AMD & Nvidia GPUS on the same MoBo?

[kevsbuild]

Hi, I'm just a noob so go easy on me

In comparisons of the AMD HD 6990 and Nvidia GTX 590 the best performer depends on the particular game being played, so I was wondering if there are any motherboards that allow you to have both AMD and Nvidia GPUS on the same Mobo at the same time and easily switch between the AMD and Nvidia GPUs to suit the particular game being played?

 

[Devastater6194]

Your a noob yet your considering getting a gtx 590 AND a 6990. Hoping you are asking out of curiosity. Think you could but the setup to be able to hold the two massive cards would be expensive. Sli 580's or crossfire 7970's would smoke them. The difference would only be a couple fps if that so it wouldn't be worth it. Also the 590 would have physx.

 

[Lmeow]

As far as I know, the only motherboards that support both ATI and nVidia GPUs being used at the same time are those with the Lucid Hydra chip. A new technology may have come out, but I don't think so. Last time I checked, only certain combinations worked well enough. On a few sites, regular CrossFire and SLI didn't work, which means in the case of the HD 6990 and GTX 590 (both powered by dual chips and thus using CrossFire and SLI respectively) would most likely not work or just present very low frame rates.

As far as switching between GPUs goes, the only GPU switching technology I'm aware of is nVidia's Optimus, but that's only laptops and with Intel GPUs as secondaries as far as I know.

The Lucid Hydra motherboards by the way are all from MSI, and I only know three which exist - P55A Fuzion for the LGA 1156 platform, Big Bang Fuzion for the LGA 1366 platform, and 870A Fuzion for the AM3 platform.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

You can use a nVidia card for PhysX and let the AMD card(s) handle the main GFX, but you are talking something completely different. The 590 and 6990 are absolute failures IMO.

The 6990 gets 762 fps in Guru3D's game test suite for $725 .... or about 95 cents per frame
The 590 gets 881 fps in Guru3D's game test suite for $750 .... or about 85 cents per frame

If you double them up in CF / SLI they go to 903 fps (6990 - $1.61 per frame) and 982 fps(590 - - $1.53 per frame) which is really terrible scaling.

OTOH .....

.... two factory OC'd 6950's in CF will get ya 759 fps at a cost of just 63 cents per frame. That's just 3 fps slower than the 6990 at just $480 as compared with the 6990's $725

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&N=-1&isNodeId=1&Description=6950+Frozr&x=0&y=0

.... two factory OC'd 560's in SLI will get ya 862 fps at a cost of just 50 cents per frame. That's just 19 fps slower than the 590 at just $460 as compared with the 590's $750

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=-1&IsNodeId=1&Description=560%20Ti%20900Mhz&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=20

 

[kajabla]

Yep. Stay away from both.
The basic problem with your idea is that it wouldn't make sense to buy both of those expensive cards and leave one idle. You could just spend $1100 on two 7970s and have insane performance at a better value, if you can call it that, by making use of both at the same time.