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Geek 101: Should I Buy A Second Graphics Card?

19.04.2011
If you're looking to kick your PC's up a notch, the simplest solution is to upgrade your graphics card. But sometimes shelling out some cash for a better GPU simply isn't an option. What if you can't afford a top-of-the-line card? Or, in a more perfect world, what if you already own a high-end graphics card, but you still want better performance? In some cases, it's smarter (and cheaper) to buy a second card rather than swap out your current GPU for a better model.

This week we took a look at some of the graphics cards we have on hand down in the lab and ran them through some pretty rigorous performance tests to determine whether it's smarter to double down or trade up.

Today we're talking about multi-GPU solutions that allow your PC to split the graphical workload between two or more cards at the same time, which means more frames per second for you.

There are caveats. Consider power consumption: if you plan to run multiple graphics cards, you'll need a power supply that's up to the task. You'll also need to make sure there are free PCI-Express slots on your motherboard (and space inside your chassis) to pack in an extra graphics card.

You also can't combine cards from different product lines: your won't play well with an , and you might even have trouble pairing the 6970 with another Radeon card from a different series (like the ). For best results, make sure you use two identical cards when setting up a dual-GPU PC.