Physx - Are you interested in it? Have your say! VOTE!

[Sunny129]

^ mute = moot


interesting poll...i chose not to vote though b/c the OP's question/poll is aimed at gamers only. i do zero gaming despite having 5 video cards in 3 different machines, 3 of which are nVidia and PhysX-capable...and so i think i would have skewed the results by adding a vote "PhysX - no thanks!"

 

[Deders]

That's a mute poll. I have hardware PhysX capability but since I want use SLI I have to set it to 'CPU' anyways.

how come?

 

[bystander36]

That's a mute poll. I have hardware PhysX capability but since I want use SLI I have to set it to 'CPU' anyways.

I think you misunderstand the options. Selecting "Auto-Select" still uses SLI, then it will automatically choose a GPU to use GPU-PhysX options on when GPU-PhysX is used, and still do SLI.

 

[tviceman]

So difficult to market that it's come/coming out on 4 games this year, 3 of them blockbuster titles (Metro Last Light, Batman Arkham Origins, Call of Duty Ghosts) and 3 MMOs Hawken, Planetside 2 and Everquest Next.

Yeah, whatever NVidia is doing, must not be working :sneaky:

It's also used in The Bureau: X-Com and going to be in Witcher 3.

 

[Kenmitch]

Seems like a touchy topic to some. I don't game a whole lot so don't really care one way or the other anyways.

Seems like a stupid move by NVidia disabling the feature if a AMD user wants to purchase a dedicated NVidia gpu to use for PhysX.

The devoted praise the NVidia driver GODS so I'm sure there would be no issues on that end.

Kind of strange to see a company not want to make xtra sales, increase market share, push proprietary features.

 

[Carfax83]

You have noway of knowing why the frame rates are poor seeing as there is no setup info, the link that boxleitnerb gave also looks like poor frame rates and seeing as the average persons GPU struggles to give high frame rates as it is PhysX will just bring it down further and as you have said you need a dedicated card to get decent results, yet more money on top.

Whether you require a dedicated card or not depends on your hardware, resolution and your settings. If you have a GTX 780 but play at 1920x1080p, then you should have some extra GPU cycles that you can devote to PhysX if you want.

At any rate, a dedicated PhysX card is cheap considering how much raw computational power it packs compared to even the fastest CPUs..

 

[Carfax83]

It has in infernal engine used in ghost busters.

http://www.viddler.com/v/90135d36

While Ghost Busters was impressive for a software physics engine at the time, you can't compare it to what PhysX is capable of.

The demo in the link above displays rigid body and ragdoll physics, both of which have been used in computer games for a long time because they don't require complex calculations.

Cloth and fluid simulation is something else entirely, and while you may be able to find some games that run cloth physics on the CPU (Bioshock Infinite uses software Apex clothing for Elizabeth's dress for instance), they will all be very limited in use to preserve frame rates.

CPUs can only handle so much, where as GPUs have way more top end. Using hardware accelerated physics, you can have MULTIPLE instances of very demanding physics calculations running with a slight hit to frame rate.

You see this in Batman Arkham City and Mafia 2, which uses quite a bit of cloth physics for the characters..

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I appreciate Physx when its there but never miss it when it isn't. Nice plus that doesn't factor into videocard selection.

 

[Final8ty]

O

Whether you require a dedicated card or not depends on your hardware, resolution and your settings. If you have a GTX 780 but play at 1920x1080p, then you should have some extra GPU cycles that you can devote to PhysX if you want.

At any rate, a dedicated PhysX card is cheap considering how much raw computational power it packs compared to even the fastest CPUs..

Which does not change my point as I said average gamer which the 780 is not and the average gamer would not have 2 GPUS either even for Physx.

 

[Final8ty]

While Ghost Busters was impressive for a software physics engine at the time, you can't compare it to what PhysX is capable of.

The demo in the link above displays rigid body and ragdoll physics, both of which have been used in computer games for a long time because they don't require complex calculations.

Cloth and fluid simulation is something else entirely, and while you may be able to find some games that run cloth physics on the CPU (Bioshock Infinite uses software Apex clothing for Elizabeth's dress for instance), they will all be very limited in use to preserve frame rates.

CPUs can only handle so much, where as GPUs have way more top end. Using hardware accelerated physics, you can have MULTIPLE instances of very demanding physics calculations running with a slight hit to frame rate.

You see this in Batman Arkham City and Mafia 2, which uses quite a bit of cloth physics for the characters..

Over complex physics calculation is irrelevant for gaming, most people can't tell the difference, it's only there is more stuff on screen which they notice as time and time again I have read comments of gamers thinking a game is using Physx when it is not.

 

[Carfax83]

Which does not change my point as I said average gamer which the 780 is not and the average gamer would not have 2 GPUS either even for Physx.

That was just an example. My overall point is that modern GPUs are so powerful, that you typically have quite a bit of spare cycles left over which you could use to run PhysX.

Or you could just plug in that old Geforce card you have laying around collecting dust and make it a dedicated PhysX card.

I usually buy the best bang for the buck PhysX card at used prices. Last generation it was the GTX 460. This generation it's the GTX 650 Ti..

I really only spent 30 dollars on my GTX 650 Ti PhysX card, as I sold my previous GTX 460 for 60 bucks..

Over complex physics calculation is irrelevant for gaming, most people can't tell the difference, it's only there is more stuff on screen which they notice as time and time again I have read comments of gamers thinking a game is using Physx when it is not.

How can you say it's irrelevant, when it brings increased realism?

So you'd rather have clothing that is glued to characters and moves like it's been ironed with industrial strength starch?

Thanks but no thanks..

 

[Final8ty]

That was just an example. My overall point is that modern GPUs are so powerful, that you typically have quite a bit of spare cycles left over which you could use to run PhysX.

Or you could just plug in that old Geforce card you have laying around collecting dust and make it a dedicated PhysX card.

I usually buy the best bang for the buck PhysX card at used prices. Last generation it was the GTX 460. This generation it's the GTX 650 Ti..

I really only spent 30 dollars on my GTX 650 Ti PhysX card, as I sold my previous GTX 460 for 60 bucks..


Q
How can you say it's irrelevant, when it brings increased realism?

So you'd rather have clothing that is glued to characters and moves like it's been ironed with industrial strength starch?

Thanks but no thanks..

What you have spent is not the point, what the average gamer will do and spend is.
I have not seen anything about Physx that looks remotely more realistic in games at this point than any other physics implementation except for the fur on a wolf.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Its not very impressive. I had a GTX 680 and it just wasn't anything getting all excited over.

 

[MrK6]

That was just an example. My overall point is that modern GPUs are so powerful, that you typically have quite a bit of spare cycles left over which you could use to run PhysX.

What? This is a ridiculous argument. The bottleneck in almost every gaming system is the GPU, so no, there aren't "quite a bit of spare cycles left over." If you were arguing for CPU based physics applications you might have a point.

How can you say it's irrelevant, when it brings increased realism?

So you'd rather have clothing that is glued to characters and moves like it's been ironed with industrial strength starch?

Thanks but no thanks..

Clothing that looks like fluid is just as ridiculous and unrealistic.

For some reason those of you that suck down the marketing koolaid think because something is different and a company tells your it's better, you automatically think it must be so without using your own judgment or common sense. As was mentioned by several other posters, simply removing effects instead of having them rendered in another method is also a laughable marketing scam, but some of you don't comprehend that either. The simple fact is that the GPU is already the most taxed part in most gaming systems. Running poorly optimized physics on them to further drag down performance is beyond asinine, yet some of you still seem to think it's a good idea.

 

[boxleitnerb]

^ and yet there still is no evidence that anything was "removed". Or do you have knowledge of all alternative realities to know how the games would look without PhysX?
Hint: Just because similar effects were integrated in other games doesn't mean squat because there is no way of knowing what a particular developer team would or wouldn't have done.

 

[Deders]

What? This is a ridiculous argument. The bottleneck in almost every gaming system is the GPU, so no, there aren't "quite a bit of spare cycles left over." If you were arguing for CPU based physics applications you might have a point.
Clothing that looks like fluid is just as ridiculous and unrealistic.

For some reason those of you that suck down the marketing koolaid think because something is different and a company tells your it's better, you automatically think it must be so without using your own judgment or common sense. As was mentioned by several other posters, simply removing effects instead of having them rendered in another method is also a laughable marketing scam, but some of you don't comprehend that either. The simple fact is that the GPU is already the most taxed part in most gaming systems. Running poorly optimized physics on them to further drag down performance is beyond asinine, yet some of you still seem to think it's a good idea.

The beauty of massively parallel processing is that generally most games won't use all the cores, even though the GPU itself might be at 100%.

Once the shaders have done their thing there is plenty of horsepower left over, especially considering cards that could handle every game at full detail only had hundreds of shaders, now we are talking in the thousands. It would be a shame to waste it.

 

[Final8ty]

The beauty of massively parallel processing is that generally most games won't use all the cores, even though the GPU itself might be at 100%.

Once the shaders have done their thing there is plenty of horsepower left over, especially considering cards that could handle every game at full detail only had hundreds of shaders, now we are talking in the thousands. It would be a shame to waste it.

The fps hit with Physx says otherwise.

 

[Keysplayr]

The fps hit with Physx says otherwise.

So turn it off if the particular game is too taxing with your particular Nvidia GPU.
At least it's there to be turned off, right?

 

[Final8ty]

So turn it off if the particular game is too taxing with your particular Nvidia GPU.
At least it's there to be turned off, right?

Why should anyone have to turn it off if the claim there is plenty of horsepower left for it when your very comment proves my point.

 

[cmdrdredd]

People talk about the "fps hit" but when you have a game go from 120fps to 80fps that's a big hit yes but the playability changes exactly none.

It depends on your hardware but I have never had physx on in a game that couldn't get me at least 60fps average.

I would like to know what games, at what settings, and with what specific hardware are being referred to with this because that all matters.

 

[Deders]

The fps hit with PhysX says otherwise.

One thing I found when I had a 560Ti is that when playing Arkham City at full detail with high PhysX, overclocking my CPU made a huge difference. It made it playable at settings that the publisher recommended a 570 alongside 460 for PhysX.

Now I have a 670, it rarely drops below 60fps but it doesn't matter to me if it does. I have a bit of a graphics fetish so i like to see my PC being pushed to the limits.

Like graphics, even GPU PhysX is boosted with more CPU power.

My Brother and I have the same make and model graphics card and when I built his computer with an i5 and Z77 chipset I found his CPU pushed graphics about 30% faster. My CPU still pushes my card harder than a Phenom II would, and probably the next AMD generation. I've still not seen overclocked i5 750 results on the same page as the latest AMD products so I can't be sure about how they compare.

 

[Final8ty]

People talk about the "fps hit" but when you have a game go from 120fps to 80fps that's a big hit yes but the playability changes exactly none.

It depends on your hardware but I have never had physx on in a game that couldn't get me at least 60fps average.

I would like to know what games, at what settings, and with what specific hardware are being referred to with this because that all matters.

How many times does it have to be said that the context is not about if you throw enough hardware at it. You clearly have not been following.

 

[cmdrdredd]

How many times does it have to be said that the context is not about if you throw enough hardware at it. You clearly have not been following.

How many times do I need to look at your sig and say "hmm...can't use physx anyway"?

The hardware being referred to matters. It's a graphical effect and people on this forum like to say "just turn off SSAA or turn down shadows and it will be fine". You can turn off physx and in some cases put it on low and that changes the performance hit.

Why do people want 60fps with a 2 year old card on the latest game with physx enabled but they don't expect the same with all the other effects? It's the same thing, a graphical effect you can turn off or down.

 

[Keysplayr]

Why should anyone have to turn it off if the claim there is plenty of horsepower left for it when your very comment proves my point.

Final8ty Final8ty. You obviously realize that it completely depends on the level of GPU being used or if there is a second Nv card dedicated to PhysX. So why would you even allude to such a thing as above? Is it a one size fits all or nothing scenario? No, of course it isn't. Use your head man.

 

[Keysplayr]

How many times does it have to be said that the context is not about if you throw enough hardware at it. You clearly have not been following.

So then, you're only talking about one situation at one setting in one game using one rig at one particular time or segment in a game then?

Cause it seems to me you have lost your way here and you can't stop. No brakes, no point in steering, right?