ATI and Nvidia crunching in the same box??

edgedemon

edgedemon

edgedemon

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Has anyone any experience of running Nvidia and ATI cards in the same rig for BOINC projects. The reason I ask is that I currently have 1 x 470 running seti and 3 PCI-e slots spare, and was thinking of getting a second CUDA card in the next 6 weeks or so. It would be silly with all the effort Mr Halz is putting into the MilkyWay@home team, not to reward him with an increase in ppd. So how realistic would it be to crunch seti on the 470 and Milkyway on whatever cheap 2nd hand ATI card I can find???

Im more than fine for power, so it is just the software side Im thinking of, I running Win7 64bit, will I start getting driver compatibility issues etc...
 
I'm not too sure that would work :eek: because of the single nature of the Boinc client. I don't think anyone has tried but looking at the way the xml config files work it doesn't look likely.
 
I will have a google and see what I can find...
Cant be the only one who wants to do this, there might be a hack, or you might be right...
 
Asking for driver hell, I'd expect. RDP aside, I don't think I've seen two graphics drivers working at the same time.
 
Berserker said:
Asking for driver hell, I'd expect. RDP aside, I don't think I've seen two graphics drivers working at the same time.
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Im suspecting that myself, but Im also extemely paranoid and no offence intended, but feel forced to bin any advice from you as I also suspect a hidden agenda as the reason I want to do this is to catch and stomp you :p:p

Oh well, will have to find another solution, but for now it looks like there is nothing I can do to catch you unless I switch everything over from seti...

will have to do some research on power draws and find an ati card with the same draw as an 8800GT that will do MW, maybe a 38xx, will have to see..
 
edgedemon said:
Im suspecting that myself, but Im also extemely paranoid and no offence intended, but feel forced to bin any advice from you as I also suspect a hidden agenda as the reason I want to do this is to catch and stomp you :p:p
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In that case, go right ahead. :p

Since you aren't taking my advice, you won't be able to complain when you've been stomped thanks to fighting driver hell for the last week. :)
 
Berserker said:
In that case, go right ahead. :p

Since you aren't taking my advice, you won't be able to complain when you've been stomped thanks to fighting driver hell for the last week. :)
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lol - had to laugh at that one...

loudbob said:
There are a couple of boards that have hardware built in to allow just this sort of thing.....

Example:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-129-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1495

But it's a hefty price tag just to run different vendor cards
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I know there was a storm a while back when it was discovered that the nvidia drivers disabled ati cards stopping a user having an ati card for gfx and a low end nvidia for physX so I think it is possible and people must have done it, but sounds like it is either expensive or endless fiddling/trouble
Will keep an eye out in case I see anything about it and post back.

It looks like you will have a chance to build a decent lead on me berserker, but I will be looking to do something, just dont know what yet, but you and kolala have definately hit my 'I hate being stomped' button - curse you :D
 
Hmm Sapphire have a 2 year warranty now just need to replace the slightly chewed screws on the back and send it away glad I still have the receipt :D

Edit: Damn you receipt where are you :(
 
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It would appear that as long as you dont use anything later than Cat 10.2 then this is possible..
Now I have to decide on whether to shell out on a 2nd hand ati card and risk it..
 
I have both ATI and nvidia cards running in my rig atm but I'm only doing folding :)
Folding works fine for my nvidia card but i can't get it too fold on the ATI but that's OK for me any way less power used.
I did try Milkway@home the other day but didn't have much success with that either it kept trying to use the nivdia card and i didn't really like the BONIC client, how it was laid out etc ,, so I'll stick with folding :D

Edit: Both cards are using the latest drivers too.
 
Richy1204 said:
I have both ATI and nvidia cards running in my rig atm but I'm only doing folding :)
Folding works fine for my nvidia card but i can't get it too fold on the ATI but that's OK for me any way less power used.
I did try Milkway@home the other day but didn't have much success with that either it kept trying to use the nivdia card and i didn't really like the BONIC client, how it was laid out etc ,, so I'll stick with folding :D

Edit: Both cards are using the latest drivers too.
Click to expand...

Thats very interesting - I had seen a couple of posts saying that if the ati is in slot 1 and the nvidia in slot 2 then it 'might' work, but it seemed to be a bit random
For milky way you need to use the seperate ati milky way app to run it on your ati card
 
I downloaded the latest BONIC program which it said to on the milkyway@home page installed it and it couldn't seem to connect to the sever thing and i left if for an hour or two which didn't help. I searched around on the Internet and found a different version i think it was a 64-bit version anyhow i installed that and it work first time but it only download CPU work it wouldn't download any gpu work at the time i was folding on the nvidia and it didn't seem to want to work with the ATI so yea i gave up.

I have the ATi in the fist slot and nvidia just below.

It works fine for gaming on the ati and folding on the nvidia which is good but there is some issues.
It took me ages to get both to work i was following a thread on a different forum a set up guide and it said to use Nvidia 185 drivers and any cats for ati. Which didn't really work so i just installed the latest drivers for both cards and its works fine. Had some problems getting the nvidia card to fold without a dummy plug at first but I've manged to fix that now :)

But i still cant get the ati to fold :( it worked OK before the i put the nivdia card into my rig.
 
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