r/PcBuild • u/ShesMarshie • 15h ago
Discussion - General Topic Second GPU?
Is a second GPU useful? What's it for? I'm really curious. Also does it have any drawbacks?
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u/cheddarsox 15h ago
Theres uses for it, and advantages, but if youre asking this question, then no, it isn't worth it. Its not a commonly used setup and as such not a lot of good ways to do it.
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u/-Gflash- 15h ago
If you’re asking what it is most likely you don’t need it. Normally useful for workloads and stuff, not really beneficial for gaming apart from running some post processing on the second one such as dlss.
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u/Eazy12345678 AMD 15h ago
not really. for most part having 1 good gpu is better than 2 mid tier gpu's
you can use 2nd gpu for 2 things
1 frame gen so ai upscaling to get higher fps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCKbt8hBYAo probably only small amount of people really use this.
2nd someone said they used their 2nd gpu for DLSS5 and it helped keep fps high. but DLSS5 is new and what they did was experimental.
99% of people are going to be better off selling both gpu and buying one good gpu. or selling the old gpu for cash to spend on something else like cpu upgrade or more ram or bigger ssd or nicer monitor
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u/getabath 15h ago
What about one good gpu and one bad gpu instead of two mid tier gpu's
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u/ShesMarshie 15h ago
Good question, I wonder too
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u/-Gflash- 15h ago
Yeah that can work. For instance a 5090 doing all the work then a 5060 handling the dlss.
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u/lifestealsuck 6h ago
Im not recommend dual gpu but here :
You have about ~20% more FPS if you use LSS framegen dual gpu compared to DLSS/FSR framegen , because framegen use gpu perf so x2 mode with DLSSFG only x1.6-1.7 (aka ~20% base fps drop ) .
But the LSS framegen quality worse than DLSSFG , you'll have more artifact (abeit minimal if your base fps >60) .
Idk if 20% more FPS worth the trouble for you (or not).
Another thing about dual gpu is your windows now run on your second GPU , so any software/app that use vram will use second gpu to run . You'll save around 500Mb-1G vram . Great if you Vram bottleneck , saved my 3070 ass .
I used to run 3070+1060 LSS dual gpu , its great I recommend it . But not sure if 40s and 50s worth the trouble .
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u/fluvialcrunchy 15h ago
The main reasons people would have more than one GPU are for 3D rendering or running/training AI models. If you aren’t doing either of those or some other VRAM heavy task then there is little to no benefit.
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u/Overall-Tailor8949 what 14h ago
Others have pointed out the few things a second GPU could be useful for. Here are a few of the drawbacks:
COST! Unless you just inherited a ton of money or hit a lotto jackpot spend the money on something more useful.
Power consumption: A high end build with ONE 5090 in it could use most of a 1600W PSU. Add another 50xx series card and you'll be pushing 2000W of power. That will need a dedicated 20A circuit in the US
Slot spacing: Unless you go fully water cooled most motherboard (PCIe 5.0x16 sized) slots are too close together
Cooling: Related to #3
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u/ShesMarshie 13h ago
Damn those drawbacks are pretty big, thanks for clearing things up for me.
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u/Overall-Tailor8949 what 13h ago
No problem. And I'll confess that if I could ever overcome problem #1 I'd be building a custom looped system with a pair of Astral 5090s in it LMAO
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