2 Quick GFX Card ???'s

[CaptMorgan]

Here are my questions, straight and to the point on this glorious Friday-but yet I have to go to work in 2 hours so maybe not so glorious

1) got another card but I want to switch the new arrival into a rig that already has a card in it- and put the original card in another rig. Basic question is all I need to do is take the original card out and put the new 1 in right? I figure the drivers are the same? Original card is GTX260 new card is GTX280; which leads me to my next question:
2) I will be putting that original card the 260 in a rig with another 260, I feel this has been covered before and I apologize if that's the case. Now for the benefit of the GRID and its projects (maybe the team also) Is more beneficial to have 2 cards runnin in 1 rig separate/independent of each other? Or is it better to them in SLI? I know SLI is a benefit to me with games/graphics but I am more interested in pumping out more WU's

Thank's everyone

[Musho]

I don't know anything about your second question, as I don't fold/crunch myself, but I can answer your first question Usually just swapping them around works, but in some cases it causes weird issues. Just to be on the safe side (and it doesn't even take much work), use the following steps before swapping a videocard:

1) uninstall the driver from control panel in the add/remove program section
2) reboot (some say you should reboot to safemode, but I've personally used regular windows without any problems)
3) Run driversweeper and let it remove all the nVidia drivers (http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/)
4) Reboot again (so it can clean any driver files still left automaticly)
5) Shutdown
6) Swap cards!
7) Enjoy!

[Otis11]

As for your second question, I don't have much data, but from the one month of data I have, I would guess there is little to no penalty for having dual cards in the same system.

When I had a 2 260s i was averaging 47k ppd. Now I'm on 1 260 and sitting at ~25K (but it's now clocked slightly higher...). So if there is any penalty it's <5k ppd.

[Musho]

As for your second question, I don't have much data, but from the one month of data I have, I would guess there is little to no penalty for having dual cards in the same system.

When I had a 2 260s i was averaging 47k ppd. Now I'm on 1 260 and sitting at ~25K (but it's now clocked slightly higher...). So if there is any penalty it's <5k ppd.

47k / 2 = 23,5k
25 / 23,5k * 100% =~ 106%

How much higher did you clock your card now? If it's ~6% higher than what it was previously, there seems to be no less of ppd by going with 2 cards in a single rig

[CaptMorgan]

Might go SLI with the 260's then- sounds like the way to go for my soon to be operational 275's

[Otis11]

47k / 2 = 23,5k
25 / 23,5k * 100% =~ 106%

How much higher did you clock your card now? If it's ~6% higher than what it was previously, there seems to be no less of ppd by going with 2 cards in a single rig

Wow... I'm actually shocked how accurate that is.

I went from 1350 to 1436 (check the OCing thread)

(1436-1350) = 86

86/1350 = 6.37%...

So apparently I had negligible impact if any with dual 260s.

[INFRNL]

Capt: if you go from a GTX 260 to a gtx 280 it may or may not automatically reload the driver. It does take the same driver but windows sometimes does weird things. If you have precision or boinc load automatically, you will not want to have it try to start on its own when switching cards be cause it will not aitomatically switch to the new card. It will either ask you to install the driver or will take a reboot to reinstall the driver for the new card.

As far as sLi is concerned, there is always a slight performance hit for multiple cards compared to single unless something has changed. i do not recall but I think its less noticeable on GPUgrid rather than F@H, but will not be as good as 1 card/ 1 system.

[CaptMorgan]

Thanks INFRNL sounds good- 1 card/1 system would be nice but easier getting as many cards in there right as we can

[CaptMorgan]

That was fun(ny) remove drivers manually>reboot> use driver sweeper>comp auto detects current drivers> auto installs?>wants me to reboot Lolsycoaster!!

It worked anyways and should be fine-but really I am on a old driver on 1 comp and really will just update to the newest (stable) driver right? I mean there is no need when there is a driver update to always uninstall?

[Snow Crash]

That reboot is suppose to be into safe mode. The purpose of DriverSweeper is to remove all the detrious the previous uninstalled version because NVidia is not so good at cleaning up after themselves and you never know if a driver will read a setting from an older version and then not be performing at it's peak

[INFRNL]

I either install new driver over old or do standard uninstall and reinstall...haven't had any problems. I usually install latest beta driver on nvidia site. I am currently on 196.34. will have to update

[CaptMorgan]

I would like to update also, though I believe they have removed the 196.75 update because of the heat issues- but like Snow Crash said he has had no problems. Where did you get 196.34, I don't think it ever showed up as an update on NVIDIA's website?

[INFRNL]

I either got it from nvidia or through another forum, can't recall exactly
EDIT: actually its still on nvidia's site. http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_wi...6.34_beta.html

[CaptMorgan]

Well to be honest i had done the driver uninstall and driver sweeper because I was concerned with switching from a 260 to a 280- really all should be fine. Guess maybe like Snow Crash mentioned towards the possibility of not getting peak performance; was and is my main concern- maybe it's a New England thang Don't want my comp gettin dirty with random bits of data and registry crumbs right?

Also just did this on the comp I am throwing the other 260 in and it seemed to work better- this 1 being XP 64-bit. Maybe with Win7 alot of things are take care of themselves

Edit, yourself: it's a beta but i read about heard it was fine thus far