new Fermi 480GTX... plus 8800GT physx

I know they aren't out yet, but this summer I was thinking of upgrading my SLI 8800GT configuration to a 480GTX (or whatever the name was established as). I will only buy one card because of how powerful they should be and the cost.

My question is, should I keep one of my 8800GT cards for physx?
i probably can't get much for them when selling and figured it might be worth it, but will it slow the new cards down? I have read that 8400 and sometimes 8600 cards slow down 295GTX cards when used for physx.

My guess is that the 8800GT will not slow down the 480, and if it does, slowdown will be minimal. However the 480GTX isn't out so we don't really know.

Depends on what settings you're going to run. If you're not really going to stress your graphics card (low resolutions like 1680x1050), then I'm almost positive that using the Fermi for both graphics and PhysX will be faster than using an 8800GT as a dedicated PhysX card.

I wouldn't doubt that a GTX480 + 8800GT PhysX is slower than a GTX480 just running the Physics for you.

What about a GTX480 w/ a 9800GTX+ running PhysX?

Don't listen to chris, what he says doesn't make any sense. A GTX 480 + 8800GT will be faster than a 480 by itself. Logically it's the only thing that makes sense. Performance degradation happens at like the Geforce 8200 or whatever the 32SP part is. The 8800GT is a pretty powerful chip.

Not trying to start anything here but logic leads me to side with akotlar. Doesnt make any sense that offloading the PhysX to a capable gpu wouldn't help. At the very least it shouldn't slow you down.

The performance gains of using a 8800gtx, if any, may not be worth the extra power it will draw.

Speculation like this, without cards in slots is merely a way to pass time on the internet.

8800GT is good for physx, you should try it out when the time comes and make your own tests.

I have asked a similar question. I asked if having my 2x GTX280 in sli and a 8800gt for physx is worth it. I already have the parts but if it wasnt worth it then I was going to use the 8800gt as a sard in a secondary rig. Most people have said and logic usually dictates that more is better. Onlything I was wondering is that if the higher end card can handle physx and you throw in another card to help, does the second card(8800gt) help or will it take on all physx responsability itself and hurt? I hope this makes sense.

Originally Posted by akotlar

Don't listen to chris, what he says doesn't make any sense. A GTX 480 + 8800GT will be faster than a 480 by itself. Logically it's the only thing that makes sense. Performance degradation happens at like the Geforce 8200 or whatever the 32SP part is. The 8800GT is a pretty powerful chip.

It does make sense in the way he is thinking though. GTX 480=512SP correct? Now just take the 112 SP's away from the GTX480 for Physx(Really, it will probably call for 128SP). The card still has 400SP's left for gaming. And as we all know, no game coming in the next year is really going to push that amount of power on the GTX480. Nothing that can't be run on a 240 SP GTX285 anyway.(Triple monitor gaming excluded)

So basically, the GTX480 can do it all at the same time, where as in his mind there is a slight delay offloading to the 8800GT here lies the "faster on one card" than offloading it to a seperate card. It actually makes sense if you really look at it, and technically I would think there is actually a ms or 2 in that delay to offload.

Screw amount of SP's surely? Physx is pure crunching for particles etc there's no need for mass rendering of textures etc. an 8800GT would do fine in any current physx enabled game as a dedicated physx cruncher.

The reason crappy cards suck for physx is because they are so slow in comparison to a high end card like a gtx285 that it is faster for the gtx 285 to just do all the work.

No one really knows the numbers yet on a 480. It could be the same deal. It's so freaking fast that it is faster to render a game and crunch physx at the same time than wait for the 8800gt to just crunch the physx

Or maybe not. We don't know till the card is actually out.

Originally Posted by x_MaGiuS_x

Speculation like this, without cards in slots is merely a way to pass time on the internet.

boom. dont you all have an outside to go play in?

Originally Posted by SnowBeast

It does make sense in the way he is thinking though. GTX 480=512SP correct? Now just take the 112 SP's away from the GTX480 for Physx(Really, it will probably call for 128SP). The card still has 400SP's left for gaming. And as we all know, no game coming in the next year is really going to push that amount of power on the GTX480. Nothing that can't be run on a 240 SP GTX285 anyway.(Triple monitor gaming excluded)

So basically, the GTX480 can do it all at the same time, where as in his mind there is a slight delay offloading to the 8800GT here lies the "faster on one card" than offloading it to a seperate card. It actually makes sense if you really look at it, and technically I would think there is actually a ms or 2 in that delay to offload.

I doubt you'll run into scenarios where anything less than 512SP's will be utilized. It would be a massive oversight on the engineering side if a dynamically allocated processing pool was so mismanaged that you had actually had anywhere near 112SP's sitting idle to offload physics calculations alongside graphics calculations. There isn't some "magical resource ceiling" where games don't use extra resources afforded them; they take as much as they can get (unless you're dealing with a VS/PS fixed setup, in which case compute resources need the correct ratio VS:PS for the average usage scenario).

Really slow cards decelerate PhysX compared to a single performance GPU because they don't reach a critical threshold of processing power & especially bandwidth. It is not a relative measure, so its not like 8800GT + 280GTX is good but 480 GTX + 8800GT is somehow magically decelerating PhysX calculations.

Look at it this way. In what case is 512SP's + 112SP's slower than 512SP's for an architecture with similarly balanced SP/GB/s?

Why not just wait until it is out to see how it really performs and if it is worth the price vs performance

Curiuous, how many games these days are using PhysX fully and in a way that makes the game better?

I think you should sell both, If you havent seen physics videos on fermi, they are pretty amazing.

Originally Posted by jvz555

I think you should sell both, If you havent seen physics videos on fermi, they are pretty amazing.

I agree. Sell 'em and put the money towards a 480GTX (or whatever they're called).

not sure what outputs Fermi will have. I always keep extra cards for replacements in case of failure and to use triple monitor support. Until now, a single GTX280 cannot drive 3 monitors (conventionally speaking, not sure about the s-video). Anyway, keep the card. The money you make isn't worth the trouble of having a new card not working and finding a temporary replacement.

Besides, it really is a worthy keeper and still strong enough to run most games very well, especially at 1680*1050.

I can almost guarantee you of the results you'll see...

A GTX480 with 8800GT dedicated to PhysX will have higher maximum framrates, but lower minimum frame rates. With PhysX dedicated to the 8800GT, you've got 112 SP's to work with, and that's it. If you need more power for PhysX, there's nowhere to get it, so your frame rate gets dragged down even if there's extra processing power available on the GTX480. Meanwhile, the GTX480 is free to render like crazy when the 8800GT isn't bogging it down, but getting 200FPS sometimes is kinda worthless when your minimums are still below 60.

A GTX480 doing Graphics + PhysX will have lower maximum frame rates, but higher minimum frame rates. You'll have more total stream processors to balance with, so the only thing that puts a ceiling on PhysX performance is how intensive graphics rendering is at that very moment. Unless games start getting a lot more demanding really soon, that's not much of a ceiling.

That was my thinking and I have a 285 GTX. G400 apparently handles PhysX more efficiently than G200 and previous gens, like 3x better according to Nvidia. I had plans to keep the 285 as an overkill PPU, but now I'm just gonna part it out and save some bux on Fermi (or something ATI DX11 should Nvidia shit the bed). No point crippling your min FPS when a single GPU can handle it with grunt to spare.