Is running a GTX 1070 and an RX 480 in tandem possible?

[thedavemc]

Bit of a weird question perhaps, but in my windows boot I run a 1070 and a 480 at the same time running 1 monitor each.

I've just got my macOS boot working with my 1070 with Nvidia web drivers, and my 480 seems to work fine running the second display (listed in system report as AMD R9 xxx),

Ideally I'd like both cards fully working to accelerate FCPX. I could start mucking about, but as I'm not exactly an expert in this stuff, I thought I'd ask first if this is even possible, or if I'm just going to mess things up by trying.

 

[Fl0r!an]

As far as I know FCPX requires two identical GPUs to use both for compute tasks.

 

[thedavemc]

As far as I know FCPX requires two identical GPUs to use both for compute tasks.

Hi Fl0r!an,

Thanks for the reply. OK fair enough. Is there any way to choose which card FCPX uses for acceleration? I use the 1070 for my primary display, but it seems the 480 should outperform it looking at benchmarks.

 

[maxi322]

I tried a similar thing with an rx460 and a gtx 1070. I could only acheive FCPX to use the RX460 when it was in the first PCI Slot. When the 1070 is in the first PCI slot it will fall back to use the CPU because FCPX doesn't use nvidia gpus for open cl.

So RX480 in Slot 1 and GTX 1070 in Slot 2 should make FCPX use the 480 for open cl.

 

[thedavemc]

I tried a similar thing with an rx460 and a gtx 1070. I could only acheive FCPX to use the RX460 when it was in the first PCI Slot. When the 1070 is in the first PCI slot it will fall back to use the CPU because FCPX doesn't use nvidia gpus for open cl.

So RX480 in Slot 1 and GTX 1070 in Slot 2 should make FCPX use the 480 for open cl.

Wow thanks for this super-helpful reply. I have a couple of questions if I may.

I assume you're doing the ATI spoofing thing via clover. Do you also have the Nvidia Web drivers installed and enabled through NvidiaWeb bootflag?

Are you running displays off both cards? Any issues? Ideally I'd like to have both cards running a display each as I run it this way in windows.

Although I can boot into macOS with 1070 in slot 1 and 480 in slot 2 (I haven't done the spoofing yet), and run a screen off each. FCPX crashes when I try to load a library. I'll swap them over and spoof in clover and see if it works.

Thanks again!

 

[maxi322]

As far as I know is Fake ID spoofing for the RX480 no longer necessary in 10.12.6 because the Device ID was added in the driver.

Back when I tried this combination of GPUs the GTX 1070 was not supported in macOS. So in macOS I had all displays hocked up to the RX460. And in windows one was hocked up to the 1070 the other two to the 460.

Try removing the Fake ID and only booting with the RX480 in the system and check if final cut works then. You can move on from that point.

 

[Fl0r!an]

I don't know of any way to configure which card gets utilized by FCPX. As far as I know it usually prefers the GPU which is also used for graphics output.

 

[maxi322]

I'm just sharing my experiences here. And I could do what I want as long as the RX460 was not in the first PCI Slot it did not get used by FCPX.
I still used the HD530 as a helper card because my mainboard initialized the GPU in PCI Slot 1 (RX460) everytime otherwise.
And I had this setup for a while so plenty of reboots and FCPX still used the RX460 everytime.