Ati primary and Nvidia for physX

[Gunni Parker]

I was looking into setting this up as I have a 7970 as my primary card. I was looking at getting a cheap 260gtx if I can find one. Has anyone else done this before. I know it can be achieved.

 

[NightSt@lk3r]

its been done before, its a pain in the arse and not worth the hassle.

 

[Confused Stu]

Definitely works, and works well in my experience - I'm running a 7970 and a GTX460. Thanks to Nvidia deliberately disabling PhysX if it recognises an AMD card in your system, you will need to use modified drivers for it to work:
http://www.ngohq.com/graphic-cards/...with-latest-physx-and-geforce-285-solved.html

Whether or not it is worth it is purely down to how many games you have that use hardware PhysX (not CPU PhysX, which most "PhysX games" use). I use it for Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, which I return to every couple of months. If it wasn't for these games, the only other one I have it affects is Mirrors Edge (which I never play) so it wouldn't be worth it for me except for Batman.

How many games on this list do you play regularly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_hardware-accelerated_PhysX_support

 

[Gunni Parker]

I have borderlands 2 to play through, I have also never played arkham but I do own it. I don't like that I am missing out on eye candy. How does the 460 fair with PhysX on high?

 

[tommybhoy]

its a pain in the **** and not worth the hassle.

Have you tried it before?

Definitely works, and works well in my experience

+1 and very easy to hack, takes about 10 seconds running a .bat file after the Nvidia drivers are installed and downloaded the patch.

260gtx will bottleneck due to the differing vram speeds causing big fps hits/spikes/stutter, if stu isn't experiencing any on his setup, then the 460 may not suffer as much.

640 upwards doesn't seem to cause any of the problems from what I've saw in user results around the web.

Afaik, PhysX version 3 won't enable hybrid physX either as you can hack it to use the cpu instead.

 

[NightSt@lk3r]

Have you tried it before?

Yes.

 

[Gunni Parker]

Have you tried it before?



+1 and very easy to hack, takes about 10 seconds running a .bat file after the Nvidia drivers are installed and downloaded the patch.

260gtx will bottleneck due to the differing vram speeds causing big fps hits/spikes/stutter, if stu isn't experiencing any on his setup, then the 460 may not suffer as much.

640 upwards doesn't seem to cause any of the problems from what I've saw in user results around the web.

Afaik, PhysX version 3 won't enable hybrid physX either as you can hack it to use the cpu instead.

I heard that the CPU can take a hit and run Physx? How does it fair. I have a I5 25k?

 

[tommybhoy]

I think it's ok if you don't go crazy on the PhysX settings, maybe low/medium can be achieved but idk, haven't tried it myself.

B2 can be run on the cpu and afaik, P2 can be too.

 

[Confused Stu]

260gtx will bottleneck due to the differing vram speeds causing big fps hits/spikes/stutter, if stu isn't experiencing any on his setup, then the 460 may not suffer as much.

No stuttering or noticeable FPS hits compared to a 7970 at 5760x1080 without PhysX. I had to play AC in DX9 mode as DX11 hit 1 frame every 5 seconds or so in the opening menu. Thinking bug rather than PhysX issue. I ran my 460 at x4 PCI-E and tried dropping it to x1, which caused my minimum FPS in the Arkham City benchmark to go down from 40-ish to 25-ish, but the averages didn't move too much. However, in normal gameplay I couldn't tell the difference, so have left it at x1 PCI-E and gained back 2 USB3's and my eSATA port.

 

[Yaayuh!]

I'm playing BL2 at the moment and the PhysX works on CPU, badly. So started researching on this and I gave up on the idea because of the countless amount of issues i found people having.
Also, may settle with the extra 7970 now which wouldn't leave space for another card..

 

[Freddie1980]

Well it looks like Nvidia are being forced into supporting AMD hardware for PhysX -http://www.tomsguide.com/us/PhysX-APEX-Nvidia-Sony-Playstation,news-16841.html. Maybe going forwards we won't have to worry about what our hardware is and we can just enjoy the games.

 

[Yaayuh!]

Well it looks like Nvidia are being forced into supporting AMD hardware for PhysX -http://www.tomsguide.com/us/PhysX-APEX-Nvidia-Sony-Playstation,news-16841.html. Maybe going forwards we won't have to worry about what our hardware is and we can just enjoy the games.

Not necessarily. You can run PhysX on a CPU, so maybe that's what the PS4 will do, the APU should be able to do the same.

 

[tommybhoy]

Not necessarily. You can run PhysX on a CPU, so maybe that's what the PS4 will do, the APU should be able to do the same.

^
This.

Even if it is enabled using the PS4's gpu it will probably still be locked out on AMD gpu's in regards to the PC.

I can just imagine the cost of tech assistance@Nvidia alone as enough reason for it to be locked out, for example:

Email to Nvidia techs-'My 640 isn't doing physX'

10 emails later, the clueless user(lets face it, the majority are tbph):

then decides to inform Nvidia tech help-'I render on a 7950, not a 640-it's just for PhysX but it's not working'.

Not that anyone thinks about that when directing hate towards Nvidia for the lock out.