Ever since nVidia bought Ageia ( makers of Phyx sw ) and incorporated it into their driver, the need ( and power ) of recent nVidia has made the addition of a dedicated PhysX card quite a low priority for most gamers. Only games that actually use PhysX ( such as Batman series etc. ) will take advantage of it. The gains depend on how strong the dedicated card you use is of course:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/33897 ... physx-cardWhats up guys. So I have a i5 2500k and EVGA GTX 590 setup. I started playing Batman AC and it's amazing. With max setting and tesselation at max @ 1920x1080 my framerate is 78fps average. But when I turn on PhysX on high my FPS plummet down to @ 48FPS average. And yes I can tell a huge difference with FPS in 40-50s and locked at a constant 60fps with Vsync enabled. I guess the 590 just spoiled me because I won't except playing anything less that 60fps now, it's gorgeous.
So I'm planning to pick up a dedicated PhysX card. Anyone know what is the lowest card I can get by with PhysX on high and still producing a high FPS with my 590? I've been googling for some benchmarks but no luck. I know there arnt a lot of games but use PhysX but Batman AC PhysX are to badass to play without. Thanks.
BTW PSU no problem, I got a 1050w.
All of those except for the gts 450 are very terrible cards for dedicated physx. A old 8800gt will cream any gt430/440 any day of the week except for power consumption.
Best in slot for dedicated physx is general for most a 8800/9800gt or a gts450 single slot. For dual slot a 9800gtx+ or gtx260. The older architecture has more 32bit floating point unit performance per clock and per unit than Fermi. The main advantage that most users will see is unlinked core and shader clocks allowing you to downclock the core when desired and focus more power on the shader core alone. A very good 9800gtx+/gts250 can top the shader out at 2.1ghz. Last but not least nvidia seams to have designed the physx drivers to not fully load the card so only a certain % of the cpu can be used making cards with higher shader counts and clocks better for physx than others.
Minimum for dedicated physx that is Fermi is basically a GTS450, they have high enough shader count with decent clocks to make it fairly good for another year or two as a dedicated physx card. For retro a 9800gtx+ or gtx260 is better. Anything more than those cards isn't going to give you as much of a bang for the $$ and power used.
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showt ... ?p=2569470Quote:
Originally Posted by Ray_Rogers2109
Would I really need more shaders if I don't have anything connected to the ports on the PhysX card? As stated I'm buying the Sapphire 6950 2GB with the 6970 bios switch as stated. It'll be my main graphics card. I don't think I'll even buy the PhysX card until after I buy the monitor.
So Sapphire 6950/unlocked fully to 6970 will be the main card and nVidia will just be for PhysX.
The reason I suggest a card with more shaders is because nVidia likes raising the requirements. When the first released PhysX for their cards(after buying Ageia) there wasn't a minimum shader requirement. Then they made the minimum 16 shaders, then they raised it to 32 shaders sometime in the last year(I forget when). I wouldn't be surprised if they up it again to 64 shaders in the near future. So while 48 shaders will technically do now, I'd go with something with more just in case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ray_Rogers2109
Okay I looked at the program files and features with the start menu. Says I have PhysX version 9.10.0513 Should I still need a dedicated GPU for PhysX though? Asking before I install the GPU in my system specs tomorrow (hopefully it'll arrive then).
You do not need a PhysX card to use PhysX. Games that use PhysX will run in "Software" mode if a PhysX card is not detected. The physics details of the game will be run on the CPU and the physics details will be lowered so it doesn't overload the CPU. The quality without a dedicated PhysX card is equal to what you would get with other software physics engines, such as Havok or Bullet. Some games allow you to actually increase the physics details back to their full levels even when running PhysX on the CPU, however framerates tend to suck due to PhysX never being designed to run on a CPU.
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/physx/faqWhich graphics cards can accelerate NVIDIA PhysX?
All GeForce 8 series graphics cards and above with at least 256MB of local onboard graphics memory and at least 32 cores will be able to accelerate NVIDIA PhysX. If you intend to use an NVIDIA supported graphics card as a dedicated Physx card, the other graphics cards in the system must also use an NVIDIA GPU.
A dedicated video card for Physx has been tested before. My memory of the results was hazy but basically if you're running anything from a GTX560Ti above, you'll see reduced performance by doing it. It's best to leave the Physx work to the main GPU itself. There was a very slight increase in performance with lower end Nvidia cards like the 450.
Basically, unless you have an older video card ( GTX 460 or lower ) then there are very slim gains to be had by using a dedicated videocard for PhysX. Your GTX 660 card is so strong relatively speaking that even paired with an 8800 GTX ( or better ) card for PhysX, you won't notice a "huge" improvement in performance, although there are some gains to be had... at the expense of added power consumption heat and noise of course...remember these gains are only to be had in actual PhysX games like Batman, Mafia II and a handful of others...
You would have been better off to buy a GTX 660 Ti card instead of the cheaper 660 and not worry about a dedicated PhysX card as shown above. You are still welcome to try it of course but don't be shocked if it does not give you huge gains... Ideally you or a friend has an old 8800 or 9800 GTX card laying around that you can pop in and test before buying such a card, to see if it is worth the trouble or not...
If the card you use for PhysX is too low in performance, it will cripple your 660's performance as shown in this video ( GTX 580 paired with 8600 and better cards ):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbww3dhzK0MHe recommends minimum GTX 550 ( or better ) to pair with a strong primary card like the GTX 580 ( similar performance to your 660 card ). So if you decide to go ahead with this, make sure you put a DECENT card in there or it will slow down your 660...
Here is a trick to try that might save you buying a PhysX card...turn off AA completely ( or just use nVidia's FXAA mode if the game offers that option, it has very small performance hit compared to "regular" AA ) since you are running the game at such a high resolution ( 1920x1080 ). If I play a very demanding game on my GTX 560 Ti card at that resolution and notice any ingame slowdowns, I simply turn off AA as it is not needed at such a high res ( you can not see any aliasing , or so little it is basically unnoticeable ) to increase my FPS performance. So before you go out and buy a dedicated PhysX card, try turning off AA completely ( or use FXAA mode only ) and see if that increases your performance to a satisfactory level... happy gaming!
but I would like to run games like Batman: AA / AC and Mafia II with PhysX. The GTX 660 runs it ok but I don't get the 60FPS I'm looking for when running the benchmarks. As far as performance goes, I can run most of my games at max detail, 1920x1080 with 16xQAA and 16xAF fine so I don't think I'd need to go with SLI and besides, I've read countless reviews about the infamous micro-stutter when running 2 GPUs together (my GTX 660 only supports 2-way SLI) so if I can avoid that, I'd prefer to do so. My question now though is this, what kind of GPU should I get for dedicated PhysX processing? I was thinking that I could get a GTX 460? I can find it for a reasonable price or I don't need that much power for a dedicated PhysX card? Like I said, I'd like to run max PhysX and still maintain a minimum of 60FPS throughout so can anyone tell me what would be the cheapest GPU I can get that will allow me to do that? Thanks.
. I had a budget of £200 so the 660 Ti was above that (current price: £232). Thanks for the video, it's good to know that too slow a GPU and it will hinder performance. Looking at prices of a GTX 560 Ti, I've concluded that it's DEFINITELY not worth it. Cheapest I found on eBay for a 560 is €170 which is nearly the same amount of money I spent on my GTX 660. I guess I'll just consider going SLI in a few months time when Nvidia start to introduce the GTX 700 series, that way the 600 series will be phasing out and be cheaper.
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, Mafia II just is too demanding, plus, like you said before, it isn't well optimised so it wouldn't get those high frame rates. I'll definitely plan for SLI later.