Dedicated PPU or NVIDIA for Physics?

[maleficarus]

My take on this who debate is this: From what I have read (could be wrong here) in order to fully utilize a NVIDIA card for both graphics+pysics you need a HIGH end model pretty much. Low end Geforce cards/mid range NVIDIA cards just don't have the power to handle both; at least this is what I see. So for all of us that have low to mid range Gforce8/9 series cards the only other option is to buy a second Geforce8/9 series card and run them separately. Now that seems fine at first until I read in order to do this one would have to hook up each card to its own monitor. Am I correct in assuming this? If so, then that option is absolutely retarded and would cost an arm and a leg in the end. 3rd and final option would be to simply buy a dedicated PPU card with 1 single monitor and be good to go correct?

Well, me personally, I would vote for PPU dedicated, less hassle, less worrying about driver conflicts and 1 single fucking LCD! If I'm way off here please correct me....

 

[mope54]

Can you post where you read the stuff about multi-monitor requirements?
I never heard of that and it doesn't quite make sense from how I understand the stuff to work. I would not prefer a dedicated PPU because you need to upgrade it, I think, or are they all the same? Whereas with nVidia you can just keep sliding your last card down to physX duty. For example, buy a 260, use the 8800 for physX. Buy a 290, use the 260 for physX. I haven't found much more than 1-2 games that I own to take advantage of physX, though, so it's very minor at this point of the game.

 

[maleficarus]

I read several guys had to do this to get it working. Could that be just a rare thing or what?

 

[Balthazor]

Never heard of the multi-monitor requirement.

PPUs don't hold a candle to even the 8x00 series of Nvidia cards in terms of processing power, and in many cases will be cheaper. The only advantage of a PPU now is:

-if you want to use hardware physx with an ATI video card or some other non-physx capable card (older nvidia cards, for instance)
-you have some sort of expansion slot restrictions preventing you from using a second video card for physx but you have a PCI slot free
-or you really want to play one of the physx-enabled games that currently only respond to the Aegia physx card without recognizing Nvidia's GPU physx (I think the original GRAW is one of these, for example)

 

[bigdogchris]

There's simply not enough game support to buy a dedicated PPU.

 

[Silus]

A dedicated PPU is no longer a good choice, over a CUDA-ready mid-range card.
Obviously, PhysX and graphics at the same time, are not meant to be done on a low-end card, which doesn't have power to spare. But a mid-range card, such as the 9800 GT is capable of producing the same results as a dedicated PPU in terms of physics, while also processing graphics. We are basically getting an additional feature, just by owning a graphics card and that's always a plus.

 

[Atech]

Never heard of the multi-monitor requirement.

PPUs don't hold a candle to even the 8x00 series of Nvidia cards in terms of processing power, and in many cases will be cheaper. The only advantage of a PPU now is:

-if you want to use hardware physx with an ATI video card or some other non-physx capable card (older nvidia cards, for instance)
-you have some sort of expansion slot restrictions preventing you from using a second video card for physx but you have a PCI slot free
-or you really want to play one of the physx-enabled games that currently only respond to the Aegia physx card without recognizing Nvidia's GPU physx (I think the original GRAW is one of these, for example)

you forgot:
- if you only want to draw 28 watts...maximum for your physis solution.