What is up when your GPUs aren't the same?

[Alfatta]

Hello guys, I'm kinda noob and planning on building my first rig.
The thing is I'd like to mix different GPUs. Is it possible? What is happening then about the drivers?
I can't find online good answer to this question (most answers are outdated, some says it's impossible, some that it is completly possible and that I can even mix Nvidia and AMD GPUs, some that I can but only if there is one driver beeing good for all the GPUs, like the same driver for 580 and 570)

I'm looking for an actual answer before buying things!

Concretely, I would like to put starter rig with one AMD R9 390 and two AMD RX 580. Is it possible? If yes, how do I manage the drivers? (and also, wouldn't the mix up make me lose too much hashrate?)

Thanks for your answers! I'm completly lost about this one!

[philipma1957]

Hello guys, I'm kinda noob and planning on building my first rig.
The thing is I'd like to mix different GPUs. Is it possible? What is happening then about the drivers?
I can't find online good answer to this question (most answers are outdated, some says it's impossible, some that it is completly possible and that I can even mix Nvidia and AMD GPUs, some that I can but only if there is one driver beeing good for all the GPUs, like the same driver for 580 and 570)

I'm looking for an actual answer before buying things!

Concretely, I would like to put starter rig with one AMD R9 390 and two AMD RX 580. Is it possible? If yes, how do I manage the drivers? (and also, wouldn't the mix up make me lose too much hashrate?)

Thanks for your answers! I'm completly lost about this one!

This does not belong here  I asked the mods to move it.

amd's like the r9 390 and the rx 580 will work  in windows 7 or 10  and some linux builds.

do you own a r9 390?

nvidia and amd also mix but it is more work.

what parts do you have on hand?

[Alfatta]

Oops, true, sorry about the wrong section.

In fact, I own a R9 390, the part I have right now. And I am considering buying two RX 580. (The other option was to buy more R9 390 but I have a better buy opportunity with RX 580 and it also sounds more profitable)

Glad to hear I can mix up those. Still can you tell me a bit more about how to manage the driver then? (or others things I would have to manage in this case)
Can I just instal both drivers and it will automaticly be ok? Because I don't think I am in a "one driver for both cards" scenario

[ntsdm1]

you should be able to run both gpus together,
just be specific with the settings for each gpu model
and you shouldn't have many issues

[Alfatta]

Thanks for your reply. Still... Could you be a bit more specific with "just be specific with the settings for each gpu model". What are you exactly talking about here? (drivers?)
Because... I still got my drivers interogation, can't find the answer anywhere. Can I just... instal both drivers and... that's it

[bouldou]

Hi,
I have a rig with a mix of R9 290 ans RX 580, and no problem, it works like a charm
Using Windows 10, Claymore 10.0 and Driver 17.7.1

Good luck ! Let us know if you have any problem

[Elder III]

You can use the same driver for a R9 390 and Rx 580, in fact it's designed to be used that way. As long as you have either all AMD or all Nvidia (of the last few generations) you can use the same driver. It's only an issue if you're trying to use a new model GPU along with a really old one (as in several generations older) that's not supported with active driver updates.

[BHTeam]

Install the latest drivers and you will be just fine.

[abudfv2008]

Not good idea to mix different GPU, especially AMD with NVIDIA
Even mixing 1060(1070) + 1080(1080ti) is not good idea.
They have different hashrate in different algs and it would be a pain to make maximum profit with them combined.

[Alfatta]

Thanks a lot for all your replies.
So I'll just instal the famous AMD blockchain driver and normally everything should be ok for both my R9 390 and my RX 580? (If not, it would be the case with just the latest driver?)

[Bostast]

Thanks a lot for all your replies.
So I'll just instal the famous AMD blockchain driver and normally everything should be ok for both my R9 390 and my RX 580? (If not, it would be the case with just the latest driver?)

I have the same question. I have the R9 390 and the R9 nano.

[newmz]

Not good idea to mix different GPU, especially AMD with NVIDIA
Even mixing 1060(1070) + 1080(1080ti) is not good idea.
They have different hashrate in different algs and it would be a pain to make maximum profit with them combined.

This statement is just bullshit. I have been running a rig with 3 x 1070s and 3 x 1060s for a few months now in Windows 8.1. It will happily mine ETH using Claymore at 170mh/s, using about 780W for the whole rig.

I have also briefly tried it mining zcash with EWBFs miner and it was no problem.

I have also run AMD rigs with older AMD cards using the Ethos custom linux distro. I have run a rig with 1 R9 390, 1 R9 380, 2 R9 290s and 2 R9 290Xs. No problem.

So yes you can mix up the different cards, but it's much easier if you use the same brand (AMD or Nvidia) and it's much easier if they are from similar generations. It is however possible to run rigs with different brand cards. One proof of this is that there are a few manufacturers out there releasing motherboards with crazy numbers of PCIe slots. Given that the drivers for AMD and Nvidia both currently limit maximum number of cards - if you got a motherboard with 13 PCIe slots - you would have to run for example 7 Nvidia cards and 6 AMD cards ON THE SAME MOTHERBOARD. You would probably have to run 2 separate instances of mining software - 1 for Nvidia using their driver and 1 for AMD using their driver, but they wouldn't make these crazy motherboards if it wasn't possible.

So my point is -of course it's possible. Might not be easy but definitely possible.