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Best card for dedicated PhysX

J

JDookie

n00b
Joined
Dec 26, 2009
Messages
9
I currently have dual 295's in quad SLI, and a 9800GT for PhysX.

After doing quite a bit of testing and researching, it seems that when playing games that have a heavy PhysX load, the 9800GT is "restricting" my 295's since they are basically always waiting on the 9800.

Well, I've decided to upgrade the PhysX card, but am not sure how *nice* of a video card to get before I pass the point of diminishing return.

I'm thinking along the lines of a GTX 260 Core 216.

What do you think? Would a GTS 250 give the same PhysX performance or should I step up as high as a GTX 275?

Suggestions?
 
After doing some testing I decided PhysX is "mostly" a gimmick and not worth the time thinking about :)
 
Well, I have to disagree with that. Take Batman AA for instance. With a 9800GT running PhysX duties, and dual 295's running all video, I get an average of 125 FPS, and the benchmark runs as smooth as silk.

If I remove the 9800 from the loop, and just run the dual 295's for both video and PhysX, FPS drops to 80 average, and I get quite a bit of stuttering.

Both tests were run with all max settings, of course.

So, as you can see, in my particular setup, a dedicated PhysX card increases performance in PhysX enabled games quite dramatically.

This has been proven time and time again, and it has also been proven that your main gpu and PhysX gpu needs to be a matched pair otherwise you end up starving the main video gpu(s), which I believe is happening to me.

What I'm asking is, if anyone has much experience with using high end video cards for PhysX duties, and at what point do you start wasting your time.
 
bytemuncher said:
Totally agree. Had a 9600gt doing physx alongside a 5850 decided to sell the 9600gt for the reasons you stated.
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I have to agree too. I thought it was a joke in Mirrors Edge especially since the hassle i had to go through to getting working. Batman clearly showed a visual advantage but it wasnt worth the framerate hit and also I had a couple probs with physx in that game too like floating leaves. Cryostasis was a sluggish mess even without physx so why even bother with it. really I think it will die out long before it will ever become an important part of a game.

OP, I would stick with the 9800gt and certainly would not stick a huge card like a gtx260 in there just for physx. in most cases it will offer little to nothing over the 9800gt anyway.
 
bytemuncher said:
Totally agree. Had a 9600gt doing physx alongside a 5850 decided to sell the 9600gt for the reasons you stated.
Click to expand...
But if you had already invested in the hardware, surely you might as well just leave it in? You just removed a powerful floating point unit from your computer, why would you want to make your machine less capable?

What you have to remember is, that second GPU is good for more than just PhysX.

Even if hardware physics based on PhysX does turn out to be a gimmick, all the cards people are using for PhysX (9600GT, 9800GT, GTS250, GTX260) can also be used as dedicated OpenCL cards. Both Nvidia and ATi have already added support for OpenCL in their drivers. Because OpenCL works on both vendors hardware, an OpenCL based implementation of hardware physics can't be far off, meaning any secondary GPU you toss in (be it an Nvidia card you're already using for PhysX or an older ATi card) can be used to help take the load off of your main GPU. There's also the option of running other CUDA or OpenCL accelerated applications on the card, such as hardware accelerated video encoding.

Don't toss out those last-gen cards just yet, they're still useful ;)
 
Just realized there is a forum dedicated to Physics. Mods, sorry for posting in the wrong place.

Please delete this thread. I'm going to post it over there. Thanks!
 
The best bang for the buck for phsyx is the GTS250 (same as 9800gtx+).
You can get a bit more with a faster one but it is so little that is not worth it, at least not with todays games.
Since you have a good card already I rather just OC it.
 
JDookie said:
Well, I have to disagree with that. Take Batman AA for instance. With a 9800GT running PhysX duties, and dual 295's running all video, I get an average of 125 FPS, and the benchmark runs as smooth as silk.

If I remove the 9800 from the loop, and just run the dual 295's for both video and PhysX, FPS drops to 80 average, and I get quite a bit of stuttering.

.
Click to expand...


Yea I see Batman bantered around a lot as a poster child for PhysX, Most of what can be done with PhysX can be done using the usually underutilised CPU with more code. No one is saying PhysX doesn't work specifically,

Can code be written to CPU multithread better opposed to spending time coding for PhysX?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/batman-arkham-asylum,2465-10.html


Cant believe people are still buying into this con!
 
Unknown-One said:
You just removed a powerful floating point unit from your computer, why would you want to make your machine less capable?
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Increased airflow and decreased power consumption. Also enjoying the simplicity and stability of a single gpu setup.
 
bytemuncher said:
Also enjoying the simplicity and stability of a single gpu setup.
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Considering this isn't an SLI or Crossfire solution that splits up rendering, I don't find that argument applicable. If you're having stability issues because you've installed a second video card, there's something seriously wrong with your system (could be your power supply isn't large enough, bad slot on the motherboard, etc). You might want to run some diagnostics to make sure your system is ok.
 
I was told on another site that dual 8800gt not in sli, but one for physx works better than sli...

dont know if it true cuz i only have one, but i could see it if you had a game that was heavy on physx.
 
XCLR82XTC said:
I was told on another site that dual 8800gt not in sli, but one for physx works better than sli...

dont know if it true cuz i only have one, but i could see it if you had a game that was heavy on physx.
Click to expand...

yea sounds like crap to me, would be asking for proof of that.
 
XCLR82XTC said:
when i get mo money..im gonna get another 8800...ill try it. prolly bs though.
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if you are talking about running sli setup and using physx then no it doesnt work like that. from what I understand you will have to use one card for physx and the other for graphics.
 
thats what i was talking about. 1 person told me he got better frame rates like that, than he did in SLi
 
I wouldn't use anything higher than a GT 240. It should be fast enough to serve as a dedicated physics card, they run cool, quiet and don't need auxiliary power. But if those things don't matter a 9800GT is probably the way to go.
 
trinibwoy said:
I wouldn't use anything higher than a GT 240. It should be fast enough to serve as a dedicated physics card, they run cool, quiet and don't need auxiliary power. But if those things don't matter a 9800GT is probably the way to go.
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well you would be VERY wrong. if anything a gt240 would be about the bare minimum I would suggest for a physx card. heck in some games something like a gt240 could actually slow you down at a lower res compared to just using a high end card to do both physx and graphics. a dedicated 9800gt is really about the lowest to go if you actually want to fully use physx. a gts250 would be even better but I would hate to have a dual slot slot card just for physx.

maybe this will show you just how much a lower end card sucks for physx in most games. http://www.egielda.com.pl/?str=art&id=5447-6
 
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I am guessing that if/when PhysX becomes something significant, most of us will make our current GPU a dedicated PhysX card and upgrade the main video card.
 
Blackstone said:
I am guessing that if/when PhysX becomes something significant, most of us will make our current GPU a dedicated PhysX card and upgrade the main video card.
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if I was a betting man, I would say physx will never become significant. even if it did I certainly would not run a dual slot 150 watt card just for the few games that need the gpu acceleration.
 
cannondale06 said:
if I was a betting man, I would say physx will never become significant. even if it did I certainly would not run a dual slot 150 watt card just for the few games that need the gpu acceleration.
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You do realize PhysX isn't the only thing you can do with that secondary card, right? There are all sorts of CUDA and OpenCL applications that will take advantage of your graphics card(s) to improve performance.

trinibwoy said:
I wouldn't use anything higher than a GT 240. It should be fast enough to serve as a dedicated physics card, they run cool, quiet and don't need auxiliary power. But if those things don't matter a 9800GT is probably the way to go.
Click to expand...
Uh, you just described a 9800GT. Fast enough to be a PhysX card, runs cool, runs quiet, single slot, doesn't need auxiliary power.

I would consider a GT240 far too weak to be used as a PhysX card.
 
Unknown-One said:
You do realize PhysX isn't the only thing you can do with that secondary card, right? There are all sorts of CUDA and OpenCL applications that will take advantage of your graphics card(s) to improve performance.


Uh, you just described a 9800GT. Fast enough to be a PhysX card, runs cool, runs quiet, single slot, doesn't need auxiliary power.

I would consider a GT240 far too weak to be used as a PhysX card.
Click to expand...
you do realize that I was only talking about physx, right? :p
 
cannondale06 said:
you do realize that I was only talking about physx, right? :p
Click to expand...

you said

cannondale06 said:
...I certainly would not run a dual slot 150 watt card just for the few games that need the gpu acceleration.
Click to expand...

I was attempting to make it clear that there's more you can do with a second video card than help out "just a few games". :p
 
Unknown-One said:
you said



I was attempting to make it clear that there's more you can do with a second video card than help out "just a few games". :p
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well you are reading too much into it then. stop and think about what I am saying. this is a thread about physx and I was saying for just a few physx games I certainly would not do that. it should be implied that if you have other uses for having that much gpu power then my comment doesnt apply.
 
I'm using a 8800GTS (G92) for my dedicated PhysX card and my HD 5870 does the graphics duties. It works fine.

I bought a GTX 260 (216) here hoping to replace the 8800GTS.
 
cannondale06 said:
well you would be VERY wrong. if anything a gt240 would be about the bare minimum I would suggest for a physx card. heck in some games something like a gt240 could actually slow you down at a lower res compared to just using a high end card to do both physx and graphics. a dedicated 9800gt is really about the lowest to go if you actually want to fully use physx. a gts250 would be even better but I would hate to have a dual slot slot card just for physx.

maybe this will show you just how much a lower end card sucks for physx in most games. http://www.egielda.com.pl/?str=art&id=5447-6
Click to expand...

I don't see a GT 240 in that review. You do realize that it has more compute power than a 9600GT right and is highly overclockable? It's slower at graphics due to a shortage of ROPs which are irrelevant for PhysX.

Unknown-One said:
Uh, you just described a 9800GT. Fast enough to be a PhysX card, runs cool, runs quiet, single slot, doesn't need auxiliary power.

I would consider a GT240 far too weak to be used as a PhysX card.
Click to expand...

A regular 9800GT uses auxiliary power and the fan is loud. You're referring to the castrated "green" versions. Why would you consider a GT240 too weak? Based on what?

In any case my particular choice shouldn't concern you guys, it's what I would use based on what I know about the card. You can use whatever you feel is adequate for your needs.
 
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trinibwoy said:
I don't see a GT 240 in that review. You do realize that it has more compute power than a 9600GT right and is highly overclockable? It's slower at graphics due to a shortage of ROPs which are irrelevant for PhysX.



A regular 9800GT uses auxiliary power and the fan is loud. You're referring to the castrated "green" versions. Why would you consider a GT240 too weak? Based on what?

In any case my particular choice shouldn't concern you guys, it's what I would use based on what I know about the card. You can use whatever you feel is adequate for your needs.
Click to expand...
well a gt240 is slower than a 9600gt in most cases so I doubt its a better physx card.

in that review the 9800gt had a large performance edge over the 9600gt in almost every scenario. I would certainly say that a 9800gt would be the minimum card to use if you are really trying to push physx.
 
A GT240 has 8 ROPs compared to 16 on a 9600GT. You can't use game performance as the sole predictor of PhysX performance because the workloads are considerably different - i.e PhysX is all about compute and bandwidth and has nothing to do with geometry processing, texturing, blending, AA etc.
 
only game PhysX makes much of a difference in is Batman AA...and even then it wasn't a gamechanger or anything...paper that moves on the ground, flying leaves, and realistic destructive tiles is all I remember

PhysX has had more then enough time to grow and it looks like this will never take off...there is one major title that supposedly incorporates PhysX coming out in early 2010 that I'm keeping my eye on though...it's called Metro 2033...

http://kotaku.com/5387604/metro-2033-trailer-paints-a-bleak-picture
 
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