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2 graphic cards
MrMonolitas
Member UncommonPosts: 263
Hey guys, i have a question. Since i will be building ryzen pc soon, i was wondering what are the benefits of having two graphic cards in the same rig. I have to make a notice, not in sli or crossfire. Is there anything i could do with two seperate graphic cards? Video encodig, rendering or something like that? I was thinking about one high end graphic card and further down the road get cheaper video card ( when miners going to drop the prices finally ) for... Something... would it make some things easier for me? I know this question is very vague... Well i could do mining i suppose.
Comments
As far as mining goes, you'll really want to figure out associated costs (cooling and electricity) before doing that these days. Most mining isn't worth it for individuals as you'll have to either be a miner for alt-coins that no one cares about (gogogo DOGE!) or try to compete against BTC/ETH farms which will annihilate your single card hashrate. You may/may not manage to mine anything and depending on associated costs, you may actually end up losing money - so do the math first.
I say just get one card and enjoy your machine for yourself.
They will not work together though, you have to have individual tasks for each card. That means gaming will only work on one of the cards. In the theoretical task of video rendering, without special distribution software (which does exist, but for the sake I'll assume your not using), you render 1 video per GPU just fine, but you couldn't use all the GPUs to render just 1 video and have it speed that up.
For the most part, unless you need it for massive multi-monitor support (and even then there are arguably better solutions), or are doing it specifically for some task (crypto mining, render farm, AI training), then most avoid it.
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
If you aren't planning on that, then yeah, all other things equal, that second PCI slot doesn't do you anything.
The main reason for it is when you run more then 2 screens. You will also get a boost in performance but it isn't as much as most people think, my experience is usually around 20% improvement, maybe 30% if you are lucky. But with some cards the performance actually is even worse and not all games support 2 or more cards even if FPS games tend to.
Unless you get a mid range card for free it is in my opinion always better to put the money into one card unless you plan to do like Quizz and use many screens.
A high end card will outperform 2 SLId/X-fired medium ranged card, if you don't believe me check out any good GPU chart site (like Toms hardware) and compare the improvement by yourself.
You're mostly correct on the 370 vs 350 boards. The 370s support both crossfire and SlI, while the B350s support only crossfire. Many games these days are offering SLi/Crossfire profiles after launch, sometimes mostly as an afterthought. Scaling is all over the map depending on the game. Also, as we move more and more into DX12 exclusive games in the coming years, that support may dwindle even further. I find single card solutions to be the better option by far at anything less than 4K, especially with Gsync or Freesync.
So, I did SLI back in the day of the Voodoo 2, and the second time I did it was with GTX 760's. I personally wouldn't recommend it to anyone who enjoys have a hassle free gaming system. If you're the type of person who likes to chase benchmark scores and that sort of thing, then by all means. But there are just too many minor issues with SLI/Crossfire that IMO makes it a poor choice for "actual" gaming (frame timing issues, some games not supporting it, etc etc).
I really do think you're just better off getting 1 more powerful card.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Speaking about 370 vs 350b i really did not realise that you still can so crossfire with 350b.
Also, pairing 1800x with 350b wouldnt be a big problem? Since essentially mother boards are the same, just high end board offer more "things" to play with. Is that statement correct ?