Radeon for display, Nvidia for CUDA in one system?

[arexma]

Anyone running this setup and can report if it works properly?

I read that there was a bug at a point in the nvidia drivers, where the system did not recognize a nvidia card as CUDA device unless a screen was connected (be it only a dummy DVI) but that it should work, only PhysiX isn´t working (thanks for that nvidia -.- )

As the whole GF100+ GPU GeForce generation absolutely blows in terms of OpenGL performance I was thinking on getting a HD6970 for display and use GF100 GPUs in the same system for Octane.

And yeh, I know of the alternatives.
(o) I could use a quadro for display - I refuse to buy one as Nvidia obviously thinks they need to cripple OpenGL in GeForce cards deliberately, denying any problems and ignoring support tickets to force people into buying quadros. Thanks for nothing nvidia.
(o) I could simply put the GF100 for CUDA in one of my other systems - well, to me its inconvinient, I rather have it all in one machine, but I guess it´s the only way I currently see.
(o) I could use a G92 series GPU for display along with GF100+ GPUs - I am also a passionate player and the G92 is simply too weak, again a matter of convinience having all in one machine.

So yes, it´s basically I creating my own problem, and I know I need to point it out, else one tends to get good advice rather than an answer to the initial question

One other thing, anyone here with a GF110 (GTX570/580) can report if the OpenGL issues also persist with those GPUs?
I´d be glad if buying a few of those would solve my problem as the GF110 is quite superior to the AMD Cayman besides certain AA modi and adaptive power management.

[gilfanovruslan]

Can not say about gf110, but my newer gf114 gtx560 has same opengl problem.

[Timmaigh]

I believe Octane wont work with radeon card as display adapter, you need to have both cards Nvidia....but i am not 100 percent sure, so somebody please correct me, if i am wrong.

regarding Nvidia gf400/500 openGL performance, jsut yesterday i read few things about it. I personally feel same problem, at home i have gtx460 and at work gtx470, both suck big time, when it comes to viewport performance in Max. There is a hint on a fix for this on Wiki page dedicated to Fermi, but i did not read anything more, so i cant say what exactly it is and if it works. Might want to look for yourself.

Anyway i plan to solve this by modelling on my older compy with radeon 4870 in it, which was very good AFAIK and use my workstation for Octane only. Aint going to buy Quadro, if i was about to spend money, it would rather for gtx590 (1024 cores of joy )

[Jaberwocky]

I have played around with various drivers on my GTX460

Try this Tesla Driver. V263.06 from the Nvidia web site.It installs and works on my 460 without modification.It seems to give AutoCAD/3D max some punch and it works with the current release of Octane.

I am in the meantime going to have a play with trying to get an old AMD HD2600 XT graphics card that i have lying about to use as display to work with my GTX460.

I'll report back with my findings.

[arexma]

I am in the meantime going to have a play with trying to get an old AMD HD2600 XT graphics card that i have lying about to use as display to work with my GTX460.

That´d be grand. Thanks.

@Tim:
I know all that, I am one of the peeps from the threads linked in the wiki on the trail of nvidias opengl disaster. Thats the actual reason why I want to combine a Radeon and a Nvidia.
And the problems is within Buffer memory operations and gl.getpixel and so on. You can circumvent the memory problems if you replace the opengl functions with CUDA functions. Should be doable with Blender for instance, but why should I recode the UI of Blender just because nvidia wants to sell quadro cards. I´ll simply give my money to AMD then. And the problem with doublesided backface shading persists.
Autodesks software not being FOSS makes it a bit harder to circumvent those issues.
However, for 3dsmax it ain´t really a problem, you can simply choose dx9 or dx10 as display driver and all´s good. It only makes sense to choose opengl if you got a quadro anyways in max.

[Jaberwocky]

No luck.I cannot get the 2nd card in my case.The old 2600 xt is to long.

I will need a different motherboard to fit both cards in ,Sorry.

I will be upgrading my motherboard soonish so i'll give it a try then when i can get 2 cards to fit.

[arexma]

NVM, don´t trouble yourself.

I´ve been doing some more thinking after some more research and the HD6970 is actually very unatractive.
The Cayman chip is running on its limits, the voltage all cranked up, can barely hit 1GHz, hot and loud like hell (I wonder where are all those now that made fun of the GTX480?) and slower than a GTX570 not to mention you´r locked out from Club CUDA.
As much as I don´t care what brand my card is as long as it does the job, AMD's last one was a fail IMO. Which brings me to AMD´s last win:

So, I´ll simply buy a 5870 or even a 5850, slam an aftermarket cooler on it and OC it till it glows. And that's not really a financial risk. If it works in my system, hooray, if it doesn´t I put it in another system and start to dualmachine, as long as it is dualslot I get it in. =)
I really don´t want to give up my GTX470 anyways, it actually purrs with 800 MHz leaving plenty of other cards in the dust. With the money I save I rather get a second 470 or a 570.

Thanks for your effords though - may the gods bless you with fertility