nVidia PhysX Processing on a Dedicated GPU question

[Van Diemen]

With the release of the official 180 drivers nVidia promises the ability to dedicate a graphics card solely for PhysX.

So we could have say one 280GTX doing all the graphics work and an old 8800GTS doing all the PhysX stuff. My question is will this work on non SLI motherboards or this for the SLI capable boards only?

 

[Van Diemen]

Its okay guys, I've just found the answer.

Looks like you don't need a SLI capable mobo to run one NV card as main graphics and a second card running PhysX

See page 2 of this article:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_physx_performance/default.asp

 

[magick]

Is it really worth the extra power/noise/heat issues a 2nd GFX card would make for the sake of PhysX as hardly any games use it?

 

[w3bbo]

More and more games are starting to have PhysX effects. Farcry 2 for example.

 

[magick]

What sort of card would you need? Can you use a low powered fanless 8500 or 9500? And can you run a nvidia physX card with a ATI as your main gfx card?

 

[drunkenmaster]

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_physxgames_home.html

Not seeing it listed on Nvidia's own list, and Farcry 2 websites make zero mention of physx but do say their own engine is responsible for the realistic effects in the game.

SO probably the most destructable games with maybe most realistic physic, in Crysis and Far Cry 2, to of the best engines around don't use Physx.

I know the 8800's have lost value and won't sell for much, but frankly sell it, if we ever do get to the point where more than 1/20 games really uses physx, where more than 1/50 AAA titles use it and when more than 1/100 games actually makes any realistic difference when in game, you'll be able to pick up an old 8800 for 1/10th of what you can sell yours for now.

it won't do diddly squat basically, is going to be a waste of power, and frankly, we've been promised for what 3-4 years that games have to have physx for fully accurate physx in game, yet, not one game has shown that yet. No one's yet actually backed physx saying its needed, not one studio and all the best physics engines don't seem to need such accuracy. Its got very little chance of ever really catching on past what it is now, a semi decent software API that people can use instead of making their own physics engines. Havok has, lets be honest, a million times more chance of being picked up as Intel bought it and are bringing their own graphics cards to the market, past the fact that they already own a massive portion of the graphics market through intergrated anyway. They've licenced it to AMD from what I recall also. So Nvidia, losing market share, barely pushing Physx, versus the majority of the market and far far far far far more money between them through AMD/Intel and they want Havok.

 

[MeatLoaf]

With the release of the official 180 drivers nVidia promises the ability to dedicate a graphics card solely for PhysX.

So we could have say one 280GTX doing all the graphics work and an old 8800GTS doing all the PhysX stuff. My question is will this work on non SLI motherboards or this for the SLI capable boards only?

It works on any board, i tried it on a P35 board with an 8800GTX and an 8600GTS

 

[Wizardskills]

Yeah it works on any board. I had it working on my x38 with an 8800 Ultra as the main card and a 8600GTS as the physx card

 

[Cyber-Mav]

do note that physics benchmarks will use the slower card e.eg in the above example the 8600gt will be used for physics and benchmarks will show low performance compared to the 8800ultra being used for physics, but in game performance the combination of the 8600gt and 8800ultra results in faster performance, this was shown in some firingsquad reviews.

 

[crestj]

I've got a 260GTX MaxCore with an old 8800GT running as a dedicated Physx processor but can't tell if the extra power\heat is worth it.

Does anyone know what increase you get over running Physx on the same card as all other gfx processing?

 

[Pottsey]

drunkenmaster said “SO probably the most destructable games with maybe most realistic physic, in Crysis and Far Cry 2, to of the best engines around don't use Physx.”
Crysis being a perfect example of how current day CPUs are too weak at physics and are holding us back. Crysis only being able to handle a small amount of physics at once shows that we need hardware physics to move forward. Crysis had to have the physics scaled back as the CPU cannot cope.
If every GPU or just every CPU had some sort of PPU/hardware physics we would all be much better off. Its the lack of hardware thats holding physics back.




drunkenmaster said “we've been promised for what 3-4 years that games have to have physx for fully accurate physx in game, yet, not one game has shown that yet.”
As far as I am aware no one promised fully accurate physics can you show any promise? Fully accurate physics for games is a total waste of resources. No game has shown fully accurate physics because it’s a waste and not what PhysX is about. No gameing API should be real life fully accurate.