Question about how discrete grapics and and egpu can be on one computer.

I have an Lenovo R61 with and Nvidia Quadro 140M.
I have a list of questions about how a egpu effects the internal one(dgpu).

• If I have 2 Nvidia cards can i have both drivers installed for the egpu and dgpu. With out any clashes?
• Is it better to get an Nvidia or AMD card since my dgpu is Nvidia?
• If I am able to have both drivers install correctly, which card will be the main one doing all the computation? Can I tell the cards to do this? If one card is Nvidia and one is AMD does this become harder?
• Can I tell one card to turn off and just have my egpu do all the work?

Also do i just go get drivers from the manufacture's webpage? I only have PCIe 1.0 with x1 bandwidth and no Optimus compatibility.

Thanks for the help and sorry for the long list of questions.
-Goatfig

 

you can have both drivers installed. you have dozens of drivers already installed.
nvidia or amd depends on what you want.
it's not harder in one way or another.
read the sticky before making new topics.

 

Don't worry. some desktop users use diffrent graphics card on one computer also, and they have no problem at all.
like, using 560 for CUDA only, and 580 for main gpu.

They install two driver also, but hey, no crashes!

 

So lets take the new retina macbook pro as an example.

It has an integrated 650m as its discrete graphics. If my e-gpu was an nvidia 560, would the two cards work together? Or would I have to choose one of the cards while playing a game?

And I believe the intel hd4000 doesn't even appear under bootcamp. So I'm guessing Optimus won't be possible.

 

Yes, both cards can work together. In Win7 you will have monitors attached to some video cards. I set my monitor attached to the eGPU to be the main display. Then my Win7 desktop appears on the eGPU-attached monitor and running any games will run using the eGPU.

Shame the MBPr's HD4000 can't be activated. Means Optimus pci-e compression (x1.2Opt) nor Optimus internal LCD mode can be used on that system. The 13" Macbook Pro with slower CPU, lower res screen but boots with the HD4000 iGPU active can have x1.2Opt activated. Means I'd go for the 13" MBP if wanting x1.2Opt performance.

Other thing to consider for the MBPr to get x1.2Opt equivalent performance is a native Thunderbolt-to-pcie (TH05) adapter. Unfortunately BPlus do not have a full-performance x4 2.0 Thunderbolt adapter in the works. Why? Apparently the power/size budget of the circuitboard they are working with has limited them to x2 2.0 for now with a x4 2.0 TB adapter coming later next year.

 

Thanks for the reply. I'm planning on keeping my 13inch 2011 macbook pro but my parents might buy the new retina model. And it really is bizarre Apple makes it so just the dgpu shows up... Of course they're only doing this to decrease battery life so to some, it'll make it seem that os x>windows 7 battery wise.

And do you know an estimate for when the THO5 should be released? If they can get it to the masses before next year it's going to be hard for others to catch up.

 

MBP's policy on disabling igpu on bootcamp is really... dissapointing.
Putting restriction on preexisting software, just because someone is using windows instead of macosx sounds just plain wrong.

But hey, It seems I won't be able to use full bandwidth of thunderbolt when using optimus on thunderbolt anyway.