Can I combine 2 graphic cards for better performance

[gladinchristy626]

Will i get better performance if I use nvidia 1030 2gb ddr5 and nvidia 730 2gb ddr5 together

 

[Gam3r01]

No, not really. DX12 promised the ability to do this, but it was never implemented.

 

[clarkjd]

Will i get better performance if I use nvidia 1030 2gb ddr5 and nvidia 730 2gb ddr5 together

Short answer : no!
longer answer: you can only SLI or combine two equal cards, and even then it's a crapshoot as to whether or not you would see any improvement. Some games even perform worse with two cards than they do with one.

 

[Martell1977]

While you can run two different cards together, they wont work together as you want. You want SLI for nVidia or Crossfire for AMD, which is where they share the load.

For two different cards, you can set one to do the Physx calculations, while the other does the general work. Not sure this would be very beneficial unless you play one of those rare games that includes Physx.

Also, nVidia does not allow SLI on any cards below the 1070, and they do not have a connector for the required bridge. AMD however, allows Crossfire on all their cards, but they use the PCI-e pipeline so that no bridge is required.

In short:
nVidia: SLI = Running two of the same card to increase performance, no allowed on models below 1070
Card run two different cards, with one being dedicated to Physx.

AMD = Crossfire enabled on all cards, need two of the same card, however, some lower end ones are capable of "hybrid Crossifre" meaning their iGPU can work with a lower end dGPU to increase performance(this never really caught on, but I believe is still possible).


Note: As mentioned, some games will benefit from a multi-card setup, some will not be affected while others will see a performance decrease. It really comes down to what program you are running.