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Win7 is able to run ATI and Nvidia?
I was recently looking to upgrade my video card for Fallen Earth since it uses Physx. I stumbled upon some forums saying Win7 is able to run both Ati and Nvidia cards at the same time. Is this true? If so that is freaking sweet because I have an mobo that has 2 pci e slots for video cards. Granted the other one is only x4 but that will be used for Physx only. I have an 4850 and it plays the game well but I think it would help if I took some of the load of of my E8400 procy.
I only planned on getting like a 9800gt+ or a 260gtx for Physx so hopefully that wont be overkill for the x4 slot. What do you all think is it a good Idea or no?
Edit:
Also do you need to have a special mobo for this? because Nvidias site said something about special mobo that ables the 2nd card for physx only.
Comments
I could be VERY wrong here... But do you mean in like an SLI or Crossfire type config? Or independently? Because, at least a few years back when I checked, it was the motherboard that decided if you could SLI or Crossfire, so you needed to pick an MB that would support your card config, or else it would not work. That would lead me to beleive that IF Win 7 can do it, you would still need an MB that would support it. However, things may have changed.
Im not sure about mixing and matching ATI and Nvidia, but I do know that with Nvidia you can run say a GTX260 and an 8800GT at the same time (GTX260 being your actual vid card and the 8800GT being used only as a physX processor).
And its pretty much any SLI mobo that will allow this.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
you could run ati as your main graphics cards, and nvidia for physx on XP. all you need is enough pci-e slots, and the proper drivers. nvidia really doesn't like this though, and have been adding code to their drivers to disable their card from running, if ati cards are detected.(i'm sure there's a lot more to how this works, but i didn't want to look it up) if you can find the older nvidia drivers, don't remember which ones, you can still do this, but you'll never have up to date drivers for your physx card. i know a few people who were crossfiring a pair of 4870s, and using a 9600gt in their third pci-e slot..... in fact, someone on this site posted about their success in mirrors edge doing this.
People already found a workaround for nvidia's sabotaged drivers to let you use a Geforce card for Physx and ATI card for graphics with the new drivers, apparently it's a really easy workaround too but I don't have a link or anything atm.. if someone really needs it I could dig it up.
There is also the Hydra 200 mobo chip coming out that really does what SLI/XFire should have done all along, it's GPU independent so you can mix nvidia and ATI cards and splits actual object rendering between the cards instead of half-frames or alternate frames.. sounds pretty cool but I think the Hydra mobos are gonna be $60 surcharge or so.. though I've heard nvidia is trying to sabotage it too, not sure.
Yes, you can. You just need to use some unofficial physx patch to get it working as nvidia in it's greed has disabled such functions.
http://www.ngohq.com/graphic-cards/16223-nvidia-disables-physx-when-ati-card-is-present.html
Physx Disabled when non Nvidia GPU present.
And Nvidia is trying to shut down the unofficial Physx Drivers, along with AMD / ATI.
I wouldn't count on the 'fix' always working. It could be patched out next time you upgrade your video drivers.
youtube.com/gcidogmeat
Hydra 200 chipset won't fix the PhysX issue. nVidia went out of its way to make sure you cannot run PhysX if you have ATI. Also a mix sli/crossfire type setup would not be a good idea. There are 2 approaches to multi-GPU rendering. There is the common every other frame approach. Where each GPU alternates which one renders the frame. Then there is the compositing approach where a scene is organized into what objects are in it, those objects are divided amongst the GPUs, rendered, then composited. In both cases they will not work well for a mixed video card setup using nVidia and ATI.
When it comes to every other frame rendering, nVidia and ATI images look different once rendered. It will create an awful effect when played at 60 fps and each frame being starkly different. When it comes to compositing the scene, the clocks and cores must match. nVidia has less cores, and ATI has a lower clock.
I think you just need to sell all your crap on ebay and buy "one" really nice video card.
The 2 methods employed by Crossfire/SLI are alternate frame which you described well, and split frame which doesn't deal with objects, it just splits the frame into top field and bottom field.
Hydra's implementation is what you described with the composite object rendering, it actually intercepts Direct3d calls to split 3d objects between the 2 cards, where they are rendered then patched together and displayed onscreen. The biggest trick it does is load balancing, so the clock speeds won't matter - it's suppose to figure out how many objects the card can get rendered in time, assign it those objects, take the result and composite it with the other card for output.
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=785
Physx is still a problem, plus I hadn't considered the slightly different rendering ATI and Nvidia output, but it probably won't look too weird since objects are rendered in whole, or it may send all lighting procedures to 1 card to get the same look.. we'll see as soon as MSI's Big Bang finally comes out.
Yes, Win 7 allows you to have drivers installed for two different cards, so people were using that to run ATI for graphics and nVidia for PhysX, but nVidia disabled PhysX in latest driver if it detects non-nVidia hardware. Since no games use PhysX for anything that actually affects gameplay, I consider it to be a non-factor as a checkbox feature anyway. Since right now, choosing nVidia vs ATI is choosing DX11 vs PhysX, to me, ATI is the obvious choice.
PhysX is overrated anyhow. In my opinion you should opt for a 4890 or 4870 depending on the resolution you play on. Nvidia has droped the ball and ATI are batting. As to your original question, I have no idea lol But I've always been under the impresion that you cannot mix and match ATI and Nvida in Xfire or SLI.