Someone just used an AMD and Nvidia GPU at the same time | Digital Trends (2024)

FAQs

Why are both my GPUs being used? ›

The primary goal of using two GPUs in a single system is to boost graphics performance. This approach is often seen in gaming and professional workstations, where users demand the highest levels of rendering power.

If you care about ray tracing, streaming, video production, or professional applications, Nvidia graphics cards are the better choice. Its cards' ray tracing performance is leagues ahead of AMD's, and more Nvidia cards are compatible with 3D modeling software than AMD cards.

Using two discrete GPUs is more complicated than you think, especially if they come from different manufacturers since they can't utilize the same drivers and may even have trouble getting recognized by the operating system. All this results in various technical difficulties and is often not worth the hassle.

Many consumers tend to choose an AMD graphics card if they have an AMD processor, due to the popular belief that AMD hardware works better together. In reality both AMD and Nvidia GPUs will perform well with either an Intel or AMD CPU.

Apart from this, remember that some miners can support both platforms simultaneously. For instance, T-Rex miner only supports NVIDIA GPUs, whereas TeamRedMiner only works with AMD GPUs. Other miners, like lolminer or GMiner, work with both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. In this case, one miner will be enough.

There are several benefits to multi-GPU configurations: Dramatically increased frame rates and graphical capabilities for high-end gaming. Faster rendering and productivity in creative applications. More power for GPU compute tasks like machine learning.

Advantages of dual GPUs

Installing two or more GPUs lets your computer share the graphical workload among the video cards. This multi-GPU system allows your PC to process more data simultaneously, enabling greater resolutions while maintaining high frame rates in games and applications.

Two GPUs support multi-monitor gaming. Dual cards can split the workload, optimize performance (better frame rates, higher resolutions), and provide extra filters. Additional cards let you leverage newer technologies such as 4K Displays.

While AMD likely has a pricing edge over Nvidia, it is unlikely to ever lead the market, Moorhead believes. "Nvidia would have to screw up big time somehow for AMD to ever be a No. 1," Moorhead said. "At the same time, AMD would have to hit on all cylinders."

AMD has been lagging behind Nvidia for some time. Nvidia (NVDA 8.15%) has been the clear-cut winner in the artificial intelligence (AI) graphics processing unit (GPU) race. While AMD (AMD 4.92%) has competing products, it hasn't seen anywhere near the success of Nvidia.

Why do people still buy Nvidia GPUs? ›

Demand for Nvidia's graphic processing units (GPUs) is booming as companies clamor to get supplies of its chips for artificial intelligence (AI) model training and inference used in data centers.

You may have heard of dual GPU setups in the past, but combining AMD and Nvidia in the same system? Even if you're using two of the best graphics cards, that's always going to be tricky. However, it's now been done and benchmarked, and the results are shockingly good — with a few major caveats.

As of now only two GPU cards can be connected with NVLink; three-way, four-way and quad are not possible using NVLink bridges even if NVLink by principle is a very versatile interface. As of the GeForce RTX 3000-series, SLI has been effectively replaced with NVLink.

AMD CrossFire™ is a multi-GPU (MGPU) technology which combines the processing power of graphics cards (GPUs) with the aim to improve performance by speeding up the rendering of 3D graphics.

You'll need the chipset drivers but you don't need the Adrenalin software. You can use Ryzen Master if you want to tweak CPU settings.

Connect SLI/ CrossFire bridge

Both graphics cards need to be connected via a bridge cable that usually comes with the graphics card or has to be bought separately. Only GPUs from the same series can be connected to each other. Finally, close the case and plug in your display ports to the primary GPU.

There isn't any special magic that make amd cpu and gpu combo perform better.

To put it simply, no. The SLI technology requires the use of two or more identical graphics cards to work together in tandem. The graphics cards must be of the same model and from the same series.