Two Gpu's running independently

Hello, 

I currently have a radeon 7870 in my system right now. I was wondering if it would be possible to put a 6850 in the other pci-e slot and run the cards independantly for adding extra montitors and bit/litecoin mining. Is this possible?

And if so, what would I have to do with my drivers? I am currently running AMD Catalyst 13.4 (stable release)

 

Thanks for any feedback! 

Because they are 2 completely different generations, I don't think it is possible to put a 6850 with a 7870 as they use different driver files.

My first thought was no.... But then I did a bit of googling, and it looks like it is possible, just you won't get any performance increases from doing so (unlike crossfire or SLI)... So you might be able to, I don't see why this WOULDN'T work, but I'm definately no expert.... If you have the second card, try it maybe? I'm sure someone on the forum has tried it before and can give some insight haha.

It is possible. If you disable crossfire, that doesnt mean that the 2nd card just dissapears. It will remain functional, and will support any software that supports specifying a specific GPU (bitcoin mining)

And ofcourse can also be used for connecting displays. (if you enable crossfire you can no longer use the 2nd card for connecting displays)

This also means when you play a video for example on a screen that is connected to the second card, the secondcard will for example take care of the acceleration on that application.

I guess this guy is doing it. I asked him in the comments if you have to do anything with the drivers, hopefully I get an answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMWb5SlSgfU

 

you dont, actually, windows 7 will take care of it (even when you have no drivers installed at all)

Well, I'm on windows 8 but I guessing that it will still work. My last question is that will the computer know what GPU to use for games? I'm assuming that is will use the GPU in the top x16 pci-e lane for programs by default?

It should just use whichever GPU powers the monitor the game is running on.

Oh, okay.