Needs advice on Adding a Second Graphics Card

[TLCJohn]

Hi there

I am looking for some advice please. I am running a 3 monitor setup at the moment, but the computer is having redraw problems and seems to be quite slow when running Photoshop, in-design and Premiere. Not all at the same time.

Back story: The motherboard is Intel Core i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz 2.93GHz - Memory 6.00 GB running windows 8.1 64bit When the computer was built at PC World. It came with a 1GB Graphics Card GF9800 GT DVI = VGA + HDMI DDR2, 1GB PCI Express.

Now to run three monitors I pulled out the card and added a Geforce GTX 650 2GB card but things are still slow.

I have another graphics card MSI GT630 4GB DDR3 PCI-E 2.0 card.

Here is the question, I have enough PCI Slots on the motherboard for a second card, can the Geforce GTX 650 2GB and MSI GT630 4GB DDR3 PCI-E 2.0 run together and if so how? I have been reading about crossfire and SLI but they are going over my head. Any helpful advice would be great.

Thank you

Kind regards
John

 

[Woody1999]

Yes, you can SLI two different cards, but the i7 870 only has 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes, which means you'll only be able to run the two cards at x8 each. In addition two lower end cards in SLI aren't as good as one good modern card. Because of this, I'd recommend upgrading to a cheap but powerful enough modern card like an R9 270 or 280.

Woody

 

[bignastyid]

You cannot SLI a 650 and a 630. Besides the fact that neither card actually supports SLI, SLI also requires the cards to use the same model of gpu, have the same amount of vram and an SLI compatible motherboard.

 

[TLCJohn]

Hi there Woody

Thank you for your quick reply, I my sound thick here but are you saying yes I can run the two cards or no I should not run the two cards together and what do you mean about the 8x part?

My thought was to us the 2GB card for email and Notepad++ Coding and the 4GB card for the artwork and video. Are my thoughts not right on this?

Kind regards
John

 

[bignastyid]

Yes, you can SLI two different cards, but the i7 870 only has 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes, which means you'll only be able to run the two cards at x8 each. In addition two lower end cards in SLI aren't as good as one good modern card. Because of this, I'd recommend upgrading to a cheap but powerful enough modern card like an R9 270 or 280.

Woody

Sorry but you are wrong. You cannot SLI 2 different gpus they have to be the same gpu and have the same amount of vram. They can be from different manufacture and have different clock speeds. Plus neither the GTX 650 or the GT630 support SLI.

 

[bignastyid]

You can still run both cards in the system but the 2nd card isn't going to help performance much, about all it would be good for is running extra monitors.

 

[TLCJohn]

Hi there Grandmaster

What is the difference between SLI and CrossFire I think they call it. I have been looking on YouTube and people seem to just slip a second card in to computer. Would doing this do any harm to the computer itself? Have a llok at this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zHirLYDoAg

Kind regards
John

 

[bignastyid]

SLI= Nvidia
Crossfire= AMD

I have built many rigs that have a beefy primary card(gaming or workstation) then 1 or 2 cheaper cards just for extra monitors(productivity). It is best if all the cards use the same driver, when the cards use different drivers it can be difficult to get the setup to work properly due to driver conflicts.

 

[Ra_V_en]

He is talking about other software than games, in which case obviously you don't need to SLI things.
I'm not sure what OP means by redrawing problems, is there any way to show it on any video on YT? It might not be a a hardware problem but some kind of software related issues.