Mixed Cards

[jmcquigg]

Hi - I'm thinking about adding a 2nd card to my system as I'm thinking on adding a 30" monitor in addition to my 2 21"ers. . I currently have a GTX280 driving both. I'm not planning on any SLI mode.

1- Can I add an ATI card alongside the GTX?
2 - How does the PC know which one is the "boot" card? I've read that since 30" don't have scalers, the boot-up bios won't show (bad for me)
3 - I'm not a serious gamer but I do sometimes play. Does a GTX280 have the horsepower to drive a 30"? If so I can save some $ by getting a lower end card for the 2 21"ers.

Thx
JMC

 

[lifeblood]

With XP and (I think) Vista you could not mix ATI and nVidia drivers. With Win7 I heard you could but have not tested it personally.

In the BIOS you tell the PC which video card to boot first. If you have two PCIe 16 slots then check you manual to see which is the primary of the two.

Two 21"ers and a 30"? Dude, I'm jealous.

 

[jmcquigg]

thanks for the info. I'll probably play it safe and just go with Nvidia.

 

[lifeblood]

As a general rule, unless you have a strong reason to mix the cards, I would go either both ATI or both nVidia. You're just asking for trouble otherwise. I would like to use both so I can play Eyefinity on the ATI card and still have CUDA/PhysX support via the nVidia card, but nVidia disables those things in the drivers if it detects and ATI card.

 

[jmcquigg]

Do you think a GTX 280 can reasonably drive a 30"? I don't need 60 FPS for Crysis...

 

[lifeblood]

I have no idea. Someone with a GTX 280 will need to respond to that question.

As you see from my sig, I'm making due with a 19" 1440x900 primary monitor. As soon as an armored bank truck crashes in front of my house and I grab up all the money lying around I will run and get some nicer monitors (Yes, I'm dreaming now).