How many video cards?

***PRB*** · July 31st, 2010, 19:17

Here is my old system:

MB: Asus P6T Deluxe (LGA1366)
CHIPSET: Intel® X58 / ICH10R
CPU: Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (LGA1366)
RAM: 8 GB DDR3/1333MHz Non-ECC Non-Registered Memory Module
VIDEO: NVIDIA 9800GTX+ 512MB Dual DVI (PCI-E) Video Card (2)
OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
SOUND: ADI® AD2000B 8 -Channel High Definition Audio CODEC

I had two video cards, each with two video connectors. But I only have two monitors. If I removed one of the video cards, do I loose performance? In other words, do the two video cards chare video processing, even if only one of them has monitors plugged into it? If so, then removing one would result in a perfomance hit, right? Is that how it works?

I'm shopping for a new system and I'm leaning towards one honkin video card instead of two, but I'm not sure that's a smart "strategery"...

***stansdds*** · August 1st, 2010, 04:14

I've never tried a dual monitor or dual video card set up, but I'll step out on a limb and say "yes", you will lose performance by running two monitors off of a single card instead of a pair of cards.

**txnetcop** · August 1st, 2010, 08:15

Yes you will! In fact the higher the resolution you run it you will see performance drop on most game software. Some software is optimized to run two monitors on one video card. What you might consider is moving to a GTX470/480 just make sure you have the juice to run it

**Cazzie** · August 1st, 2010, 08:47

I use two nVidia 9600GS cards in an SLI hook-up. One card does the vid work, the other is dedicated to PhysX.

Caz

***PRB*** · August 1st, 2010, 12:31

Thanks, guys. That's kind of what I thought was happening. Shopping for a new computer these days is more complicated than it used to be. Lots of choices.