DirectX 12 Can Combine Nvidia and AMD Cards

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,400
Microsoft is getting ready to make a big announcement very soon at the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco. The big news will shake up the gaming world and you have Microsoft and DirectX 12 to thank. Just think Mix and Match. :cool:
 
This is really crazy hah!
I might just go Nvidia AMD next round.
 
nvidia will do everything it can at the driver level where it won't work with an amd card i would think...
 
Unsure what kind of layer of abstraction would be necessary for this to work.
 
synonSr.png
 
I seem to remember lucent/hydra? or something like that making similar promises.

My head is just full of reasons why it might not work, or not work optimally, etc, but it would be pretty cool if it worked and worked well even for a few games.
 
If true, this is a huge deal for the lower tier of GPUs. Theoretically you could get a low tier GPU to pair with your Intel integrated GPU and get pretty decent performance. This is a powerful argument for switching away from consoles.
 
honestly forget the nvidia + amd combo i do not think to many people care about that.

yeah some might like being able to use AMD audio tech and nvidia's 3d tech or physx but the major thing no one has talked about yet is the Vram issue.

if you have 3x 290's with 4GB ram each you would have access to 12GB of Vram which opens up their use to high res display that might choke only having 4GB of Vram. or over modding a game like skyrim if i had DX12 support ect.
 
i'm skeptical at best. and at worst it won't work outright. The likelyhood of endingup in one of those service call hells where one manufacturer claims the other's card is too probable.
 
realistically, how many people have more than 1 gpu?

I've got (2) HD7950's gathering dust on the armrest of my couch. I wouldn't mind resurrecting them for DX12 :)

Now the real question is how many riser cards does someone need to install 10 GPUs to one PC? :D
 
i'm skeptical at best. and at worst it won't work outright. The likelyhood of endingup in one of those service call hells where one manufacturer claims the other's card is too probable.

You're mostly likely right, but it would be cool if you could just pile on cards and increase performance. Even just adding initials HD graphics ontop of a card would be interesting.
 
I mean to say, Where one manufacturer claims the fault lies with the other card is too high.
 
You're mostly likely right, but it would be cool if you could just pile on cards and increase performance. Even just adding initials HD graphics ontop of a card would be interesting.

With things like this, I always hope i'm wrong.
 
If that means I get 4GB of vram with my current setup I'm all for it.
 
really? I mean i do not expect this to work out at all.

but it would open up so many possibilities. like people only having $200 to upgrade.

upgrading from a gtx 770 to a 970 wont do much, but "add" their power and you've got something real good.

That is kinda what I am thinking.

I doubt AMD/Nvidia will play fair. Nvidia already disables Cuda if it detects a not Nvidia GPU.

I'm running a GTX 680 right now with 4GB. The benches I see show (roughly across multiple games) what a 50% increase for a GTX 970 also with 4gb.

If I could plug in both cards, be at 200% (from the 680) and have increased Vram... I see many people doing this.

I suspect a number of textures and other resources would be duplicated in the Vram so it wouldn't be 4+4=8, likely 4+4=5 or 6 maybe (imo).

My next question is how does this affect your DX version if cards or differing generations are present? Will the DX 12(ish) GTX 970 + DX 11 GTX 680 give me uber performance in DX up to 11 and only slightly better performance in DX 12 titles?

Be neat to see if it works. I have a pretty big PSU and on old GTX 580 gathering dust.
 
Who would subject themselves to this sort of torture and why? I have questions ...
 
IF this works (and it is a HUGE if) I imagine it would be only for DX12 GPU's, so no combining older cards with newer ones.

And just like how it took a while to implement all DX11 features into Nvidia and AMD's drivers - respectively - I imagine some of this would take a while until it is available, and even longer if the GPU manufacturer feels they have something to gain by holding back, like Nvidia traditionally has...

I'm cautiously optimistic though! Would eb nice to be able to freely mix and match without all the problems associated with traditional SLI/Crossfire.
 
Neat parlor trick at best. At this point in the game, I can't think of any useful purpose. I say that only because of the fanboy camps that nurse the teats of their favorite GPU.
 
This has been known for a few weeks. However, from what I've heard it has to be specifically written for to work.
 
Really the more interesting thing here is that the new API will allow memory pooling. No more frame buffer duplication.
 
It would be interesting if you could install a lesser card simply to gain more VRAM. Though the memory bus of the card you choose would weigh heavily on the added performnce, but it's an interesting possibility nonetheless. perhaps a memory addon card could also be a possibility since it can be addressed separately and only has to shuffle info across the pcie bus. Just a thought..
 
Back
Top