ARC A380 + nVidia GPU in same system? (Resizable BAR)

[xXaNaXx]

So I just bought an Intel ARC A380 to use for encoding all the Blu Rays & UHD Blu Rays I have purchased (and will purchase) for storage on my NAS media server.

However, the A380 requires Resizable BAR, and the only system I own that is new enough to support it is my main desktop gaming/video encoding system (NOT the i7-4790K rig in my sig, it's a Ryzen 9 5950X system), which currently has an nVidia GTX 980 in it. I don't game a whole lot anymore (definitely NOT enough to warrant upgrading to a current nVidia 4k series or AMD 7k series GPU with AV1 encoding built-in)...but when I do game, I still want better framerates than the A380 would ever be able to provide me (1080p 120hz monitor).

Has anyone here had any experience with having both nVidia & Intel ARC discrete GPU's in the same system, and have those experiences been good or bad?

If you have done this successfully, are there any tips/tricks to getting these cards to play well together in the same system?

And before anyone mentions it, yes, I have already watched THIS LTT video where they did this....just looking for more real-world info

 

[noko]

I say just try it. I've have done a number of times Nvidia + AMD combo's with Windows 10 and 11 without issue. Seems like together they work better than trying to change from one card from one GPU manufacturer to another. Now I think you may have an issue with the GTX 980 with Rebar on. Now I would suggest, recommend getting rid of that dinosaur GTX 980, return the A380 and get an ARC A750 or A770. Would be a hell a lot faster then that 980, especially in modern games plus much less conflict potential.

 

[xXaNaXx]

I say just try it. I've have done a number of times Nvidia + AMD combo's with Windows 10 and 11 without issue. Seems like together they work better than trying to change from one card from one GPU manufacturer to another. Now I think you may have an issue with the GTX 980 with Rebar on. Now I would suggest, recommend getting rid of that dinosaur GTX 980, return the A380 and get an ARC A750 or A770. Would be a hell a lot faster then that 980, especially in modern games plus much less conflict potential.

Yeah, I'm gonna be keeping the GTX 980 a while longer because I'll be needing 2 different GPU's eventually anyway.

At some point I intend to upgrade my Mini-ITX HTPC (i5-3570K) to a more modern platform which supports ReBAR (probably an i3-13100F or newer, depending upon when it happens). Once I do that, the A380 will go into that system, so I will still need the GTX 980 for my desktop. And that's just fine with me for the time being because even though the GTX 980 is ancient, it still does everything I need it to do except hardware AV1 encoding.

I'm also waiting to see what the lower-end nVidia 4k series and Radeon RX 7k series cards are going to be priced at...they'll have AV1 encoding baked in as well, so I'll upgrade my desktop system from the GTX 980 at that point. The A380 will handle AV1 decoding for the HTPC (and maybe some AV1 encoding in parallel with the desktop system while the HTPC isn't in use for watching media), while the GPU I choose for my desktop rig will handle double duty for both gaming & encoding.

Plus, I don't want to deal with the crappy performance from the ARC cards in non-DX 12 titles (which is the bulk of the games I play), and the newer nVidia & AMD cards (even the mid-tier ones) will in all likelihood destroy the ARC cards pretty handily for gaming.

I'm mainly just curious to get some real-world reports of how it works mixing the two in the meantime so I can go ahead & get started with the AV1 encoding....I have a LOT of movies & TV series that I'll have to plow through, so the earlier I can get started with that, the better.

 

[chameleoneel]

REBAR shouldn't be an issue for the 980----because they simply do not support it in their driver. Having it turned on in the bios, does not affect GPUs which otherwise don't support the feature.

 

[xXaNaXx]

REBAR shouldn't be an issue for the 980----because they simply do not support it in their driver. Having it turned on in the bios, does not affect GPUs which otherwise don't support the feature.

This is exactly what I was thinking, and is the reason I made this post...to get information just like this.

I know for sure that if a GPU requires ReBAR and it's not there, it won't work properly (or at all)...but everything I've come across for older non-ReBAR GPU's on newer motherboards with the feature enabled says that it may or may not improve things, but definitely should not make things worse.

 

[xXaNaXx]

so i went ahead & put the A380 into my desktop as a 2nd GPU, and surprisingly it all worked pretty flawlessly...i didn't even need to download & install the drivers for it, Windows handled installing the latest & greatest drivers automatically.

that said, i'm a bit underwhelmed at the encode quality vs file size during AV1 encoding; i'm using HandBrake 1.6.0 for my encodes (which is required to have ARC AV1 encoding support).

I encoded a 130-minute 4K 10-bit HDR movie in h.265 and the file size is 6.48GB, using a CQ of 26. the same exact movie encoded in AV1 via Intel QSV on the A380 using the same CQ of 26 is 9.08GB. if i move the CQ slider to higher numbers in order to bring the file size down, the video gets pixelated/blocky as hell REALLY badly....it looks like i'm trying to watch an old DivX-encoded 480p video on a 1080p or 4K monitor. so far, i'm definitely not impressed with the quality of the hardware encoding. i'll probably stick with CPU-encoded h.265 for a while until more of the devices i use around the house have at least decoder support for AV1...and even then, i'll probably end up just doing CPU encoding for AV1 on my Ryzen 9 5950x (which encodes at roughly 1/2 real time), since it gives good picture quality even at higher CQ numbers, but i have to work on getting those file sizes down to at least probably 20% better than h.265 with comparable or better quality before i commit to re-encoding my entire library.

there is the possibility that newer drivers could improve things (crossing fingers), but if not, i'll probably just stick that card into my HTPC once i upgrade it to a mobo that supports ReBAR to handle AV1 decoding (since the Shield TV won't do AV1 decoding).