Hybrid physx

adolf hamster · 4 Dec 2017 at 21:26

so, been playing a bit of bl2 and thought for a laugh i'd turn on the physx effects and see what they eye candy looks like, knowing ofc that cpu implementation is going to ruin my framerate, which it does in certain areas

and i quite like it, but not enough to go changing from the trusty 290x, a bit of googling suggests this is a thing but figured i'd ask for some opinions here:
1. is it worth doing?
2. does it work without crazy levels of hacks?
3. what kind of card should i be looking at if i wanna save the pennies?

humbug · 5 Dec 2017 at 03:51

GTX 1070 here, play a lot of BL2 with mates, i don't know if its because its and old game with older PhysX but with in on anything higher than low my frame rates are utter crap, don't bother, looks nice but makes the game unplayable when its going on.

Rroff · 5 Dec 2017 at 04:14

Doesn't take that much GPU (as a second card - partly due to the efficiency or lack of it makes of that card) - I used to run my old GTX470 for it for a bit but in the end it wasn't worth the power use of the card over the tiny hit compared to my 780 doing both - anything from like a GTX660 upwards would probably be fine - possibly even a little slower but more recent games probably need more like 660 performance for the PhysX processor.

By tiny hit I mean comparing main GPU doing both with main GPU + dedicated PhysX GPU not the hit from having PhysX on which can be substantial depending on scenario.

imginy · 5 Dec 2017 at 05:01

humbug said:
GTX 1070 here, play a lot of BL2 with mates, i don't know if its because its and old game with older PhysX but with in on anything higher than low my frame rates are utter crap, don't bother, looks nice but makes the game unplayable when its going on.

Surprised you are not happy with the 1070 and high physx I used to be happy playing it on my 660ti on high it's not like this game needs high frame rate to play.

I just went and played for an hour with my gtx 1080 throwing as much stuff about as possible and most the time the framerate stayed above 100 averaging 120-140 running about.

The lowest it went in a hour was 67 fps and this was just for a second. (1080p max everything)

adolf hamster said:
so, been playing a bit of bl2 and thought for a laugh i'd turn on the physx effects and see what they eye candy looks like, knowing ofc that cpu implementation is going to ruin my framerate, which it does in certain areas

and i quite like it, but not enough to go changing from the trusty 290x, a bit of googling suggests this is a thing but figured i'd ask for some opinions here:
1. is it worth doing?
2. does it work without crazy levels of hacks?
3. what kind of card should i be looking at if i wanna save the pennies?

Don't know how easy it is to get working or anything but the game definitely looks much better with it on, the game looks very plain without it on so much so that in the 4 years I had my amd card I never bothered playing any borderlands and only downloaded it again last week because I got my nvidia card now.

facboy · 5 Dec 2017 at 06:24

Tldr; don't bother.

I have done this a lot back in the day with a 7970 Ghz and a gtx480, just before I got a 980. It could be done but was a major hassle requiring particular old versions of modded drivers. And the performance was pretty poor, to the point that it was marginally better running alone on the gtx480. For a long time I had both the 980 and the 480 in the machine and my vague recollection is that even that wasn't officially supported. In any case that also ran worse than just letting the 980 do everything. I got the feeling that either Nvidia had given up on the idea of having a dedicated physx card, or gearbox had not coded it in a way that would support it well.

adolf hamster · 5 Dec 2017 at 10:33

My main question really is how much better is it than using cpu implementation?

As mostly its fine with medium physx on the cpu but certain sections (especially when liquids are involved) i'm getting ~75 down to 15

I'm aware this isnt going to be as good as a single good nvidia gpu, but for a small investment would it make a difference conpared to cpu?

Had a breif look at cards and cant see myself going for anything more than a gtx1050 price wise. A look at the physx wiki seems to suggest it works for the newer cards

imginy · 5 Dec 2017 at 11:11

adolf hamster said:
My main question really is how much better is it than using cpu implementation?

As mostly its fine with medium physx on the cpu but certain sections (especially when liquids are involved) i'm getting ~75 down to 15

I'm aware this isnt going to be as good as a single good nvidia gpu, but for a small investment would it make a difference conpared to cpu?

Had a breif look at cards and cant see myself going for anything more than a gtx1050 price wise. A look at the physx wiki seems to suggest it works for the newer cards

If you got a second hand 660ti for around £50 and ran it without your 290 it would already be massive improvement.

Gpu power doesn't matter much in borderlands 2 as it's mainly cpu bottleneck so trying to run phsyx off cpu is going to kill your frames.

I don't know how well the 2 cards would work together so can't comment on that but I know from experience 660ti runs borderlands great.

ubersonic · 5 Dec 2017 at 11:21

humbug said:
GTX 1070 here, play a lot of BL2 with mates, i don't know if its because its and old game with older PhysX but with in on anything higher than low my frame rates are utter crap

Sounds like you have some kind of issue, I used to hammer BL2/1.5 with mates using SLI GTX970 and everything maxed out, it was perfect.

humbug · 5 Dec 2017 at 13:35

Maybe i do have issues, I'll put up a video over the weekend so you can see for yourselves; with the PhysX turned up the game turns into a slideshow 'when there is a lot going on'

adolf hamster · 5 Dec 2017 at 13:46

imginy said:
If you got a second hand 660ti for around £50 and ran it without your 290 it would already be massive improvement.

Gpu power doesn't matter much in borderlands 2 as it's mainly cpu bottleneck so trying to run phsyx off cpu is going to kill your frames.

I don't know how well the 2 cards would work together so can't comment on that but I know from experience 660ti runs borderlands great.

Its tricky really, with physx on low but everything else maxed i'm getting ~60-120 fps which is obviously perfectly acceptable. With medium physx its mostly ~40-75 until theres spawned water flow in which case the fps expectedly takes a dive (for example around satans suckhole in the bloodshot fort) to 10-20 which really limits playability on a sniper character.

Guess i could have a gander on the mm see what secindhand cards are available, worst case it doesnt do anything and im stuck selling a spare card. Its only borderlands/madness returns that i play with physx so not after massive investment in this, otherwise i'd just retire the 290x and get a good nvidia card

adolf hamster · 5 Dec 2017 at 17:56

hmm, there's a b-grade gtx750, for someone who's never put much effort into keeping up to date with the way these product names work and it's equivalency would this be sufficient for what i'm planning?

for £50 it kinda seems worth a shot

facboy · 5 Dec 2017 at 20:37

adolf hamster said:
My main question really is how much better is it than using cpu implementation?

Better, but not good enough to be worth it. Still dropped into the 30fps region in my experience. From what I recall it was also a pain to run on the 480 alone, Nvidia would disable physx if any non-nvidia card was detected. Not even sure disabling it in device manager was enough, I may have had to physically turn it off.

adolf hamster · 5 Dec 2017 at 20:42

facboy said:
Better, but not good enough to be worth it. Still dropped into the 30fps region in my experience. From what I recall it was also a pain to run on the 480 alone, Nvidia would disable physx if any non-nvidia card was detected. Not even sure disabling it in device manager was enough, I may have had to physically turn it off.

well just pulled the trigger on that b grade 750, will give it a go and a quick run through satan's suckhole will tell me if it's working well enough to justify keeping, if not can dsr it.

the physx wiki seems to suggest that they've stopped the whole detecting a non-nvidia card thing, and for the 750 it's all official drivers (ie no hax required) so its worth a shot for some extra eye candy

spoffle · 5 Dec 2017 at 21:07

adolf hamster said:
well just pulled the trigger on that b grade 750, will give it a go and a quick run through satan's suckhole will tell me if it's working well enough to justify keeping, if not can dsr it.

the physx wiki seems to suggest that they've stopped the whole detecting a non-nvidia card thing, and for the 750 it's all official drivers (ie no hax required) so its worth a shot for some extra eye candy

DSR isn't a thing anymore, and it's because of this sort of thing.

adolf hamster · 5 Dec 2017 at 21:12

spoffle said:
DSR isn't a thing anymore, and it's because of this sort of thing.

lets hope it works then, because it'll be extra hassle to sell on

spoffle · 5 Dec 2017 at 21:13

adolf hamster said:
lets hope it works then, because it'll be extra hassle to sell on

More or less hassle than a shop who now has to refund you in full, while being stuck with a second hand item, just because you wanted to test something?

adolf hamster · 5 Dec 2017 at 21:15

spoffle said:
More or less hassle than a shop who now has to refund you in full, while being stuck with a second hand item, just because you wanted to test something?

it was b-grade already

i do get your point, and i agree it's open to abuse, although it's not like i'm planning on doing this all the time

facboy · 5 Dec 2017 at 22:08

Prolly b-grade because it was DSR'd, oh the irony.

Bear in mind that it is a two way street, DSR such as it was existed to protect consumers from unscrupulous businesses abusing their trust. Honest businesses benefit too because people buy and keep things that they might otherwise be hesitant to try in the absence of the regulations.

adolf hamster · 5 Dec 2017 at 22:15

facboy said:
Prolly b-grade because it was DSR'd, oh the irony.

Bear in mind that it is a two way street, DSR such as it was existed to protect consumers from unscrupulous businesses abusing their trust. Honest businesses benefit too because people buy and keep things that they might otherwise be hesitant to try in the absence of the regulations.

pretty much, i can get the noble intentions, after all often a description and some pictures aren't enough for some items.

even trickier for pc components- how else am i able to tell if this will do what i want it to do aside from googling (which i've done), asking on forums (this thread), and after that the only possible way is to install a card and see for myself.

subbytna · 6 Dec 2017 at 10:29

What game is BL2?