Old nVidia card = new PhysX card?

[philosofool]

I'll be building a new rig this week, the specs are in my sig file.

Currently, I have an 8800 GTS 320MB and my new board will have an unused 4x PCIe slot on it. The big question is, can I use the old card as a PhysX only processor, and is it worth bothering?

I'm sure it won't overwhelm the PCIe 4x lanes because if it could, we'd have no business whatsoever running PhysX on the same 16x PCIe slot as our graphics card. But will I see any performance upgrade, and will it be worth the extra power while my machine is not running PhysX. (Wow this makes me wish the graphics cards folks were smart enough to figure out how to power down their processors when they're not doing much.)

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Yeh you can use your card. I suggest you take a look at this boards "New PhysX thread" by keysplayr to see how PhysX performs in various games with various cards.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2329052&enterthread=y

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: philosofool
I'll be building a new rig this week, the specs are in my sig file.

Currently, I have an 8800 GTS 320MB and my new board will have an unused 4x PCIe slot on it. The big question is, can I use the old card as a PhysX only processor, and is it worth bothering?

I'm sure it won't overwhelm the PCIe 4x lanes because if it could, we'd have no business whatsoever running PhysX on the same 16x PCIe slot as our graphics card. But will I see any performance upgrade, and will it be worth the extra power while my machine is not running PhysX. (Wow this makes me wish the graphics cards folks were smart enough to figure out how to power down their processors when they're not doing much.)

Yes, you can use your current 8800GTS 320 as a dedicated PhysX card in the new mobo's 4x PCI-e slot. As long as your new primary card is an Nvidia 8 series GPU or later.

With that level of PhysX card, testing has shown that you will see improvements in any GPU PhysX game that exists, and most likely any that come down the pike from one extent to another.

The graphics cards folks WERE smart enough to "reduce" power by clocking down the core, shaders and memory when 3D apps are not being run. Nvidia was working on something called Hybrid Power a short while ago, where your graphics cards would totally shut down and only utilize onboard graphics when it 2D mode. I guess it's still a work in progress. We'll have to see.

Whether it's worth the extra power while your machine is not running PhysX is up to you. Many components of your system utilize power when not used. sound cards, nic cards. HDD controllers, RAID cards.
But, like I said, it's up to you. The power used by the dedicated card would be relatively small compared to your entire system when not in use.