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Greetings from Beautiful Boise!

Asus 990FX
AMD FX8150
32GIG RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Main GPU is a GTX-470. I am an Adobe Creative Suite user and like the Mercury feature.

I'm adding a third monitor to be driven by a second GPU. Slots available are a single PCIe x1 and a PCIe x16.

The purpose for the third monitor is to have text and .pdf documents open when I code, not for any timeline sharing or such in Premiere or After Effects.

I'm wondering if mixing brands (e.g. the GTX-470 and a Radeon) produces any undue system resource demands...that is to ask if it would be best to stick with an NVidia card, and preferably a Fermi card (again, due the Adobe-related functionality). Any recommendations on the card? Pricing is not a terrible issue, but I have a 750Watt (Corsair TX750) PSU and would like to keep it...

Thanks much!
Leo

You shouldn't have any issues.

Thank you!

You won't have any issues mixing AMD and Nvidia, but if you pick another Nvidia card, you can manage all the features of both cards through one driver control panel. It's a minor point but it's useful for things like Adobe colour settings and ICC profile management.

If you're not planning to game, something like a GT520 is probably your best bet:

• It runs the exact same Fermi architecture as your GTX470, meaning any driver/application quirks you've had to workaround with the GTX470 will also be fixed on a GT520
• It's really cheap - as low as $25
• Most of them are a short, low profile card design to avoid blocking the air-intake of your GTX470's blower
• It only consumes a maximum of 29W so you don't need to worry about your power supply, PCI-E power cables or extra airflow
• It's another 48 CUDA cores going spare, if you use any CUDA or OpenCL applications in your work.

Thank you-that is extremely gracious of you to put that post together. L

The pleasure was all mine.
You postponed my boredom on a slow workday for an extra four minutes

For the sake of simplicity (i.e. not having to maintain two separate drivers) you might want to stick with the Nvidia.