Does Windows 7 support multiple simultaneous nVidia graphics cards with different drivers?

Question

On one of my dev machines at work (currently running XP), I have two nVidia graphics cards:

• Quadro NVS 440 (my original card, for my three primary monitors)
• GeForce GTX 275 (just added, for CUDA development)

I can get both cards to work OK by installing the latest GeForce drivers, but I get some annoying-but-not-crippling display artifacts on the Quadro's screens (mostly scattered black rectanges where repainting fails for a few bits of UI in certain applications).

Under XP, this seems to be the best I can do. I can use Device Manager to supposedly install different nVidia drivers for the two cards (the latest Quadro drivers for the NVS, the latest GeForce drivers for the GTX), but I actually end up with the same driver for both, because the driver dlls all have the same names and get installed on top of one another in the system directory.

I have read that Win7 has a new video driver architecture that better supports multiple heterogeneous cards. Does anyone know if that will handle my scenario? If so, it will give me a compelling reason to get that machine on Win7 ASAP.

Solution 1

AFAIK, the new video driver architecture will not aid your situation. The official stance from Nvidia is no you can't mix cards, and experiences from other users is that your mileage may vary when you try to mix the pro and consumer cards.

Solution 2

Well i don't know if you are using QUADRO for a real issue however as you probably know, Quadro/GeForce family are closely related, price apart but Quadro drivers don't work on a GeForce BUT... there is a work around to enable 3d professional acceleration on GeForces (enabling Quadro drivers and detections) that theorically, could transform them into Quadros :

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539&pgno=1

You can try if you like, personally i've never tried i'm from the AMD/ATI side of river.

Comments

[norway-firemen]

I'm going to be switching to Win7 anyway for lots of other reasons in the not-too-distant future, so I will report back what happens.

[caliban]

Please report back on this question, so we can all learn something. I wish you all the best in getting it to run... and to that effect, you might want to read this page - forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t56925.html

[Naidim]

This was the case with Vista, but Windows 7's WDDM 1.1 does allow different drivers to be used concurrently. The OP's issue is that nVidia cannot let you mix nVidia drivers. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model#WDDM_1.1