Multiple Graphics cards - Non Multi-Display Setup

Question

Is it possible for me to utilize the processing capabilities of multiple graphics cards, even if I'm only using one monitor? I recently bought a new AMD graphics card, fairly top of the line. I also have a two year old, decent nVidia card. They're obviously very different cards. I don't really mind for gaming because my current card can handle most games fine by itself. I'm concerned about video editing programs such as Adobe Premiere and After Effects.

Would the system be able to utilize the power of both cards to, say, render a video? I have both drivers still installed on my machine. And because there is only one monitor connected to my current graphics card (AMD) the nVidia would be connected to no display. So I am wondering whether it would or could be utilized in some way to help in processing video. Thanks!

Answer 1

Is it possible for me to utilize the processing capabilities of multiple graphics cards, even if I'm only using one monitor?

Yes, that is possible. For gaming this is usually done by using two similar cards and using one card just for extra calculations (See Crossfire and SLI).

But it is quite possible to combine a AMD card and an Nvidia card and use the AMD card to render graphics output while letting the Nvidia card to PhysX calculations.

In theory you could also let the nvisia card to CUDA calculations, though I have no experience with that and some treads mention that this requires the Niviida card to detect a monitor, even if that monitor is not used. (And Folding at home solutions mention 'faking' a monitor with a single resistor across the Nvidia VGA output port.

This means that the technical answer is yes, you can.
In practice you might run into problems.

Answer 2

I think this only depends on your software like "rendering software".

There are video-encoders available that support something like "CUDA" or "Stream". Usually these programs should be able to use a nVidia-card for processing tasks while the actual desktop is displayed via a different card.

If it comes to video-playback, there should be no speed up effect, because the hardware-optimised playback is only available on the 'playing' card.

Answer 3

If you have two or more graphics cards you can tie then together using two solutions.

ATI CROSSFIRE

The first solution is from ATI/AMD if you have two crossfire compatible cards you can share their processing power

Nvidia SLI

This solution is similar to ATI's offering execpt you must have two NVIDIA compatible cards.

Unfortunately you wont be able to make use of either of these solutions because your graphics cards are from different chipset manufacturers. So at this time you will not be able to use both cards to provide extra computing power.