I was wondering if it is possible, or if it is supported yet to be able to run two seperate video cards. In my case a 250 as my main card for gaming and doing other tasks and an 8800GTX as a secondary to do CUDA work while I am using the computer. Is it possible to dedicate the 8800GTX to just CUDA work and nothing else? Thanks in advance for your help.

For driver and Windows reasons, the primary card has to do CUDA. As far as I understand, the latest BOINC versions will automatically use only the first card/GPU, not the second.

But a complete way around it is to use both cards for CUDA and just have BOINC suspend itself completely when you start gaming. See the "ways around it" section in my CUDA FAQ.

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Many thanks for the reply and the info you provided. Another quick question I have is, with a program called game booster. Not sure if you are familair with the program or not. I used it while gaming and it seemed to help minimize the unnecessary running windows processes and other misc programs. I have been using that while running BOINC now and I wanted to know if you saw any problems using that program, do you see processes being stopped that are needed by BOINC. Sorry if it was confusing question but, just trying to optimize my computer for things like SETI especially while its not in use.

Another quick question for you as well, I see on another thread someone mentioned running two seperate cards as well. But said they had to make changes to their cc_config file. What changes need to be made to this. I am currently at work and am not infront of my client to see if it is registering both cards correctly. Should it automatically detect both cards and run good off the start or do I need to modify my cc_config file to make it function correctly.

P.S. I forgot to add that I read your faq and the info in it on how to add certain programs to the cc_config file was just wondering if there were any changes that needed to be made to run the two cards. Would that just be the use_all_gpus line?

Never heard of Booster, not using it myself. Mind, I am not a developer, just helping out here on the forums. Don't let that Project Administrator tag throw you off, it's used to ban spammers. ;-)

So if you think it helps out, go ahead and keep using it. if it breaks BOINC... well, you know what to do then.

Would that just be the use_all_gpus line?

Yes, to use all GPUs, you add <use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus> to the <options> section of the cc_config.xml file. Do know that BOINC does not make a cc_config.xml file, you will have to make it by yourself and make sure it resides in your BOINC Data directory.

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Thanks again for the help. Any suggestions for optimizing things to work as fast as possible. Any programs to lean out the unnecessary processes or optimize any other settings that you do use? I actually just did a fresh install on my computer so the overhead from any crap just floating around is gone I think I notice a difference already but, other than that any tips on stuff to optimize the computer for BOINC. I know eventually I need to or should get a dedicated machine but the one I have is pretty wicked so I will stick with it for now.

On the optimization, you'll just have to ask the projects. I saw you asked something similar at Seti already, which is at the time the place to ask.

I don't run CUDA. My Sapphire HD3850 is a) the wrong brand and b) used for gaming. :-)

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Yes. Funny you bring that up. not to be off topic, not sure if getting off topic is allowed but, I did have to do a fresh install to get everything set up to get my Physx card running again to play city of villains. I spent a while re-installing everything because i couldnt get rid of the newer physx updates that only have the updates and not the actual drivers for the card. After looking into the idea for quite some time I opted to go with putting the card back in because cith of villains only recognizes the actual physx card and not the physx emulator that nvidia has running on the new video cards. I have seen alot of posts against using the card and going with the physx enabled video cards instead but apparently because of the way the physx was designed in city of villains it will only recognize an actual physx card to do the physx portion because it was designed when physx was so new. Anyways in the midst of running into those problems it got me really thinking about getting more into BOINC and SETI alot more than I was at the time. I have been using BOINC consistently for a while but never really optimized my computer to crunch effectively. I decided to throw my older 8800 GTX back into my computer and see if I could set it up to use both cards to do CUDA and that brought me to this thread for more info on setting it up correctly. But I figured since I did do alot of gaming and had a diecent setup BOINC would be a good thing to run while I'm not gaming. Thanks again for your help.

Ok, So I got home and got it set up it looks like its showing both video cards the problem is its showing it as two 8800GTX cards and thats not the case one is actually a 250. Is there anything I can do to fix this or is it a problem that its showing as two of those cards instead of one of each card?

No, that's a problem with the driver and the way BOINC detects things. The only way around it is to make sure the better card is the primary card. But then you'd show two 250s.

Nothing you can do about it.

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Hey i was having the same problem, with my two 8800 tg's in SLI mode. i took them out of SLI mode in software, And now my Bonic detects both cards, and now i'm running 6 task. Before i was running 5 task. Thats what i figured out. Nvidia needs to fix there drivers better for Boinc program. SO i can keep my cards in sli without having to change them over in the software.

Nvidia needs to fix there drivers better for Boinc program. SO i can keep my cards in sli without having to change them over in the software.

You do know what SLI means, right? It means you can link two or more videocards together so you have a single output, making it seem as if you have one very big videocard. There's nothing to fix in the drivers, if you allow SLI it works as it should.

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