Windows 7 Combine ATI, Nvidia Graphics in same Computer

cybercore

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Combine ATI, Nvidia Graphics in same Computer


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Did you recently decided to make yourself a High-end Gaming Rig and ended-up in confusion of what to get. Whether to choose that new 1GHz AMD ATi Radeon HD or one of those of Nvidia CUDA/SLI powered GTX quad cores?

Well, here is the solution- Get best of both worlds.

Asus’s upcoming AMD-based CrossHair IV Extreme motherboard would satisfy senses. CrossHair IV is the first motherboard to feature Lucid Hydra on Both Intel and AMD platforms and lets users mix and match their graphics cards from either Nvidia or ATI and shoot up the performance.


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ATI’s CrossFire and Nvidia’s SLI, do respective multi-GPU systems to boost their graphics-processing power. The current generation of CrossFire, can handle up to four GPUs at once, mixing and matching both single-GPU cards like Radeon HD 4890 and double-GPU cards like the Radeon HD 4870 X2. On the other hand, SLI can support up to three compatible cards at once, or four GPUs with two dual-GPU cards like the GeForce 7950 GX2 or GTX 295.

Crossfire vs. SLI is always an un-solvable argument, no one has ever won the argument.


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Lucids Hydra chip will try to solve this debate by supporting different combination of both Radeon and GeForce cards. Last year’s test system used a Radeon HD 4890 and a GeForce 260GTX card working together pretty nicely, the cards consistently performed better than either single card, and often slightly better than one of the dedicated dual-card setups.

MSI launched the first Lucid Hydra motherboard (called Big bang) for Intel chips in January and Asus now brings Lucid Hydra to both platforms with CrossHair IV things would start to look better.
 
It would be great if this became mainstream but let's see how the msi board ships. Of course some users are already running with both cards installed with the ATI card taking care of the main graphics and a smaller nvidia card taking care of the physx. One does have to be carefull about which nvidia driver is used as the later versions have been deliberately written so they won't work if an ati card is detected. Apparently someone has written a workaround but finding it could be a long search... Perhaps ;)
 
So I was right, I knew this would interest you. ;)

Of course some users are already running with both cards installed with the ATI card taking care of the main graphics and a smaller nvidia card taking care of the physx.

This is not a bad arrangement at all but I would want such motherboard if both cards processed graphics at the same time, like the real SLI or Crossfire. Just Physx is not worth it. Great but not enough. Or maybe actually worth it, going with 2-3 5870 + 1 GeForce 9600 to enable PhysX support ?
 
Well it's been a few months since jumping away from my long line of Nvidia GPUs and I haven't missed a single thing "Physx" features bring. Apart from some cobwebs on Batman (which I completed before going ATi) I can't see much difference now in my quite large games collection.

I can't even say I miss CUDA, except maybe in CS4 Photoshop but it wasn't really implemented properly anyway, although I do wish video transcoders would hurry up and get onboard with Direct Compute, annoyingly the ATi transcoder app doesnt work with my HD camcorders 264 codec which oddly is slightly different somehow to the regular 264 codec?? (YES I have tried the updated driver and app which claims does the format, but still no go) but no great loss as I don't video edit so often that it's a chore.
 
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One only has to look at the flags waving in Dirt2 to see what DX11 has done for Physx...lol.

It would be a be a nice system Greg, 2x5870+9600.. It would pretty much take care of everything I guess..
 
One only has to look at the flags waving in Dirt2 to see what DX11 has done for Physx...lol.

It would be a be a nice system Greg, 2x5870+9600.. It would pretty much take care of everything I guess..

Ah with you, Ross, with your overclocking abilities you'd be getting 300 FPS. ;) No, you don't need this rig. :)


How about this one: GTX EAH 480 x 2 + 1 ATI 5870 ? Lol, you know to support ATI stream.


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Highwayman said:
Well it's been a few months since jumping away from my long line of Nvidia GPUs and I haven't missed a single thing "Physx" features bring. Apart from some cobwebs on Batman (which I completed before going ATi) I can't see much difference now in my quite large games collection.

I can't even say I miss CUDA, except maybe in CS4 Photoshop but it wasn't really implemented properly anyway, although I do wish video transcoders would hurry up and get onboard with Direct Compute, annoyingly the ATi transcoder app doesnt work with my HD camcorders 264 codec which oddly is slightly different somehow to the regular 264 codec?? (YES I have tried the updated driver and app which claims does the format, but still no go) but no great loss as I don't video edit so often that it's a chore.


1. How does it feel in games, better, worse, speed, quality ? Your impressions if you would.
2. Can't you use ATI GPU in Photoshop ?
3. Exactly how are you using that codec, is it a software converter ? Why not using a decent 3rd party software instead ?
 
1. How does it feel in games, better, worse, speed, quality ? Your impressions if you would.
2. Can't you use ATI GPU in Photoshop ?
3. Exactly how are you using that codec, is it a software converter ? Why not using a decent 3rd party software instead ?

1. Better in all tests relating to framerates (not a huge surprise considering its about 4x faster than my old Nvidia 8800 card), quality? about the same, although being able to slap on 16x AA is a big bonus.
2. ATI GPU assist in Photoshop... not as far as I can see, but then it's only for the rendering not realtime effects anyway, unknown on CS5 edition.
3. I've tried most 3rd party apps and they are all pretty slow when outputting a 1080p edit from my camcorder which has native H264 hardcoding. What I want is a app that does all the recompiling and with GPU assisted transcoding on ATI stream or direct compute to get the rendering times down greatly, the ATi software has a lot of problems in this regard yet promises it can, my observations see it does GPU transcoding but only using a very small 5% of the GPU's power...which rates about the same as running without the GPU assist = EPIC FAIL AMD, would be nice if the next 10.5 version fixes this as I only ever use H264 format.
 
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I'm guessing you mean PHYSX is now obsolete thanks to DX11's direct compute code, in which I'd agree.


How about those current games with PhysX support? And there will likely be DX11 + PhysX games in the near future, Nvidia didn't get rid of PhysX in Fermi. I wonder why so far there are no games using the advantages of ATI stream, not even ATI stream software bundke like PhysX ?
 
I guess Nvidia will hold onto physx as long as it can but as for using ATI stream for games.. In my understanding ATI stream is mainly for stuff like video editing or similar where there is a long line of repetitive code.
 
Powercolor's HD 5770 Evolution pixellized Link Removed due to 404 Error Link Removed due to 404 Error Written by Link Removed due to 404 Error Thursday, 03 June 2010 13:13
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The one with Hydra

Techpowerup managed to score a few detailed pictures of Powercolor's HD 5770 Evolution, the first graphics card that has Lucid's Hydra chip on its PCB. The idea behind the card is that it can be paired with any other graphics card, regardless of whether it's AMD's or Nvidia's.

Apart from Lucid Hydra chip, the HD 5770 Evolution graphics card is practically the same old HD 5770 with reference clocks, 1GB of GDDR5 memory and a set of outs listing DVI, DisplayPort and HDMI.

The new HD 5770 Evolution looks pretty interesting, and we are looking forward to first reviews and performance numbers when paired with another Radeon or even better, a Geforce card.

You can check out more pictures here.

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