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Dedicated physx card

BAD SANTA

BAD SANTA

BAD SANTA

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Joined
19 Oct 2010
Posts
30
Alright people,

I have already got an overclocked 5970 and know that you can run a separate nvidia card for physx so what card should I get I hear that most people use a 460 but could I use a 580?
Has anybody got a setup like this or should I stick with a 460.
Cheers.
Adam
 
You'd seriously consider a 580 just for physx??????

Running an Nvidia physx card with a main AMD card isn't officially supported any more. Making it work involves messy hacks and will cause no end of trouble.
 
A 580 is a waste of money just for a physx card, if u really want a 500 series card then a 560 would work well.
 
I wouldn't bother with eiter... PhysX is great if anything actually used it properly... but nothing does... unless you play Mafia 2 or Batman AA a lot theres literally no reason to have a card for PhysX right now.

EDIT: The newer updates for eve online use it for apex cloth, etc. but so far the performance difference between GPU and CPU isn't that great - tho might change with future updates with more content.
 
a 580 has almost the same performance as the 5970, so if you really wanted physx, just sell the 5970 and get a 580, or two 570's or something
 
Hmm ok cheers for the advice, yer I know there is not loads of difference and that not every game uses it either but when I played mafia 2 I was able to use physx because of the bug and I found it to make a pretty huge difference.
I would consider a 580 only because I love overkill and it would run super quiet and cool while ticking along at 10% usage lol.
Having said that does a dedicated physx card have an effect on overall fps if it is not good enough because I don't want to pay £300 for 560 and find that my fps falls off because of physx.
Last but not least (Admin where the heck's the rep system).
Cheers.
 
Reaper 392 said:
a 580 has almost the same performance as the 5970, so if you really wanted physx, just sell the 5970 and get a 580, or two 570's or something
Click to expand...

What? No it don't at all you can't make a statement like that without backup.
A 5970 will destroy a single 580 in every aspect especially with my clock/mem speed.
 
A PhsyX card won't reduce framerate in situations where PhysX isn't used. Its impact on framerate in situations where PhysX is in use is a bit more complicated:

In a situation where the CPU is struggling you'd see a massive performance boost offloading physics to the GPU... however the GPU is more commonly used to enable additional physics effects that aren't enabled when running on the CPU so you might see lower fps in the scene but more effects.
 
The best solution for you if you badly want physx is to sell your 5970 and go to 580 SLI. A 5970 with a 580 for physx doesn't make any sense.
 
Yer but I was trying to wait for a big upgrade until the next nvidia series then I was going to sli.
Just out of interest what do you think I could get for my 5970?
Cheers for everbodys help.
 
I mentioned the 560 because it's more than enough to handle physx and u can pick em up pretty cheap, £145.99, even the Ti's are only around £175 but as mentioned above, not many games really use it atm so.....
If u really do have money to burn and u want to upgrade then 580 sli pwns a 5970, and their great overclockers too.
 
Last edited:
As usual with these threads, my answer is the same.

If you've got an old 8800 or above nVidia graphics card lying around after an upgrade (like I had) and you're not going to sell it or re-use it, and you've got a spare PCIe slot in your computer, why not shove it in and give PhysX a try on the couple of games it supports.

However, it is not worth paying out for a card specifically for PhysX. Invest that money into upgrading other aspects of your system instead, where you will notice more of a difference.
 
BAD SANTA said:
would a 560 still be plenty.
Click to expand...

A 560 would still be overkill. Something like a 9600GS would do fine, an 8800/9800GT if you want to make sure it's got room to breathe.

Nothing uses physx more extensively than these cards provide, and spending anything over £30 or so for a second hand 9-series is a complete waste of money.

You'd have to be actually nuts to buy a new 580/560 simply for a few bits of eye-candy in a small handful of games.
 
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