Couple questions, extra AMD card and buying cheaper nVidia card for Physx

[Cyrus9008]

This is a really dumb question but I have and extra AMD 4890 card laying around collecting dust, I have a 560 Ti for my main card and an extra PCIe 4x slot. If I threw that 4890 card in the 4x slot could I use that to run anything specifically to take the load off of my 560?

Question 2: Assuming that my AMD card is useless which it probably is could I buy a cheaper nvidia card and throw it in my 4x slot to run just physx and actually see noticeable results? Don't have the money to run SLI and it's only a 4x slot anyways. What card would you recommend I use to do this??

 

[taltamir]

nvidia drivers have DRM that disables GPU accelerated physX on systems with an AMD GPU (including integrated gpus.)

 

[BallaTheFeared]

nvidia drivers have DRM that disables GPU accelerated physX on systems with an AMD GPU (including integrated gpus.)

Yes but there is a hack to get around that. However there is no way to use an AMD for PhysX.

@OP if you're playing games with PhysX and really want it, I'd suggest grabbing a used GTX 260 216 for around $60.

If you're playing Mafia II, the Batman games, or anything with decent PhysX you'll notice nice increase in performance with a dedicated card. Where dedicated cards start to fall short is with SLI systems that didn't need it in the first place.

 

[Cyrus9008]

Thanks for feedback guys but one thing. I already have an nVidia 560 Ti installed. I was wondering would installing an additional nVidia card (not in SLI) and making it a physx only GFX card boost my performance in physx enabled games?

 

[taltamir]

Thanks for feedback guys but one thing. I already have an nVidia 560 Ti installed. I was wondering would installing an additional nVidia card (not in SLI) and making it a physx only GFX card boost my performance in physx enabled games?

it would, but not necessarily by a lot.
Also GPU physx enabled games are really rare

 

[mrcool63]

nvidia drivers have DRM that disables GPU accelerated physX on systems with an AMD GPU (including integrated gpus.)

seriously?? that would imply that any user with an amd processor and motherboard(which is majority)can never use physx!! that is plain idiotic!!!

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Thanks for feedback guys but one thing. I already have an nVidia 560 Ti installed. I was wondering would installing an additional nVidia card (not in SLI) and making it a physx only GFX card boost my performance in physx enabled games?

Yes, depending how much great a hit you take currently in performance from enabling it, and how fast the PhysX card you get is you can eliminate most of that performance hit.

I wouldn't recommend spending much if anything on a dedicated card, unless you really like the titles that actually support it.

Personally I think PhysX is amazing, and it adds another level of immersion and detail to games. However there just simply aren't enough games that support it, but games like Batman AC are much better with it than without it.

PhysX is the single greatest "addon" to improve a games immersion and detail levels, everything else like AA, and AO are foobar compared to it.