Adding a PhysX dedicated card

[TheUnk]

I have two 480s and am looking for a card for PhysX.. I don't want to spend a lot considering not all games will utilize it (plus I've spent enough already!). I have a 1000W PSU and don't want to upgrade that either. From my understanding my system under full load is pulling about 700W.. What are my options? I've googled a bit but find many conflicting opinions..

 

[MJinZ]

Another GTX 480.

 

[Grooveriding]

Dedicated physx card is a real waste of cash in my opinion.

Spend the money on something else, get a bigger monitor or something

 

[Wreckage]

I would say a minimum of a 9600GT.

 

[TheUnk]

Another GTX 480.

I actually looked at that but my PSU won't cut it, so it makes it even more expensive!

 

[darckhart]

if you really want to do this, i'd recommend GT240. brand new with MIR puts em around 35$ or less.

 

[MJinZ]

I actually looked at that but my PSU won't cut it, so it makes it even more expensive!

Hah, dropping your GTX 480s down to 8x/8x without another GTX 480 is going to be real good.

 

[TheUnk]

Hah, dropping your GTX 480s down to 8x/8x without another GTX 480 is going to be real good.

The difference between 8x and 16x is not worth caring about.

http://media.bestofmicro.com/T/I/256374/original/image052.png
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_480_PCI-Express_Scaling/25.html

 

[tweakboy]

POINTLESS WAISTE OF MONEY. The CPU can handle the phsyics in the nvpanel there is option. When I play a game its like 40 percent or 60 percent avg CPU usage, the other free resources can go to Physics and I bet that still wont tax the CPU to full throttle

 

[toyota]

POINTLESS WAISTE OF MONEY. The CPU can handle the phsyics in the nvpanel there is option. When I play a game its like 40 percent or 60 percent avg CPU usage, the other free resources can go to Physics and I bet that still wont tax the CPU to full throttle

there you go again with that BS. I have corrected you at least 3 or 4 times but as usual you cant get anything through your head. if you force physx to run on the cpu it will be slow as hell in a game using hardware level physx. in games that don't use hardware level physx that setting isn't doing anything in the first place. please for once let that sink in.

OP with a gtx480 you will need at least a gts250/9800gtx+ for dedicated physx to make it worth doing. anything slower than a gt240 and your gtx480 will be faster at handling both graphics and physx.

 

[thilanliyan]

GTX 480 SLI will be really fast even if PhysX is running on one of them. You don't really need another card.

 

[happy medium]

gtx 450 in 2 or 3 weeks.

 

[lavaheadache]

I have two 480s and am looking for a card for PhysX.. I don't want to spend a lot considering not all games will utilize it (plus I've spent enough already!). I have a 1000W PSU and don't want to upgrade that either. From my understanding my system under full load is pulling about 700W.. What are my options? I've googled a bit but find many conflicting opinions..

Your gonna find conflicting opinions because people can never agree on shit....

best bet is to just try stuff out for yourself.

that being said, I had a GTX 280 and 9600 GT combo 2 years ago. Back when "they" said a GTX 280 was plenty to run everything by itself, I found that the 9600 GT gave a hefty 25% or so boost in Mirrors edge, cryostasis....and something else. Definatly worthwhile and at the very least a learning experience.

I would imagine that using a GTX 480 sli setup plus a dedicated phsyx card would help out in Metro 2033 2560x1600 4x aa DOF and Tessalation.... Not too sure if there is anything else out there that might tax your rig.

 

[nenforcer]

I've got 2 x 9800GT in SLI and added a GT240 for $45 after rebate a few months ago.

With your rig you need a fairly powerful dedicated card to make any difference otherwise the GTX480 are probably powerful enough to handle even Mafia 2.

Like happy medium says you should be waiting for a GTX 450 level DirectX 11 card.

Also a guy named 'keysplayr' has benchmarked what adding a dedicated PhysX card can do and it is worthwhile.

 

[TheUnk]

Alright, I popped in a GTS 250.. Batman saw a huge gain.. Mafia2 not too shabby either. I don't know what is up with Metro2033, but in the areas I tested it only even used 8% of the GTS250 so it had no real impact. In both Batman and Mafia2 the usage % never went over 60% so based on that it seems to me that it still has plenty of power for even more PhysX processing and it wasn't holding back the 480s at all.

These are the in-game benchmarks. I used FRAPs for the Mafia2 min/max/avg since they only give you an avg at the end. Oh yeah, it's at 5760x1080, max settings/aa in both games.


Mafia II

Before
Min/Max/Avg - 19/58/37

Dedicated
Min/Max/Avg - 31/74/42


Batman:AA
GPU2
Min/Max/Avg - 19/92/62

Dedicated
Min/Max/Avg - 31/141/85

 

[bryanW1995]

wow, that's impressive. if you can get your hands on some different cards I'd be interested to see what a gtx 260, gtx 280, gts 450, etc will do as well.

btw, what res do you game at? what AA/af?

 

[TheUnk]

wow, that's impressive. if you can get your hands on some different cards I'd be interested to see what a gtx 260, gtx 280, gts 450, etc will do as well.

btw, what res do you game at? what AA/af?

I'm running 5760x1080. I was doing the AA provided by both games in their settings menus, nothing through the control panel. Mafia2 shows 16AF, Batman doesn't seem to have this option in there so I'm not sure.

 

[SHAQ]

Can you lower the res in Mafia 2 and redo it? Or run it on one monitor? I'm considering popping in a 240 or waiting for the new replacement.

 

[toyota]

TheUnk, Metro 2033 doesn't use any significant hardware level physx so you aren't going to really from a dedicated card in that game.

 

[TheUnk]

Can you lower the res in Mafia 2 and redo it? Or run it on one monitor? I'm considering popping in a 240 or waiting for the new replacement.

These runs are all at 1920x1080:

SLI Enabled
Dedicated-GTS250
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
5774, 126052, 29, 93, 45.806

GPU1-GTX480
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
5051, 126055, 19, 58, 40.070


SLI DISABLED
Dedicated-GTX480
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
5757, 126582, 27, 72, 45.480

DEDICATED-GTS250
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
5596, 128814, 28, 72, 43.442

You can see that with SLI disabled there really is no difference worth mentioning for PhysX running on the GTS250 vs GTX480.

I think something is either wrong with the game or my setup as SLI on 1 monitor the GPU usage on both cards rarely went above 60% where as on surround they would go as high as 99%.

1920-Min/Max/Avg - 29/93/45.806
5760-Min/Max/Avg - 31/74/42

 

[TheUnk]

Batman:AA had some different results than Mafia2 for the 250vs480 dedicated. 1920x1080.

min/max/avg
37/131/83 -All on one 480
46/152/94 - 480+250 dedicated
45/192/121 - 480+480 dedicated

 

[LeCramp1]

I have 2x480GTX in SLI and a my old GTX280 as a dedicated PhysX card. I'm playing in 2560x1600 res - and in Mafia II there is a significant and noticable boost with a dedicated PhysX card.

The benchmark confirms this with a 10 avg fps boost (compared to running PhysX non-dedicated on one of the GTX480s). It's kinda misleading though, as the the in-game boost seems more significant. It's the difference between noticing a FPS drop during heavy fight scenes, to a 100% smooth gameplay for me.

Then again - as of yet I'm running everything at stock speeds (till I get my watercooling), so you might get some extra juice out of a non-dedicated setup..

Having said that.. Seeing as Mafia II is really the only really heavy PhysX title I know of, I'm not sure I would have invested in a dedicated card if I didn't already own one.

 

[SHAQ]

Batman:AA had some different results than Mafia2 for the 250vs480 dedicated. 1920x1080.

min/max/avg
37/131/83 -All on one 480
46/152/94 - 480+250 dedicated
45/192/121 - 480+480 dedicated

Wow...the 480 helped the PhysX that much over the 250? The extra frames weren't really needed but that is surprising. The Mafia 2 results don't look too good. I usually have 1 470 over 90% and the other at 70-80% at 1920 16xAA forced(off in game) with high apex, but I deleted the cloth physx from non-major characters so it is constantly over 60 fps in game. It looks like the cloth physx isn't optimized if you still run in the 40's.