Can I Use A RX 580 With My GTX 1080 To Mine Etherium Or Stream As I Game?

ItzJosh

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Apr 18, 2015
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Hey guys, so I will start off by listing my specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700x
GPU: GTX 1080 8GB
RAM: 16 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX
MainBoard: MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon
PSU: 750 Watt
Hard Drive: 560GB SSD, 1TB HDD

So I currently like to play games like Overwatch on Ultra, at 170 - 180 FPS, and when I don't play games I mine Etherium, but when I do this since I only have one GPU and no on board graphics it lags a bit, even if I do turn down the intensity, so I have decided to get a new GPU.

My first question is, would I be able to use a RX 580 in the same system as the GTX 1080 AND mine Etherium on the RX 580 as I play games like Overwatch on Ultra on my GTX 1080? I have heard of people gaming on some low end games, but would I still be able to do it on Ultra?

Another question is, would I be able to use the RX 580 for stuff like streaming the game that I am playing on my GTX 1080?

Basically, in the end I am not looking to SLI my cards, as I do not want to play in 4K. I just want to have a card to mine off of 24/7, and maybe sometimes stream on, is this possible with a RX 580 and a GTX 1080?
 
Solution
I do not know about the streaming portion of your question, but I can answer about the mining.
You can install both cards in your machine and use them both to mine, and you can mine while gaming. It's as simple as having two miner short cuts on your desktop, one shortcut uses both cards, the other shortcut only uses the secondary card. When you want to game you close the dual miner, and open the single.

As you'd be using the 1080 as the main card, overwatch isn't very demanding for a 1080, so if you limited the FPS... it's even possible to mine with your 1080, and 580, while gaming. I do this in my 1070 machine when I play less demanding games, lol. Just involves a bit of tweaking in the miner configuration, so that it doesn't work...
From a GPU standpoint it seems impossible. I've never seen an ATI and nVidia card both running at the same time in the same system. No idea how the OS would handle 2 sets of display drivers working at the same time without crashing. Generally it's either SLI or Crossfired cards and you can assign graphics processing resources to particular things a little bit. Then there is issues with CPU or RAM usage in mining effecting your game on ultra. I've never done mining myself but I think they need those resources freed up to them.

Maybe some mining expert can correct me but I don't believe you can run an nVidia card and an ATI card in the same system at the same time at all.
 
A quick bit of googling tells me that it is possible to mine with AMD and Nvidia cards in the same rig. So I would assume it's possible to mine with one and game with the other.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/6g1tul/mix_nvidia_and_amd_cards/
http://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/comment/74834

Don't know how/why you'd want to stream with the 580 while you game with the 1080 though. I thought Nvidia had built in streaming functionaility (shadowplay or whatnot)? And if not, you have an 8 core/16 thread CPU, so offloading streaming to the CPU shouldn't be a problem.
 


Streaming is not hard on my GTX 1080 or anything, but if I had a second card like a RX 580, I may as well use it to take some load off of the gtx 1080 right? I wouldn't be using shadow play to stream anyway, i'd be using OBS.
 
Not that I would do this, it seems more trouble and expense than it's worth, but if I did I'd think about creating a virtual machine. You run your game on the 1080 in Windows, while you have a virtual machine running another OS with your mining software. Configure that to use the 580.
 
I do not know about the streaming portion of your question, but I can answer about the mining.
You can install both cards in your machine and use them both to mine, and you can mine while gaming. It's as simple as having two miner short cuts on your desktop, one shortcut uses both cards, the other shortcut only uses the secondary card. When you want to game you close the dual miner, and open the single.

As you'd be using the 1080 as the main card, overwatch isn't very demanding for a 1080, so if you limited the FPS... it's even possible to mine with your 1080, and 580, while gaming. I do this in my 1070 machine when I play less demanding games, lol. Just involves a bit of tweaking in the miner configuration, so that it doesn't work the card at 100% (lowering the intensity).
 
Solution


Well I've learned something today thanks. I was sure the OS would implode with 2 different cards.

 


Windows doesn't like to play nice when using tons of GPUs, like 8+, but with less than 4 its more than manageable :)