Another Dedicated physx card question.

[Tat3rooski]

Okay, so I'm aware that buying a card for dedicated physx isn't really worth it, but I have a gtx 260 192 laying around. I'm building a new pc in the future (winter of 2011) and i'm leaning towards purchasing a gtx 460 1gb for the main graphics. If I were to put my 260 in as a dedicated physx card, what would the performance increase be? (In using a physx enabled game, of course) Is there anyone with this combo, or any benchmarks that I can look at? Thanks

 

[nanaki333]

there was a person that made a thread awhile back here that added a 9600 GT as a physx card. all of the physx enabled games barely used 50% of the 9600GT, so a gtx 260 would be overkill

 

[bunnyfubbles]

IMO it would make a lot more sense to sell your GTX260 and buy a faster main card with the extra money. Even if you could only get $50 for it that would likely make the difference in being able to buy the next tier up and then just being able to run PhysX on that card without too much of a performance hit all while enjoying the faster overall card for the vast majority of other games that don't utilize PhysX and also saving on power/heat/noise

 

[toyota]

there was a person that made a thread awhile back here that added a 9600 GT as a physx card. all of the physx enabled games barely used 50% of the 9600GT, so a gtx 260 would be overkill

not necessarily true. I really wish someone would make an accurate FAQ about this so we dont get silly and inaccurate replies about physx. the stronger your video card is then the stronger your physx card needs to be. a 9600gt is fine for something like a gtx260 or so but with a gtx560 it would not provide much improvement at all compared to just letting the gtx560 do both graphics and physx. using a 9600gt with a gtx580 could actually even cause a decrease in performance as opposed to letting the gtx580 do both.

using an AMD card though is completely different. any decent dedicated physx card will help a ton because your only other option would be having the cpu handle physx.

a gtx260 would be slightly overkill matched up with the gtx460 in some games but if you already have it then why not. personally I would sell it and get something smaller and more efficient for physx though. or just skip the dedicated physx card altogether and get a faster graphics card so ALL your games can be faster.

and really how many games do you even play that use hardware physx in the first place? I find that most people that start threads like this are not even playing a single game that uses it.

 

[Soundmanred]

Not worth the heat and power consumption.
Your main card will do just fine, even on the rare chance you'll actually play a game with Physx enabled.

 

[SickBeast]

I have a pair of GTX 460s, and I experimented with dedicating one of them to PhysX. The performance was incredible in Batman. A dedicated card is actually as good as running SLI in that game, or so it seems. The real issue is that few games actually use PhysX in a meaninful way. The only other game I can think of is Mafia 2.

 

[Keysplayr]

not necessarily true. I really wish someone would make an accurate FAQ about this so we dont get silly and inaccurate replies about physx. the stronger your video card is then the stronger your physx card needs to be. a 9600gt is fine for something like a gtx260 or so but with a gtx560 it would not provide much improvement at all compared to just letting the gtx560 do both graphics and physx. using a 9600gt with a gtx580 could actually even cause a decrease in performance as opposed to letting the gtx580 do both.

This isn't exactly logical, Toyota.
Why would the PhysX load be any less or any greater depending on if the primary card is a GTX280 or GTX480? No matter how it's looked at, the same amount of PhysX calculations are needed either way. And there isn't any magic involved. Can you give some meaningful examples of what you're saying?

OP, your GTX260 would be great for a dedicated PhysX card. The performance improvement depends highly on the actual PhysX game and settings used as per usual.

 

[toyota]

This isn't exactly logical, Toyota.
Why would the PhysX load be any less or any greater depending on if the primary card is a GTX280 or GTX480? No matter how it's looked at, the same amount of PhysX calculations are needed either way. And there isn't any magic involved. Can you give some meaningful examples of what you're saying?

OP, your GTX260 would be great for a dedicated PhysX card. The performance improvement depends highly on the actual PhysX game and settings used as per usual.

wow you should know better than that. didn't you even test physx for your self before? a gtx480 can handle more physx and graphics on its own than the gtx280. something like a 9600gt dedicated for physx would help the gtx280 much more because again it needs more help than the gtx480 would. if your logic was correct then Nvidia would simply make one physx card for every one to use. they don't because the best level of physx card needed is based on the system being used.

 

[Keysplayr]

wow you should know better than that. didn't you even test physx for your self before? a gtx480 can handle more physx and graphics on its own than the gtx280. something like a 9600gt dedicated for physx would help the gtx280 much more because again it needs more help than the gtx480 would. if your logic was correct then Nvidia would simply make one physx card for every one to use. they don't because the best level of physx card needed is based on the system being used.

Sigh.... I do.

"I really wish someone would make an accurate FAQ about this so we dont get silly and inaccurate replies about physx."

??? Where is your FAQ?

I understand what you're saying Toyota and where your line of thinking is coming from, but you needed to be clearer. Not that simple to say, "The more powerful your main card, the more powerful your secondary dedicated PhysX card needs to be. That's not how it works.

 

[toyota]

Sigh.... I do.

"I really wish someone would make an accurate FAQ about this so we dont get silly and inaccurate replies about physx."

??? Where is your FAQ?

I understand what you're saying Toyota and where your line of thinking is coming from, but you needed to be clearer. Not that simple to say, "The more powerful your main card, the more powerful your secondary dedicated PhysX card needs to be. That's not how it works.

lol, I am too lazy to make an FAQ for anything.

but really that is about how it works. an 8600gt is the minimum card recommended by Nvidia for physx. well if your gpu is a 9600gt then yes the 8600gt will help since the 9600gt would be really burdened doing both graphics and physx. but if you have something like a gtx260 then you will only break even or even lose performance because the 8600gt handling physx is slower than the gtx260 handling both graphics and physx.

so again like I said...the more powerful your graphics card is then the more powerful your dedicated physx card needs to be. but also again that is referring to Nvidia cards since with AMD any decent dedicated physx card will be a huge increase compared to running hardware physx on the cpu.

 

[SlowSpyder]

If I were buying a Physx card I would look at a GTS 250. It's cool running and doesn't take a lot of power to run. I would think it would be fast enough... anyone know?

 

[toyota]

If I were buying a Physx card I would look at a GTS 250. It's cool running and doesn't take a lot of power to run. I would think it would be fast enough... anyone know?

a gts450 might make an overall better physx card. it uses less power and has more sp. but both the gts250 or gts450 would be pretty good physx cards. do you really want to fool with the driver hassles just for a couple of games though?

 

[bunnyfubbles]

a gts450 might make an overall better physx card. it uses less power and has more sp. but both the gts250 or gts450 would be pretty good physx cards. do you really want to fool with the driver hassles just for a couple of games though?

and have the card sitting there otherwise useless for the vast majority of the time the computer is not being used to play a game with hardware PhysX

although I suppose it wouldn't be useless for someone doing F@H, but then that's that much more heat and power when not using it for PhysX

 

[Majic 7]

I have a 9800GT for physx and it adds 25/30 watts at idle, added heat is insignificant. It sits there at 35 to 38 degrees and doesn't affect the rest of the system at all. It's not zero total for the heat and watts but it doesn't break the bank either. Just got the 580 a few days ago and put the 9800 in yesterday so I haven't had a chance to actually use physx yet, but soon I will see if it's worth it.

 

[Carfax83]

Okay, so I'm aware that buying a card for dedicated physx isn't really worth it, but I have a gtx 260 192 laying around. I'm building a new pc in the future (winter of 2011) and i'm leaning towards purchasing a gtx 460 1gb for the main graphics. If I were to put my 260 in as a dedicated physx card, what would the performance increase be? (In using a physx enabled game, of course) Is there anyone with this combo, or any benchmarks that I can look at? Thanks

The performance increase would be large, as there is no game on the market today that requires more than a GTS 250 to do PhysX calculations.

This might change in the future with Batman Arkham City though, as that game will more than likely use PhysX just like it's predecessor did, but with far more usage and effects.

 

[SlowSpyder]

a gts450 might make an overall better physx card. it uses less power and has more sp. but both the gts250 or gts450 would be pretty good physx cards. do you really want to fool with the driver hassles just for a couple of games though?

Me personally? Probably not. If a killer game came out that had an incredible experience with Physx as compared to without, maybe than I would. But for some people, yea, they want Physx. I thought the GTS250 might be a good card for that... it's fairly inexpensive and runs cool and doesn't hog power. Exactly what I would want for a Physx-only card.

 

[mhouck]

but also again that is referring to Nvidia cards since with AMD any decent dedicated physx card will be a huge increase compared to running hardware physx on the cpu.

Does this mean that nvidia supports running physx on an nvidia gpu with an amd gpu present on your system now? or is this refering to a work around?

 

[gramboh]

I wouldn't bother, Yes Batman AA is great, Mirror's Edge as well (although it's old now) and maybe Mafia 2 (have not played it yet, tried demo but without PhysX), but the large majority of games do not use it.

 

[sticks435]

Ok, I was going to post a new thread about my physx question, but I will piggyback on this one. I am in sort of the same situation as the OP, though I already have a GTX570 and my old card was the 260. I am building a completely new system from the ground up and was going to use my 260 in my new system to play a couple of physx games, and then the rest of the time it would go in the old system to do F@H.

My issue is that I have a PCI sound card, and am getting either an Asus or Asrock motherboard, where the PCI slots are sandwiched in-between the 2 x8 PCI-E slots. Would x4 be enough to allow full use of the card for physx processing or would I be ok with putting the SC above the bottom x8 slot that the 260 would be in?

 

[Keysplayr]

4x is enough for PhysX.

 

[toyota]

4x is enough for PhysX.

yep

 

[sticks435]

Awesome. Thanks for the quick replies guys!

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Found a fairly recent test detailing what Toyota was describing. In the video, a 580 + 8600gts actually performed worse than a 580 doing all the work. The tester needed to step-up to a faster physx card in order to increase performance over the 580.

http://www.gamephys.com/tag/physx-benchmark/