Question Two video cards in Windows XP machine ?

[berserker0]

Hey! I don't know much about hardware, so would appreciate if someone could give advice.
Is it possible to use two different video cards in Windows XP build? So that you could choose for each game what GPU you what run it with. For example GTX 950 for late 2000 games like Crysis, and as a second card something like GeForce 6800 GT for pre 2003 games for better compatibility?

 

[Lutfij]

There is no support for the GTX950 while on Xp, so while one GPU will work, the other won't. Also, having two GPU's in a build isn't practical. Might want to think about having a separate dedicated Windows Xp build.

 

[berserker0]

There is no support for the GTX950 while on Xp, so while one GPU will work, the other won't. Also, having two GPU's in a build isn't practical. Might want to think about having a separate dedicated Windows Xp build.

Are you sure about drivers? Actually, this was meant as a dedicated Windows XP build if I understand you correctly.

 

[Lutfij]

I looked again in the drop down menu(OS drop down menu>Show more Operating Systems) and found that there are drivers for the GPU. Though in retrospect, why bother with two GPU's? Stick to one single powerful GPU that is known to have Windows Xp driver support. Also helps with reduced power draw(and eventual troubleshooting when things go sideways).

 

[berserker0]

Why bother with two? Stick to one single powerful GPU that is known to have Windows Xp driver support. Also helps with reduced power draw(and eventual troubleshooting when things go sideways).

Yes, it's probably better to stick with one. I was just wondering if it was possible, plus it seemed to me that dedicated GPU would help avoid problems with really old games. (not DOS)

 

[hotaru.hino]

Unless you're playing some obscure game, chances are you could stick an RTX 4090 if you could and it's still run the game just fine

 

[COLGeek]

Unless you're playing some obscure game, chances are you could stick an RTX 4090 if you could and it's still run the game just fine

Maybe, except for the whole XP thing.

 

[BFG-9000]

Yes, just as with Windows 10, Windows XP did allow you to install multiple GPUs using completely different drivers for each.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 did not, so multiple GPUs would all have to use the same driver (and there was never a driver that supported both GTX 950 and 6800 GT). This made it extremely difficult to use both a IGP and discrete GPU at the same time.

GTX 950 and GTX 960 were the newest cards supporting XP, but obviously not the fastest. Even for old fixed-function shader games though, there is nothing a 6800 GT can do that a GTX 950 cannot do better. You're supposed to select a 2nd card using a completely different API, such as a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI to run Glide API.