[SOLVED] Question about using two GPUs at the same time

[Budmanlxxix]

When I first built my computer I couldn't afford a GPU at the time and my motherboard does not have an integrated GPU. So temporarily I purchased a cheap $50 graphics card just to hook my two monitors up to. Later when I could finally afford a better GPU and after I purchased it I realized it only had one HDMI port and four display ports. Both my monitors only accept HDMI ports. At the time I can't afford to buy the converter until next month so in the meantime I have both GPUs installed and I have one monitor hooked up to the new GPU and the other monitor hooked up to the old GPU. I'm wondering how this affects the performance of my new GPU. And by switching one app over to another monitor and vice versa does it take over between the two GPUs. I'm wondering if I should disable my old GPU while I'm trying to game on my new GPU. And if I'm running a game on my monitor that's hooked up to my new GPU and then I move the screen over to the monitor that's hooked up to the old GPU dose the old GPU takeover the game, how does this work exactly.

 

[k1114]

For the most part all gpu acceleration is done on the main gpu and the second is just acting as a passthrough. There's only a few software that will use both or switch and these are all content creation or compute software. The second gpu does not affect performance of the primary gpu. The second gpu is mostly just unnecessary power usage to show the second monitor so getting an adapter would be recommended.

 

[Budmanlxxix]

Thank you I appreciate the information

 

[Karadjgne]

Windows 10/11 is mgpu (multi-gpu) based, not sli/crossfire based like all previous Windows versions. If anything at all, since you probably have lower tier gpus, you could dedicate the second to physX use, alleviating some of the stress on the primary gpu. With a higher tier modern gpu, that's got enough juice that stuff like physX doesn't affect it so much, so a dedicated card is basically unnecessary, but you might find some usage out of that, depending on the games and the gpus.