Phys-X & AMD GPU

[lifeblood]

I will to upgrade my GPU to a 7850 soon, but I’ve decided to also give phys-X a spin. I’m thinking of hooking my 1920x1080 monitor to the 7850, and hook my 1440x900 monitor to a GeForce card. The second display will not be used for games, it will only run 2D content (office productivity, etc). This will allow me two things:

• 7870 will idle low as it will only have one monitor plugged into it
• Allow me to run Phys-X on the GeForce

I understand I have to use a hack and certain NV drivers. My question is what is the cheapest NV GPU that I can get for this to work? A GT-240? GT-430? Anyone have any firsthand experience they care to share?

 

[railven]

First hand experience, my setup:

Primary - Radeon HD 5870 2GB
Secondary (PhysX Offload) - 9800 GTX+ 512MB

I played Batman: AC on Ultra (with Tess on Normal) + PhysX on High - 40+ FPS average. The most performance impact came from the DX11 settings.

If I switched down to DX9-Ultra (or Very High whatever it was in DX9 mode) + PhysX High - locked at 60FPS.

I only had my monitor hooked up to the Radeon, nothing hooked up to the GeForce.

I plan on doing the same with my Radeon HD 7970 and my GTX 460 once any interesting PhysX game comes along.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Depends on how much you clock the 7850, and what setting level you want to use for PhysX.

A single GT-430 would be the min, something would more cores would be better. PhysX works like any other thing, if your PhsyX card is too slow it will bottleneck your rendering card.

 

[moriz]

i have a 7970 and a GT240 as the physX card. the 7970 is running my primary (apple cinema 27"), while the GT240 is running two secondary monitors. i tested with batman: arkham asylum, and physX acceleration works, with the game locked at 60FPS during the built in benchmark. the GT240 was hitting around 50% utilization throughout.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

i have a 7970 and a GT240 as the physX card. the 7970 is running my primary (apple cinema 27"), while the GT240 is running two secondary monitors. i tested with batman: arkham asylum, and physX acceleration works, with the game locked at 60FPS during the built in benchmark. the GT240 was hitting around 50% utilization throughout.

Keep in mind you won't see 100% usage on a PhysX card, since only the CUDA cores are used the highest you'll see is around 70%.

 

[lavaheadache]

Keep in mind you won't see 100% usage on a PhysX card, since only the CUDA cores are used the highest you'll see is around 70%.

what do you mean only the cuda cores are used?

I run a similar setup being a 7970 with a GTX 285 for physx. Works great

 

[NIGELG]

To avoid all the stress just buy a GTX 570 instead as your primary and some cheapo card like a 450 to run PhysX.

 

[lavaheadache]

what stress? It is very easy to run a dedicated physx card along side a Radeon as a primary card.

It takes 1 simple registry hack

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

what stress? It is very easy to run a dedicated physx card along side a Radeon as a primary card.

It takes 1 simple registry hack

Well for one thing it isn't worth the wasted cash.

Either get a fast Geforce card that can do both or deal without it on an AMD card.

AMD users don't really miss much.

 

[lifeblood]

Well for one thing it isn't worth the wasted cash.

Either get a fast Geforce card that can do both or deal without it on an AMD card.

AMD users don't really miss much.

My primary desire is to put my second monitor on a seperate GPU so that both GPUs can go to idle. I can add the 7850 for the primary display and keep my 4830 for the secondary display, but I thought it would be fun/different if I got an NV card for the second display and PhysX. I can get a gt 240 on ebay for about $20 so not much cash is wasted.

I realize PhysX isn't very impressive, but as long as the second card isn't too expensive then its worth it for novelty experience if nothing else.