Changeing the Primary Rendering Device???

[Charles_S]

Hello my good peeps, I have a small problem/question. My computer has two active video cards. One add on card, my Sapphire HD3870, and an other on board HD3200. (780G chipset). I have them both installed and running so I can rock three screens. (it's WELL worth the pain).

My problem is that when ever I run Dolphin, the information overlay at emulation start says that I'm using my on board HD3200 as the rendering device. Clearly a small problem, And so far I'm not really getting BAD FPS . But this is obviously not the optimal configuration. (It also won't let me use DirectX as the API... but one problem at a time.) I have searched ALL over the settings for the emu and I can't find a way to change it. I thought there was once a way to do some thing like this in Windoz/CCC, but I can't find that area again. (It was an older version of CCC that had the option I think).

SO, can I fix this w/o recompiling Dolphin? Or w/o disabling my on board every time I want to play? If the sorce needs to be changed, could some one do it for me? Cuz i'm purdy freeking lazy. (And i'm not that fimilar with the project) Thanks in advance.

P.S. I'm obviously no n00b when it comes to the PC/internet. Of course I searched Google, the Dolphin FAQ, and this forum, before posting this thread. But still, it wouldn't surprise me if the answer is simple and was staring me right in the face the whole time.

[Ocean]

http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/thread-9479.html

Same problem, just with an nvidia card.

If you can't completely disable the less powerful gpu in bios or ati catalyst cc, dolphin apparently wont recognise it.

[Charles_S]

Thanks, I looked over that and your right. Thats more or less the same problem, even if it is a different card vendor. Still no solution though?

If you can't completely disable the less powerful gpu in bios or ati catalyst cc, dolphin apparently wont recognise it.

If I go in to device manager and disable the lesser card. dolphin uses the other one just fine (at least it says it is using it). Thing is it's a pain because I also have to switch around VGA cables and change which monitor is the primary. And I shouldn't have to do that. Plenty of games/3D apps detect the available GFX cards and choose the better one. And if they don't, they usually have a config area that lets you change it manually.

For example, "Decent 3" (circa. 1999) has a setup screen that lets you choose between Glide/OpenGL/DirectX, and whether to use the primary rendering device, or any alternative devices detected. (it has a "Detect System" feature.) Even applications like "MPC Homecinema" and Winamp's "Milkdrop 2" have an option to choose the display adapter, and thus the rendering device. Both of these are free, and neither one of them would be considered 3D intensive.

Looking back over this real quick I really sound like I'm bitching, and maybe I am. But really though, I'm just trying to point out that this is a thing that Dolphin should have if it doesn't already. And it's not that I don't completely understand the developers woes. This is "freeware" and you "get what you pay for". Plus, they have lives other than the Dolphin project. It would just be nice to have and it would make the program better, especially for us Multy-GPU users.