Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

[synack]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

... parsec, I am your father... Nooooooo!!

I thought Intel was the dark side

That is a good point that you don't hear many complaints about, not sure why, but then I'm not a big gamer... gasp!!

Might be that PCIe 3.0 makes up for that, which AMD will have soon. There's also a new AMD board in the works with that PLX chip with 48 PCIe 2.0 lanes. The configuration remains to be seen.

Intel IS the dark side. come, we have cookies :) (white chocolate macadamian nut mmmmm)

[synack]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

I thought that nvidia cards can be used solely for folding at home.... eg: onboard is primary and nvidia is secondary. Technically i suppose the videocard would still be an "output" but idle. don't connect a monitor and i believe windows wont go into "multi" mode.

I haven't tried it here, but i'm totally sure I read somewhere people doing just that.

Onboard probably wont work for folding as onboard does not contain the the right hardware accelerators and/or the code api to take advantage for speed ups.
not like the add-in high end cards, that is.

I would assume the same would be true for AMD.. but i'm soooo not an AMD guy and wouldn't have a clue if it would work or not for folding.

Syn

[parsec]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

... parsec, I am your father... Nooooooo!!

I thought Intel was the dark side

That is a good point that you don't hear many complaints about, not sure why, but then I'm not a big gamer... gasp!!

Might be that PCIe 3.0 makes up for that, which AMD will have soon. There's also a new AMD board in the works with that PLX chip with 48 PCIe 2.0 lanes. The configuration remains to be seen.

[- wardog -]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

AMD boards I know very little about.

You need to come over to the dark side.

Most current AMD chipsets have PCIe lanes aplenty. And what with Intel lacking always puzzled me.

[parsec]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

The examples you gave are combining the on board graphics chips with a discrete video card, which is great. But how do you use them separately, for individual tasks,which was the original question. You can't AFAIK.

The feature or option you mention is not common or likely popular for most users. It's also more work or difficult, or both, and costs money. Add that up, and we don't get it.


There are a few boards that have add on PCIe chips, and a switching chip, but how much you can re-purpose anything connected to them, I don't know.

Another issue is most of the current Intel boards don't have that many PCIe lanes, compared to say the earlier X58 boards, or the new X79 boards. That can be seen in how many PCIe x 16 slots the current Intel boards have, one at most, and in SLI, they become two PCIe x 8 slots. AMD boards I know very little about.

[Chozo4]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

No, can't do that either, mainly due to a hardware limitation, the PCIe architecture on mother boards. Not that it is wrong or poorly designed, but simply because there is only one PCIe buss system, with limited switching options. The switching options are controlled by software, but still limited by where signals can be routed physically.

If there were multiple buss connections, or switching options in the buss, video processing devices (cards, chips, on-board CPU) could be isolated and connected to other devices and have software control of their operation. Since we don't have that capability, video cards in SLI or Cross Fire must be physically connected to each other in order to be combined for use, for example.

Lucid is a limited, partial solution to that in software, but it's a difficult thing to achieve, given the hardware limitations, which is why Lucid has been less than perfect in actual use.

You mentioned "most boards", are you aware of any that can do what you asked about?

It was wrong of me to assume most as I was under the assumption that many boards inherently supported the feature through some limited fashion. Having moved from a board that natively supported both AGP/PCI-e together I thought it was possible with PCI-E normally without debunking my own false belief considering so many PCI-E lanes in many boards. However, here are a few links with both functioning through the Hybrid-SLI feature - two boards and two articles as examples.

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-SH2
ASRock K10N78M

The Rebirth of Multi-GPU Graphics
Hybrid-Crossfire : AMD's New 780G Chipset Has Powerful GPU

[parsec]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

No, can't do that either, mainly due to a hardware limitation, the PCIe architecture on mother boards. Not that it is wrong or poorly designed, but simply because there is only one PCIe buss system, with limited switching options. The switching options are controlled by software, but still limited by where signals can be routed physically.

If there were multiple buss connections, or switching options in the buss, video processing devices (cards, chips, on-board CPU) could be isolated and connected to other devices and have software control of their operation. Since we don't have that capability, video cards in SLI or Cross Fire must be physically connected to each other in order to be combined for use, for example.

Lucid is a limited, partial solution to that in software, but it's a difficult thing to achieve, given the hardware limitations, which is why Lucid has been less than perfect in actual use.

You mentioned "most boards", are you aware of any that can do what you asked about?

[Chozo4]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

I do have a question to add to this in a similar fashion. Would there be any way to use both not for output per-say but rather to run Folding@Home or other computing project using the on-board chip instead?

Rather disappointing to see it not possible on most boards thus far save only for switched usage through Virtu.

[parsec]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

Hi Parsec,

I'm preparing to set up my new ASRock FMa85x Extreme6 w/ A10 5800K 2 X 4 G Sniper 1866

I bought a Sapphire HD 5450 1G DDR3 capable of lite gaming to test out another board.

The ASRock shipped with Lucids VirtuMVP.

I'm wondering if I would get a gain in performance with this combination or should I just stick with onboard.

I'm also wondering if I can use HDMI v. DVI output as depicted on the Lucid site.


Lucid didn't address AMD APU's on their site.

Thanks!!!

Lucid Virtu is not compatible with all video cards AFAIK. The main thing is does is switch between the graphics depending on the load, using the card for gaming and the onboard for simple things. Most people feel that Virtu is buggy and does not work with some games at all. The amount of added performance will be small, but you'll only know unless you try it.

[Mustash]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

ASRock recommends the HD 7000 series. I have an HD 5000 series card w/1Gig
The maximum shared memory w/the onboard is 2 Gigs....I'm just still wondering...Not that it makes any difference 'cause I cant even get Win7 to install.

[Kornivsky]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

Of course you will get performance! You will never get anything with " onboard ". You can use HDMI or DVI,if it has input in your gpu.

[Mustash]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

Hi Parsec,

I'm preparing to set up my new ASRock FMa85x Extreme6 w/ A10 5800K 2 X 4 G Sniper 1866

I bought a Sapphire HD 5450 1G DDR3 capable of lite gaming to test out another board.

The ASRock shipped with Lucids VirtuMVP.

I'm wondering if I would get a gain in performance with this combination or should I just stick with onboard.

I'm also wondering if I can use HDMI v. DVI output as depicted on the Lucid site.


Lucid didn't address AMD APU's on their site.

Thanks!!!

[parsec]

Re: Onboard graphic card simultaneous with PCI Express graphic card

You cannot use the onboard graphics and add on graphics cards separately in any PC. The feature you are thinking of is Virtu, which uses the Virtu software to use the onboard graphics together/combined with a graphics card, and switches between them depending on the usage of the graphics system.

There is no way now to route something to one graphics chip, and another to a different graphics chip on a PC. That would be a nice feature, but does not exist in any PC at this time.

[jenssen]

I want to build a new PC and I am looking for a ASRock board where I can use the onboard graphic card simultaneous with a PCI Express card (Quadro FX580). I want to use the PCI Express card for normal desktop usage and the onboard card for presenting the desktop to a TV.

Somewhere I read that this should be possible with Z68 chipset, but I already know that not all motherboards with this chipset supports this feature. I want to know if there are ASRock motherboards which supports this, I am currently looking at the newer chipset, the Z77. I can nowhere find if this is possibe with ASRock boards, for example the Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 and Asrock Z77 Extreme6.

What I found in the manual from the Z77 Extreme6 board (ftp://europe.asrock.com/manual/Z77%20Extreme6.pdf