Hypothetical scenario with two non-similar GPUs in 1 computer

Ask Fedora
1

Doesn’t really matter what computer it is, if it has a Ryzen 9xxx CPU in it or a Core 2 duo with 4gb DDR2 RAM, that is of minimal importance to this.

Let’s say that this computer has 2 GPUs.
They could be something like a GT 1030 and a GT 710, or an AMD GPU and a Nvidia one, or a proper GPU and an integrated one.

How do these GPUs work together, at least under Fedora?

I know that two different GPUs can be used to handle Virtual Machines, but other than that, what if “I” wanted to use one for rendering, and the other just to aid with video output?

  1. For the GT 1030 + GT 710 case one has drivers which support Wayland, the other doesn’t (so it has to use Nouveau, for now).
    Maybe in the future NVK will solve this issue, but for right now what could it do? Can the GT 1030 run with Nvidia drivers an the GT 710 just use Nouveau or whatever else, as it passes the signal to other monitors?

  2. Similarly to the previous case, there are some AMD GPUs and iGPUs which use either RADV or amdGPU, so how would these interact instead?

  3. What instead for the case where there just are two different GPUs, be them proper or integrated? How would one make them work properly (outside of the BIOS options, that’s not a problem)?
    Windows too struggles with this, so I am curious to see how [at least Fedora] deals with the issue.

This came to my mind because I was thinking about my “Legacy PC project”.
I don’t really want to put my GT 1030 in there, but I am still curious about the scenario.

2

This is how it works in GNOME:

  • Navigate to the Activities Overview.
  • Right-click the application’s icon.
  • Select “Launch using Discrete Graphics Card”.

See also: switcherooctl: Launch a command on a specific GPU | switcheroo-control Commands | Man Pages | ManKier

3

At the top of my head I guess that GNOME is basically just “the way the Desktop works”, like with KDE.

I also hazard the guess that it has Xorg rather than Wayland, correct?

4

The GT 710 must use the 470xx nvidia driver so it can only run properly with X11
The GTX 1030 can use either the 470xx driver or the latest 575 driver.

When the 470xx driver in use wayland is not supported. The 575 driver does support wayland.

Thus, with your indicated config you would be limited to using nouveau (FOSS) or the 470xx driver in order to support both GPUs and would need to also use X11.

Both are currently supported by nouveau, though the move to nova_core seems like it may not support the GT 710 (I have no way to test that). Thus using 2 different GPUs of that age difference seems difficult and will become more so.

X11 has not been directly supported for at least 2 fedora release versions. There has been a package available to add X11 back to the installation, but even that is planned to be halted very soon.