Is it possible to use an 7950 3GB and a 6950 2GB on the same system?

[Ilias]

So i recently upgraded my system and i went from a Sapphire Radeon 6950 2GB, to a 7950 3GB, from the same brand. Here are the rest of my PC specs:

CPU: i5 3570K
M/B: GIGABYTE Z77M-D3H
RAM: Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 XMS3 Dual channel
SSD : Crucial M4 128GB
PSU: Corsair AX850
OS: Windows 7 64-bit

And here is the problem: I do a lot of video editing in Sony Vegas Pro 12 and while my trusty old Radeon 6950 2GB was performing admirably on it by enabling Open CL accelaration (and cutting down my rendering times signifcally), it seems that my brand new 79503GB is not supported by the software yet (bummer). So i was wondering: Since my power supply seems to be beefy enough, is it possible to install both cards and use one for gaming purposes and the other for video rendering purposes alone? I know that what im asking is far fetched but i would like your opinions (or experience) on this. Many thanks

 

[wand3r3r]

It's possible to have unrelated cards in a PC. Many people do that for bitcoin mining.

That said, I'm not sure if Sony Vegas Pro 12 will let you choose which GPU to use. For gaming you can choose the main GPU too.

 

[Ilias]

Will i have to connect the two cards via Crossfire? Or they can work independently, as two separate devices?

 

[railven]

Will i have to connect the two cards via Crossfire? Or they can work independently, as two separate devices?

Independently. As long as your software allows for source selection for the offloading, it should work fine.

I use 2x7970's in CFX to game on and the HD2000 on my i7 2600K to power a separate monitor for web browsing.

Just make sure you connect your primary display to your 7950 so it knows it is the rendering path for gaming (since gaming doesn't openly let you pick which card to game on.)

 

[Yuriman]

Independently. As long as your software allows for source selection for the offloading, it should work fine.

I use 2x7970's in CFX to game on and the HD2000 on my i7 2600K to power a separate monitor for web browsing.

Just make sure you connect your primary display to your 7950 so it knows it is the rendering path for gaming (since gaming doesn't openly let you pick which card to game on.)

Some games do actually have this option in the graphical menu.

I wonder if it can be done via a command for other games.