Hey guys, I am into GPU programming and I would like to have installed both a nVIDIA and a ATI GPU in the same computer, in order to be able to test my shaders on cards of both manufacturers. Do you know if this is possible? Thanks! Jorge [Edited by - IrYoKu1 on November 15, 2009 4:45:46 PM]

I'm pretty sure that's just fine

you just shouldn't expect to be able to have them work cooperatively SLI style hehe

If you're running Vista, you can't IIRC. I believe WinXP and Win7 allow you to do so, however. Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

And how do you select which one you want to use in each moment?

I thought in the display properties under settings you can choose which display you want to use. The text in the display drop down never refers to my monitor, but instead my graphics card. I would assume if you had 2 installed, that is where you could make your choice.

Not a good idea IMO. You'd have to install drivers for whichever card you wanted to work with i.e. Nvidia or ATI at the time since Windows doesn't support having 2 video drivers installed at once. So you'd have to uninstall/reboot/install drivers each time you wanted to switch!

I've done it before with a pci and built-in graphics a while back and it was nothing but headaches. Don't you have a 2nd system you could use?
Haven't tried it lately but considering this information from Microsoft I'd say forget about it:
Windows 7 does not offer native support for hybrid graphics systems. We strongly discourage system manufacturers from shipping such systems, which can be unstable and provide a poor user experience.

Thanks for the input!

Quote: Original post by daviangel
Not a good idea IMO. You'd have to install drivers for whichever card you wanted to work with i.e. Nvidia or ATI at the time since Windows doesn't support having 2 video drivers installed at once. So you'd have to uninstall/reboot/install drivers each time you wanted to switch!

As I understand it, unlike Windows Vista/XP, the new driver model in Windows 7 *does* support multiple concurrent graphics drivers - though you do need a separate monitor for each card.