Best Single Slot PhysX Card For My Setup

FireDemon

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 10, 2006
Messages
256
OK guys, here's the deal. I know I'm probably in for a bit of flaming since there are already a bajillion posts on which cards to use for physics processing, but with so many opinions and so many different tactics towards research, It's hard to find a mellow ground to go with.

I have two GTX460's in SLI, overclocked to 815/2100 (Stock cooling for now), and I am looking for a good card to go as a dedicated PhysX processor. Now, before anyone chimes in and says the twins are more than capable of handling the PhysX load, there's a couple reasons I want to do this. If I choose the right card, will I pick up a *few* FPS in PhysX titles? Sure. but above all, I'm doing this for the same reason 95% of the other users here would: Because we can. We like to overload our PC's with all sorts of equipment in the name of performance for that last ~5 FPS, and because we can. So, with that said, here is where the difficult part comes into play.

I COULD just grab a GTX260 and be done with it to make sure no corners were cut, but I'm running a foxconn destroyer board with an X-Meridian sandwiched in between the two 460's, so that only leaves me a single PCI-E x16 slot at the bottom of the board, and the case runs out of PCI openings after that. The card HAS to be a single slot card. I'm basically looking for the most powerful card I can cram into a single slot. After searching, it seems a 9800GT is my best bet, but I want to make sure I won't be doing more harm than good and slowing my 460's down instead of helping them if the 9800GT proves to be not up to the task. I would prefer a card that did not require any additional power connections as well, but this is not a must. I am also not closed to the idea of using an ATI card, hacked drivers permitting.

So guys, what all is out there at my disposal?
 
gts 450:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127558&cm_re=gts_450-_-14-127-558-_-Product

not a good price, though. probably not much better physx performance over the 9800gt, especially when you can get a used 9800gt on ebay much cheaper than the 450. not sure if a 9800gt or gts450 will improve your dual 460s much in physx but can't hurt to try for yourself.

can't use ati card for gpu physx. hacked drivers are for ati/ amd as primary gpu with nvidia as a secondary dedicated physx card. unless you meant replacing your gtx 460 sli setup for an ati xfire setup with a nvidia single slot card as a dedicated physx card.
 
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/batman-arkham-asylum,2465-8.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-physx-hack-amd-radeon,2764-8.html
http://physxinfo.com/news/3728/mafia-ii-demo-physx-benchmarks-roundup/

You're more than capable of doing the searching, so here are the rules of thumb:

  • GFLOPS is the most important factor of PhysX performance, followed closely by memory bandwidth and GPU architecture.
  • The GTX 460 768MB is the "best" mix of price, performance, power consumption, and thermals. You get 98% of the maximum possible FPS (compared to a GTX 480/580).
  • Look for single slot cards with high GFLOPS, bandwidth, and possibly a Fermi. The Galaxy 460 Razor is the fastest card for your application. More pedestrian cards include the 450, and the 240. I don't know exact cards for you other than that, but Newegg is your friend. ;)
 
You guys think the GT 520 would be worth it for PhysX use? I only have space for a single slot and just want to see if I can squeeze any extra physics performance.
 
I have a Sparkle GTS 450 laying around I'm going to use as a physx card.
 
I did a mini review of Physx with a HD 6970 and found that a GTX 460 didn't offer a lot of performance gain compared to the GT 430. To me the GT 430 seems like an excellent value and most of them come in the single slot variety.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1645682

^this. Getting more powerful cards doesn't net greatly improved PhysX performance. A GT430 is more than adequate.

OP, if all youre looking for is PhysX, a single slot 9600 GSO would suffice. They outperform a GT430 by quite a bit. Just make sure its the 192bit 768MB GDDR3 card.
 
Mildy annoyed trying to compare using a GTX480 for both rendering and PhysX, versus having the 9800GT handle the PhysX in Mafia 2, I set the driver to use GTX480 for PhysX and the 9800GT was still showing healthy amount of use.

I think if you get playable framerates with your cards, maybe skip trying a not so powerful PhysX card. A think for an ATi user, going against what seems to be the popular opinion (a 9800GT is too slow) is more viable. I think so long as you're still at playable in your game, why not have extra effects? But if you're on Nv and you're main card does better alone, why bother?

Can anyone tell me though, how I can tell if I'm OCing a PhysX card too hard? Since the 9800GT is considered underpowered, I'm experimenting with that route. This thread gave me a little benchmark morning fever. :p Another thing, how come if a 9800GT should I take anything away from the 9800GT only hitting 70% use in my Mafia 2 benchmarks? Does this int at all it's enough or are the numbers whack because PhysX relies on certain parts of the chip?
 
I am glad I found this post. I never got around to actually use a second card just for Physx.

Let me ask this. Can I still use a Physx card if I already have SLI/Corssfire video cards? Or is a Physx card only good if you are using 1 video card?

Also does just about all games take advantage of Physx?
 
I am glad I found this post. I never got around to actually use a second card just for Physx.

Let me ask this. Can I still use a Physx card if I already have SLI/Corssfire video cards? Or is a Physx card only good if you are using 1 video card?

Also does just about all games take advantage of Physx?

If you have the physical space you can use Physx with SLI/Crossfire no problem. As for games support. Almost no games use it. I can only think of Mafia II, Alice Madness Returns and Batman Arkham City as recent titles with Physx support. Batman: AA, Mirror's Edge, Cryostatis, Metro 2033, and Dark Void are the only older games I can think that use it. I'm sure I'm missing some and I know you can get a Physx mod for UT3 but not many people use it.
 
good luck getting it all patched up and working

GenL is the person you will need to talk to, that's all I can say...the nVidia cops...they are listening
 
PC games that can use the GPU for PhysX, does not include CPU PhysX or APU PhysX games.

Alice: Madness Returns
7554
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman: Arkham City
Crazy Machines 2
Cryostatis: Sleep of Reason
Dark Void
Darkest Days
Mafia II
Metro 2033
Metro: Last Light
Mirror's Edge
Sacred 2
Star Trek DAC
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Unreal Tournament 3
Warmonger: Operation Downtown Destruction
 
I'm just using an MSI GT 240 and was going to use it as a psyx card, but found out I can run pysx on it already!! I'm super noob status now. I just turned on the settings in Arkum Asylum... the cob webs, smoke, paper, and floor damage really adds to the game!
 
I did some more testing. With my 9800GT performing PhysX, I get almost 50fps in the mafia 2 benchmark. Having just my GTX480 handle rendering and PhysX, I get just over 40. Almost a 25% improvement!

Rig:
i7 920 @ 4GHz
GTX480 speeds 800/1600/2000
9800GT speeds 700/1753/950

Strange, popular opinion is a 9800GT is not enough. Mafia 2 bench suggest otherwise. The 9800GT only hits 70% usage, does this suggest it is enough or is the number whack because only part of the chip is utilized? Another thing that suggests it is enough, of course there was some variance in my benchmark runs, one of my best runs was at 675MHz core on the 9800GT, up to 750MHz didn't net me any gains. Hence, I settled on 700MHz. Shader clocks locked to increase at the same ratio as core from above. I don't know how to test an overclock properly when using a gpu for PhysX, and I didn't want to worry it was too high, especially for no gain!

I remember when I first got the 9800GT, I tested Mafia 2, Cryostasis, and Batman AA. Both Mafia 2 and Cryostasis showed a big improvement. Batman saw a slight dip, but it was margin of error type stuff and either way the numbers were way beyond playable.

So right now, I have 2 profiles in EVGA precision, both have my GTX480 at the speeds above. Profile 1 has the 9800GT at the minimum values, Profile 2 has the 9800GT at the speeds above, just for when I fire up a PhysX game. Really wondering about that only 70% usage though.
 
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The 70% usage could be from the fact that there aren't enough PhysX calculations to use up all 100% of the GPU.

You might try something like FluidMark and see what kind of GPU usage you get there.
 
I'm curious about all of this as well.

What's my best choice out of these 2?

GT 520 (48 shader cores) or GT 430 (96 shader cores)
 
430 for sure. 48 cores isn't enough.

Thanks. I sure hope the 430 drops to dirt cheap for Cyber Monday. I'll be getting one regardless though. :)

Edit: Went with a 2-slot 440 from Zotac instead due to higher shader clocks.
 
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If your not using an SSD, I would start there.
Then go for a dedicated card for PhysX
 
u8u78u78u7u77y97

**Edit**

Sorry, my 2 year old is posting for me when Im not paying attention.
 
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Would a GTX 275 be useable as a physx card when used with a GTX 580?
 
Would a GTX 275 be useable as a physx card when used with a GTX 580?

I would think so. I'm using a single GT 240 for gaming/physx

Useable, of course. Would you want to? I don't know. I have an EVGA GTX480 SC clocked at 850 core, 1700 shader, 2200 memory, and a BFG GTX275 OC2 definitely didn't improve the synthetic benchmark (MSI Kombustor, Preset: Extreme), it actually made the GPU score on average higher, but the PhysX score ~15% worse. However, BFG GTX285 OC yielded on a 5-run average ~11% performance improvement overall. In actual games, I've only seen 2-4 fps improvement running the 285 along side the 480 in Batman: AA, and Cryostasis at 1920x1080. I couldn't find any other titles where it mattered at all - Metro 2033 didn't have any frame rate increases or decreases, just a regular 58-66 fps variance with or without the 285 enabled in the control panel. Mafia II didn't show any change either. Perhaps it would matter more at 2560x1600?

Based on my experience, I would think you'd want a 400 or 500 series card with a big core count and the fastest clock you can find to make it even worth the added wear and tear on your power supply and increased case temperatures. When I was running a GTX285 OC SLI, that GTX275 OC2 made a big difference in Batman: AA. SLI seems to really benefit from a dedicated PhysX card when it comes to modern high-end nVidia products - due to letting the SLI do its thing rendering scenes with AA rather than handing off processing power from the first in the pair to PhysX. Then again, texuspete00 has different experience with a single GTX480 in this thread. We have the same CPU [texuspete00 and I], but mine is only clocked to 3.6GHz, it's the highest I could set with turbo boost still enabled.
 
I did some more testing. With my 9800GT performing PhysX, I get almost 50fps in the mafia 2 benchmark. Having just my GTX480 handle rendering and PhysX, I get just over 40. Almost a 25% improvement!

Rig:
i7 920 @ 4GHz
GTX480 speeds 800/1600/2000
9800GT speeds 700/1753/950

Strange, popular opinion is a 9800GT is not enough. Mafia 2 bench suggest otherwise. The 9800GT only hits 70% usage, does this suggest it is enough or is the number whack because only part of the chip is utilized? Another thing that suggests it is enough, of course there was some variance in my benchmark runs, one of my best runs was at 675MHz core on the 9800GT, up to 750MHz didn't net me any gains. Hence, I settled on 700MHz. Shader clocks locked to increase at the same ratio as core from above. I don't know how to test an overclock properly when using a gpu for PhysX, and I didn't want to worry it was too high, especially for no gain!

I remember when I first got the 9800GT, I tested Mafia 2, Cryostasis, and Batman AA. Both Mafia 2 and Cryostasis showed a big improvement. Batman saw a slight dip, but it was margin of error type stuff and either way the numbers were way beyond playable.

So right now, I have 2 profiles in EVGA precision, both have my GTX480 at the speeds above. Profile 1 has the 9800GT at the minimum values, Profile 2 has the 9800GT at the speeds above, just for when I fire up a PhysX game. Really wondering about that only 70% usage though.

I also have a 9800GT and a couple 480GTXs in SLI and I did a few tests in Batman Arkham City and found that my average fps in DX9/Physx mode was in the 70's with the 9800GT dedicated to Physx processing. But if the 480s in SLI also share physx the score goes up into the 90's. Obviously for that game 9800GT is not enough!

I was looking in Newegg and they have a Sparkle GTS450 single slot card with 192 stream processors. That should be perfect for system that don't have room for an 8th slot or double slot card..
 
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