Tiny little helper: we created a small tool to select the GPU to launch Automatic1111 with (Windows only)

[48design]

Since I have two old graphic cards (Nvidia GTX 980 Ti) and because Automatic1111/Stable Diffusion only use one GPU at a time I wrote a small batch file that adds a "GPU selector" to the context menu of Windows Explorer. This enables me to run Automatic1111 on both GPUs in parallel and so it doubles the speed as you can generate images using the same (or a different prompt) in each instance of Automatic1111.

I also tested creating a LoRA (using Kohya_ss) on one GPU and generating images on the other without problems!

One additional benefit: the second GPU has more VRAM available because it does not have additional OS related data in it.

You can download the tool here: https://www.48design.com/en/news/2023/05/16/ai-and-ml-arrived-at-everyday/
(scroll down to the end of the page)

I hope this helps others as well!

[oliverban]

very interesting. I thought you can choose it by writing something in the cmd-arg lines? Just installed it, thanks for sharing! Will use my second 3090 for more vram!

[ClashSAN]

@48design hey! welcome back !

[48design]

You can mess around with the cmd arguments but using this tool you can just decide which GPU you like to use each time you run it so it may be a bit more useful. It's not restricted to Automatic1111 but can be used for every application you like.

[48design]

very interesting. I thought you can choose it by writing something in the cmd-arg lines? Just installed it, thanks for sharing! Will use my second 3090 for more vram!

@oliverban Does it work for you?

[oliverban]

It does work just fine Nice with all that extra vram (about 2-3gb) and being able to do multiple things on the GPUs as well ! :) Now the problem is my other card is sort of starved for air so it gets hot as f*ck :P

[48design]

The benefit in terms of vram sounds great! ;)

[jmcq01]

Unfortunately the tool does not work for me, and I tried several application executables using the context menu besides auto111. I select the 2060 card, but the 3060 is always used. Was really looking forward to it, too, for a couple of uses. As mentioned earlier though, just adding --device-id=1 to COMMANDLINE_ARGS works fine at least for auto111. Maybe something with how I have my dual monitors set up is just incompatible?

[48design]

Did you change some settings in the nvidia control panel to use both cards? This may overwrite the tool. The tool simply sets the visible cuda devices system variable before running an application and resets it afterwards to change the GPU used by the app.

[jmcq01]

Thanks for the help (and email) 48design, I think I've got it settled now. Problem seems to have originated from me trying to run the install from the C:\Program Files(86) directory and then again from the desktop. Windows didn't like that and didn't run the script correctly. Like you said, privilege issues most likely.

I can now report that it's doing exactly what it should do, and I can finally(!!) fully utilize this unutilized 2060 that's been taking up space. The uninstall script also removes context menus if I ever wanted to remove it (unlikely).

Only one thing now that maybe you can fix? It won't run if the directory path includes a space, like "Stable Diffusion". I have to change it to "Stable_Diffusion" for it to work. Trying to run it on any app within the "Program Files" directory, for example, won't work either because of the space.

But otherwise this is a dream, thanks!

[48design]

Glad I could help! I have to take a look at the space-problem.

[jmcq01]

I tried replacing this line in install.bat:

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\RunWithGPU.GPU%%i\Command" /f /ve /d ""%~dp0run_with_gpu.bat" %%i "%%1"" >NUL

With this:

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\RunWithGPU.GPU%%i\Command" /f /ve /d "\"%~dp0run_with_gpu.bat\" %%i \"%%1\"" >NUL

Seems to do the trick?

[48design]

I have to take a look at it when I am at a computer but using quotes around the path was exactly what I had in mind to fix the problem. Thanks @jmcq01!

[48design]

I updated the download and now this tool should work for paths with spaces, too. Have fun!