3rd slot 680i = physics yet?

[jshuck3]

Back when the 680i came out word was the 3rd PCIe slot was for dedicated physics card by way of using an old nvidia card. Is that true and if so has that happened yet? I've got a 680i board and a 6800 just dying to work together but I can't find out if it's even possible yet. Anyone got any info?

 

[tuteja1986]

you are confusing your self with ATI design...

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33597

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: tuteja1986
you are confusing your self with ATI design...

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33597

No you are just seeing too much red.

Finally, the third graphics card slot for a physics accelerator (by NVIDIA).

linky

 

[Munky]

The third card may look good in theory, but I doubt Nvidia or Ati will support older cards for physics. By the time you actually see this used in games, you'll likely need at least an 8-series card to use Nvidia physics, and that's if the games devs actually use this feature.

 

[aka1nas]

If it ever gets used, it will probably require DirectX 10 hardware as it's a bit more programmable. There's no financial incentive to spend any extra effort making it work on DirectX 9 hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being a Vista-only feature as WDDM would probably make physics offloading a heck of a lot simpler to program.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: munky
The third card may look good in theory, but I doubt Nvidia or Ati will support older cards for physics. By the time you actually see this used in games, you'll likely need at least an 8-series card to use Nvidia physics, and that's if the games devs actually use this feature.

yup, I'd think the cards would need to be more flexible to plop them in there, shoving in an older card that is no longer up to par (or high end at least) that was never really intended to be used as anything other than a video card isn't that appealing to me anyways. Besides, if hardware physics acceleration really does ever take off I'd much rather use that in my 2nd PCI-e slot than 3rd, because I think it, if done properly, would be far more worth it than running two video cards just for video in the first place.

I also think people are looking at this the wrong way as well, sort of like the people who would justify SLI/xFire as an upgrade path, "oh I'll just throw in a 2nd card to boost my performance later on" when really it isn't that better off (if better at all) than selling your current card and upgrading to a faster one...SLI/xFire makes most sense, if it ever really does make sense, when using it as an ultra high end setup, running two high end cards from the start.

I think the same would mostly hold true for using a 3rd card for physics processing, I think you'd ideally want the same level card processing physics if they ever do go that route of physics processing via video card. Of course this really does depend on how they amp up the physics in games, if they half ass it like the half-ass solutions suggested thus far (using an old GPU thrown in to compliment), then obviously that would be all you need.

 

[Woofmeister]

Originally posted by: jshuck3
Back when the 680i came out word was the 3rd PCIe slot was for dedicated physics card by way of using an old nvidia card. Is that true and if so has that happened yet? I've got a 680i board and a 6800 just dying to work together but I can't find out if it's even possible yet. Anyone got any info?

Uh, the OP needs some help. He apparently believes that someday he will be able to use an old 6800 video card as a physics card.

Ahem, the third slot on the 680i motherboards is for use by some future Nvidia physics card that has yet to be released. Even assuming you could somehow convert a GPU into a physics processor (and merely by installing it into a new MOBO slot yet) there's no way that Nvidia would make it easy for you to use an old card you already purchased to perform a function that you'd otherwise have to buy a new card for.

 

[bigsnyder]

PSU requirements on top of SLI would make this very impractical, though using existing hardware would be very cool.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Woofmeister
Uh, the OP needs some help. He apparently believes that someday he will be able to use an old 6800 video card as a physics card.

...that would be exactly what he meant?

You can use a GPU with programmable shaders as an add-in FPU of sorts, assuming you have software that knows how to interface with it. So far they've mostly been used for scientific computing research projects.

There was talk a while back of maybe being able to use either spare GPU cycles or a secondary GPU to run a physics processing engine (like the AEGIA PhysX card), but it hasn't really gone anywhere yet.

 

[aka1nas]

I think both ATI and Nvidia put out those press releases about GPU-assisted physics because Ageia caught them with their pants down, and later realized that it's either a much more difficult problem to get working effectively with DirectX 9 hardware than they initially though or that it's going to pretty much require vista and/or Dx10 and clammed up about it until they have the hardware out in quantity and Vista is a little more prevalent.