OTOY Forums

Hi,
I've read on the forums that any video card could be used as a secondary display card to help navigating around the scene smoother. I have a motherboard that has on-board video built in (ie it has a VGA connector attached to the motherboard) and I also have a nvidia gt 430 card in the pci express x16 slot. However when I go into the preferences of octane render it only detects one card (the gt 430). Is there a way to set it up so that the gt 430 can be used to render and the internal video be used to drive just the display or do all cards have to be physical cards and CUDA enabled? I am just using the demo version so not sure if that makes a difference?

Thanks in advance

Hi, the demo version supports only one card and as far i know you could not use a integrated graphic chip for octane.

Cheers, mib.

Stealthworks wrote:Hi,
I've read on the forums that any video card could be used as a secondary display card to help navigating around the scene smoother. I have a motherboard that has on-board video built in (ie it has a VGA connector attached to the motherboard) and I also have a nvidia gt 430 card in the pci express x16 slot. However when I go into the preferences of octane render it only detects one card (the gt 430). Is there a way to set it up so that the gt 430 can be used to render and the internal video be used to drive just the display or do all cards have to be physical cards and CUDA enabled? I am just using the demo version so not sure if that makes a difference?

Thanks in advance

afaik you can use it exactly this way - even with the demo. if you set up the onboard card as primary display and connect your display to it, octane should still be able to use the gt 430 for rendering. it still may depend on what sort of onboard gfx you have; if it is an amd/ati chip you may run into problems, because nvidia drivers normally don't allow such a combination (for cuda). intel+nvida should imo work...

Hi T-3
That's great news if that were possible. I'll do a couple of tests with my demo version and report back (maybe I need to mess around with the bios settings to make it the primary display)
Many thanks for the advice - if it works it would make Octane an awesome piece of software

Stealthworks wrote:Hi T-3
That's great news if that were possible. I'll do a couple of tests with my demo version and report back (maybe I need to mess around with the bios settings to make it the primary display)
Many thanks for the advice - if it works it would make Octane an awesome piece of software

hope it works. i haven't tested it myself. i know that you can work headless (means no display attached) if the card is the only one in the system, and that nvidia keeps you from using any amd/nvidia combination the same way. will be interesting to see, if they also prevent intel+nvidia use of that sort.

ps: what mib2berlin posted is also correct, but only important for the use within octane; the demo supports no mulit-gpu use for rendering, but should still allow to work with a single card, even if it is not the main display.

Ok so i've done a few tests. Unfortunately when I connect the monitor to my on-board graphics I get as far as the windows 7 boot screen and then it freezes. If I unplug the GT 430 card and try again then it boots into windows normally. So, the motherboard seems to be allowing the computer to start normally with the GT 430 installed and the on-board enabled but something in windows is preventing them working together. Anyone any ideas?
I'm wondering if I re-install windows 7 will the setup somehow install the correct drivers to allow both to work together.
So close yet so far in getting this to work!

Sorry Stealthworks for potential miss information.
I think t_3 knows better.

Cheers, mib.

no worries mib- we are all here to learn!
I still haven't got this working but suspect its probably my setup. What's amazing is that even with the one GT430 I can do a high quality render from my modest HTPC (its got a 3GHz Celeron chip in it !). This would have been impossible to do using a CPU renderer.
Anyway hopefully this thread will help someone else and avoid them having to go and splash out on a second card.

Stealthworks wrote:Ok so i've done a few tests. Unfortunately when I connect the monitor to my on-board graphics I get as far as the windows 7 boot screen and then it freezes. If I unplug the GT 430 card and try again then it boots into windows normally. So, the motherboard seems to be allowing the computer to start normally with the GT 430 installed and the on-board enabled but something in windows is preventing them working together. Anyone any ideas?
I'm wondering if I re-install windows 7 will the setup somehow install the correct drivers to allow both to work together.
So close yet so far in getting this to work!

what onboard chip has your board?

normally win 7 has not much problems handling graphics card changes, but it might be a driver issue (most probably because you reach the boot screen). best thing is, to boot without the onboard card activated, completely deinstall the nvidia drivers (and misc. nvidia adons), and let windows boot without drivers; it should still allow to use both cards (thus not accelerated), and if you install the driver afterwards, it might work...

Hmm, that sounded promising but unfortunately it didn't work either I completely uninstalled the NVidia drivers, then enabled the on-board graphics but it still freezes at the "Starting Windows" screen when the GT430 is plugged in. i also tried booting into safe mode (so no drivers are loaded) but in that case it doesn't even get to the boot screen - just the screen where it lists all the core drivers. With the GT 430 unplugged the system boots normally with the on-board graphics enabled.

I've attached a screenshot of my system info (with only the on-board graphics enabled) and its showing an intel chipset for the graphics but there must be another issue somewhere

Many thanks for your help on this anyway.
cheers