PhysX

[PatZ1989]

Is there a noticeable peformance boost from purchasing a second nvidia card to act solely as a physx device?

Thanks

 

[UKDTweak]

Only in a select few games that actually use Nv's PhysX, such as Batman AA.

 

[gazjones105]

ill give you some figures.

batman 1920x1080 2xaa and everything on max settings (high physx)

single gtx 260
min frames 23, max 60, average 44

single gtx 260 with dedicated 9800gt (1gb) as a physx card

min frames 31, max, 60, average 53



please note though that batman is the only good game to use physx so its probably not worth it for the limited number of games that support physx

 

[RavenXXX2]

That performance is awful.

 

[PatZ1989]

yeh totally not worth it, thanks guy

Maybe in the future when more games utilitize it but no thanks for now

 

[Nivek]

Is there a noticeable peformance boost from purchasing a second nvidia card to act solely as a physx device?

Thanks

In Physx games like Borderlands, Gears Of War, Brothers In Arms etc, you will get a suitable performance increase, it may not be anything worth writing home about, but yes it will be better, and yes its worthwhile adding a lower spec nvidia card for this very purpose.

 

[RavenXXX2]

Talk about being misinformed, Borderlands, Gears Of War, Brothers In Arms don't support physx in anyway at all...doh.

 

[twist3d0n3]

Talk about being misinformed, Borderlands, Gears Of War, Brothers In Arms don't support physx in anyway at all...doh.

someone was looking to get their post count off the mark

 

[Nivek]

Talk about being misinformed, Borderlands, Gears Of War, Brothers In Arms don't support physx in anyway at all...doh.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,691443/Borderlands-PC-version-with-crispest-image-possible/News/

CEO of Gearbox

PCGH: Vehicles especially vehicle physics play an important role in Borderlands and so you are using the Physx API. Are there other highlights as far as physics in Borderlands is concerned? Will there be a support for hardware accelerated physics (Nvidia GPU Physx)?

Randy Pitchford: Vehicles and a large number and variety of particles for effects are all over the game. There are also a number of character related physics simulations going on. So, I would expect Borderlands to offer some performance advantages for Physx enabled hardware, but we haven't benchmarked that recently (or, if any Gearbox engineers have on their own, I haven't seen the results). If we do the time-demo benchmarking feature, it will be interesting to see the actual performance differences that result from the various hardware configurations with respect to physics.

 

[Nivek]

There is a post on physx for gears of war on the epic forum

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=619759&page=2

 

[Phoenixdancer]

doesnt use nvida mate

 

[Nivek]

doesnt use nvida mate

What doesnt use nvidia ?

 

[Geckovich]

Borderlands was going to be a physX title but it never made it in. Apparently you can enable it using a third party borderlands config tool (does AA/vsync/FOV etc too) but it's incredibly buggy, basically adding nothing but making the game prone to crashes.

I've not seen this myself, maybe someone else can confirm?

 

[Prof. Cheese]

Mirror's Edge got good reviews and also uses PhysX.

Cryostasis and Dark Void use it, but these aren't rated very highly.

 

[Nivek]

There is a lot of games that support Physx. Some may not have the fully loaded features ala Batman, but there is Physx effects going on in games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect etc. While you may not get all the eye candy it can deliver, you will get faster frame rates which is what the OP was asking.

 

[Rroff]

Mass Effect is using PhysX but using the visual indicator shows CPU only, there may be a way to force it to use GPU as the engine internally supports it but I dunno, the performance gains would be minor anyhow as it only makes light use of physics primitives mostly.

 

[RavenXXX2]

There is a lot of games that support Physx. Some may not have the fully loaded features ala Batman, but there is Physx effects going on in games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect etc. While you may not get all the eye candy it can deliver, you will get faster frame rates which is what the OP was asking.

Stop typing crap...

 

[Nivek]

Stop typing crap...

You are doing nothing to contribute to the thread, and are being offensive. With that kind of signature, I'm begining to think that if Physx was an ATI feature your answers would be different. Instead of being rude and unhelpful, why dont you tell us why the games I have mentioned do not support or have Physx implementation in them ?

 

[RavenXXX2]

I already have, your inept attempt to promote it on here is mega fail.

 

[Nivek]

Mass Effect is using PhysX but using the visual indicator shows CPU only, there may be a way to force it to use GPU as the engine internally supports it but I dunno, the performance gains would be minor anyhow as it only makes light use of physics primitives mostly.

I think thats one of the main reasons it is software based in some games (CPU) is so that it lightens the load on the GPU hence giving some games that little boost in performance.