupt windows files and settings and brick the system. I've had that happen to me but fortunately I could still get it into safemode and manually remove all graphical drivers and windows would work again and re-install the drivers from scratch.

 

[Darkbreeze]

He is not intending to use one of the cards for PhysX. That was only meant as a nod to the fact that they CAN be in the same system.

 

[FastGunna]

A couple things to keep in mind with mixing AMD and nvidia cards in the same system;
- PhysX will always be forced disabled/minimum-only unless you patch it with a hack that allows it to work again, this only occurs if both cards are present in the system. When only either one of the cards are in the system PhysX can be run at high settings normally.
- If you were to say, uninstall nvidia drivers or software while the AMD card is present or in use, the procedure can corrupt windows files and settings and brick the system. I've had that happen to me but fortunately I could still get it into safemode and manually remove all graphical drivers and windows would work again and re-install the drivers from scratch.

Thanks i'll keep that in mind, physx isnt really something I care about so I wouldn't be missing anything.

 

[Paul17041993]

He is not intending to use one of the cards for PhysX. That was only meant as a nod to the fact that they CAN be in the same system.

No but it disables PhysX regardless is the point I'm making, so some games such as the borderlands series will look deteriorated. Whereas when only either one of the two cards exist PhysX will behave normally.

If you don't have any games that use PhysX then you don't have to worry about that point.

 

[Darkbreeze]

And then there's this, but since your 980 is the stronger card, you probably wouldn't want to do it anyhow.

http://sergeantmerrell.com/the-hybrid-physx-mod-using-both-an-amd-and-nvidia-gpu-together/


With the advent of DirectX12 on Windows 10 systems, this might become a moot point before long in any case.

 

[Paul17041993]

And then there's this, but since your 980 is the stronger card, you probably wouldn't want to do it anyhow.

http://sergeantmerrell.com/the-hybrid-physx-mod-using-both-an-amd-and-nvidia-gpu-together/


With the advent of DirectX12 on Windows 10 systems, this might become a moot point before long in any case.

such is a hack you can try, though at the time I tested it (about last year) I couldn't get anything working, so it's a fair gamble...

and yea, when DX12 (and vulkan) games start to arise the AMD + nvidia combination should become much more useful.

 

[Darkbreeze]

It really might not even require a directx12 compatible game. If Nvidia makes the necessary changes to their driver framework to NOT automatically disable PhysX in the API, which hopefully will happen sooner than later, it should be default eliminate those issues. Since they've recently agreed to support Freesync, perhaps we'll be seeing further changes soon.

 

[FastGunna]

Borderlands 2 Is the only game I own that does anything worth noting with physx enabled and honestly just seems like a gimmick to me. I played it for 150 hours on the 7970 and who knows how long on a PS3 so I wouldn't be missing much. Don't get me wrong, it's cool but if I was still using AMD as my main card i wouldn't even consider a dedicated PhysX card. Maybe when the next batch of GPU's launch if AMD impresses I'll consider making the 980 a dedicated PhysX card if it works without any tweaking but otherwise I just don't care enough about it.

However I will remember the bit about uninstalling Nvidia drivers with the AMD card installed because that would be a potential headache that would seem to be easily avoided.

I am thinking that I might not bother using the AMD card right now because that would probably increase my idle power consumption a bit and I am trying to cut back where I can even if it would be less than $5 a month difference. Then again I could play GTA V in 2 days, crash 3 times in an hour and rage install it, who knows. Now I know it is an option.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Good luck either way Gunna.