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I have a machine in work that has two nVidia graphics cards installed. One pretty weak (GT120), and one very powerful (Quadro 4000). The idea was to use the Quadro for 3D rendering, but I'm wondering if there's any good reason to keep the weaker card in the machine?

Currently the monitor is connected to the weaker card.

Is this the right way to setup such a machine? Is there any benefit at all to keeping both installed?

I've never come across a modern machine with two graphics cards that wasn't using SLI/Crossfire before! (Edit: Except from the good old days when 2D and 3D cards were separate devices.)

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    There is no benefit at all.
    – Ramhound
    Jul 8, 2014 at 19:34
  • "I've never come across a machine with two graphics cards that wasn't using SLI/Crossfire before!" Really? Then you must be young, because video cards that only had one output port on them were common fair a decade ago, and adding a second/additional adapter card was the only way to get a second monitor.:) Point is, it's normal, and expected, especially if you want to get to that 3rd and 4th monitor (these days). Jul 8, 2014 at 19:35
  • Perhaps check out this related SU question: Running two graphics cards (non-SLI) to power 3D on two different monitors? Jul 8, 2014 at 19:36

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A good reason would be to use multiple monitors. Most of today's graphic cards have 2-3 physical monitor connectors (althou some could provide the image for more). But also many mainboards have grapic cards (or use the cpu for that) and have their own minitor connectors. So, it depends on how many monitors you want to connect.

Another reason would be to use the GPU for computations. This basically boils down to the question: does your software support using multiple GPUs for computation and can your computation-problem (a game can be seen as a computation problem) benefit from such a setup. If, for example, you want to do bitcoin-mining, the more hardware the better - but if you just want to play some 3D game, it will probably not support this and therefore not benefit from it.

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