GTX 680 dedicated PhysX or SLI?

cybereality

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Looking at building a new rig soon, and I'd like to make this a PhysX power-house. There are a couple of PhysX enabled games I'd like to play (Batman, Alice, etc.) but mainly this is for developing my own games. I was wondering which would give more power:

1) Running a GTX 680 as the main GPU with another 680 as a dedicated PhysX processor.
2) Running two GTX 680's in SLI and letting them handle everything.

Any thoughts?
 
Two 680's will plenty powerful to run any PhysX enabled games out right now, regardless of which configuration you run them in. Of course it depends on your resolution also, are you planning on doing multi monitor?

Can't comment on game development at all though...
 
Well, since you'll have the two you'll be able to try it out for yourself. I'm sure that two 680s in sli will be faster. It was with my 480s in Alice.
 

spam?

if you have two 680's test and see what works best. you can change the settings (sli to physx) from game to game. if you have a game you needs extra physx power, dedicate one gpu to it. if the game doesnt support physx, enable sli.
 
Well, on this site's review, they actually got higher FPS in Mafia 2 with one 680 set to perform Physx instead of SLI.

This is my point. Who cares what the FPS is of a 2 year old game no one really plays anymore.

Thats the drawback of Physx. 3-4 games MAYBE a year that use it. And its like....it adds nothing to the game really.

You can still beat Mafia II without a Physx card.
 
Have you played Batman AC? It's one of the coolest PC games I have played in a while.
I would cry if I had to play it on an XBOX or even with and AMD card (the game is neutered). Not having Physx takes away MUCH of the cool effects in the game.

All I am saying is if you have the cards in your PC, why not just do a quick change in the Nvidia Control Panel before you game with a title that supports hardware Physx if your performance will increase in doing so?

Or, if you have a spare graphics card lying around such as a GTX 460, just slap it in and render Physx on it for a nice little boost that in effect costs nothing.
 
Have you played Batman AC? It's one of the coolest PC games I have played in a while.
I would cry if I had to play it on an XBOX or even with and AMD card (the game is neutered). Not having Physx takes away MUCH of the cool effects in the game.

All I am saying is if you have the cards in your PC, why not just do a quick change in the Nvidia Control Panel before you game with a title that supports hardware Physx if your performance will increase in doing so?

Or, if you have a spare graphics card lying around such as a GTX 460, just slap it in and render Physx on it for a nice little boost that in effect costs nothing.

I did play it on a 6990, the game was great! and I even beat it.

Why would I go back to play it now when i beat it? Just because of Physx?.....no, once a game is done its done.

Now If they added in Physx into Battlefield 3, or Skyrim, OK I can see trying it out, But when BF3 physx are just as good as Nvidia's Physx.....well it shows you, you dont need a PPU to make Physx work.

Edit: There is a cost by adding in another card for Physx. Heat/power/noise. For a single player game, It's not worth it.
 
I did play it on a 6990, the game was great! and I even beat it.

Why would I go back to play it now when i beat it? Just because of Physx?.....no, once a game is done its done.

Now If they added in Physx into Battlefield 3, or Skyrim, OK I can see trying it out, But when BF3 physx are just as good as Nvidia's Physx.....well it shows you, you dont need a PPU to make Physx work.

Edit: There is a cost by adding in another card for Physx. Heat/power/noise. For a single player game, It's not worth it.

Newsflash: Not everyone thinks like you or enjoys the things you do, we all have different preferences. It was a simple question, not whether YOU cared for Physx or not.
 
Newsflash: Not everyone thinks like you or enjoys the things you do, we all have different preferences. It was a simple question, not whether YOU cared for Physx or not.

So tell me which game, That people still play today that they havent beat, is worth getting Physx for?

Guild Wars 2?, Max Payne 3?, Diablo 3? All new badass game releases...Why dont they use physx in them?

Thats my Point....Why go with Physx when games barely use it.

It's not my personal choice, This is fact.

Edit: I did find 1 upcoming game that will use Physx (not sure about needing a PPU) and thats Arma 3.....
 
Mafia II looked like a pretty fun game when I watched my bro play it, that said I'm not saying you're wrong in your opinion. He should just go with SLI as it won't really hamper him in any games with Physx.
 
So tell me which game, That people still play today that they havent beat, is worth getting Physx for?

Guild Wars 2?, Max Payne 3?, Diablo 3? All new badass game releases...Why dont they use physx in them?

Thats my Point....Why go with Physx when games barely use it.

It's not my personal choice, This is fact.

Edit: I did find 1 upcoming game that will use Physx (not sure about needing a PPU) and thats Arma 3.....

I believe the original question was whether or not, for the games that he is playing, which are PhysX-enabled games, he would see better performance from one 680 being dedicated to PhysX processing, or using the two in SLI, with PhysX on Auto. Additionally, he is looking at developing software that will take advantage of PhysX:

Looking at building a new rig soon, and I'd like to make this a PhysX power-house. There are a couple of PhysX enabled games I'd like to play (Batman, Alice, etc.) but mainly this is for developing my own games.

Personally, I'm glad to see that there is at least some interest in the technology as I find it can be very appealing, but is admittedly limited in the current number of titles which support it. It may not be worth it to you to go back and play older games that you have already beaten, but some of us do derive value from replaying a game, that's why nearly all game reviewers list a score for "Replay Value". If adding a new feature that you previously did not get to try out while replaying the game adds to this replay value, then by all means, go for it. My thoughts anyway...
 
@belmicah: Thanks for that link. Its interesting that using a GTX 680 as a PhysX card *does* show some gains, at least on Mafia 2 at certain settings. Shows at least I'm not totally crazy for wanting to try it.

@DASHlT: There are a few games I have been waiting to play with PhysX at full blast, namely Batman Arkham City and Alice: Madness Returns. I also got Mafia 2 (bundled free with my old GPU) and I wouldn't mind checking that out. Not to mention Mirror's Edge, one of my favorite games, I would like to replay at max settings. 4 good games, that's enough for me.

Also, I am something of a hobby game developer and would like to experiment with PhysX in some custom apps. So I was looking for the most PhysX power in general, not necessarily to play any specific released game. Hopefully I can come up with something cool to showcase what PhysX can do.
 
From the benching I've done you will get great performance with a single 680 in all the latest PhysX games on a single monitor. IMO 2 680's would be overkill just for PhysX alone.
 
From the benching I've done you will get great performance with a single 680 in all the latest PhysX games on a single monitor. IMO 2 680's would be overkill just for PhysX alone.

Cryostasis is unplayable with physx. In the benchmarks that I've seen GTX680 does take a larger hit than normal with physx. I haven't tried Mafia 2 yet.
 
@belmicah: Thanks for that link. Its interesting that using a GTX 680 as a PhysX card *does* show some gains, at least on Mafia 2 at certain settings. Shows at least I'm not totally crazy for wanting to try it.

@DASHlT: There are a few games I have been waiting to play with PhysX at full blast, namely Batman Arkham City and Alice: Madness Returns. I also got Mafia 2 (bundled free with my old GPU) and I wouldn't mind checking that out. Not to mention Mirror's Edge, one of my favorite games, I would like to replay at max settings. 4 good games, that's enough for me.

Also, I am something of a hobby game developer and would like to experiment with PhysX in some custom apps. So I was looking for the most PhysX power in general, not necessarily to play any specific released game. Hopefully I can come up with something cool to showcase what PhysX can do.
Alice the madness?the game i ran at full details with pyshics on a 5850? Pretty sure half of the power of the 680 should suffice even with pyshics enabled,yet alone 2 full 680... Donno about batman,u could sure use the extra power,but 500$ for 20 particles flying around instead of 10 is stupid :)))
 
Cryostasis is unplayable with physx. In the benchmarks that I've seen GTX680 does take a larger hit than normal with physx. I haven't tried Mafia 2 yet.

IIRC, Cryostasis has been accused of being very poorly optimized. Mafia 2 runs just fine with everything maxed.
 
I do not see any point at all in buying a second 680 solely for PhysX.
 
I would run them in SLI, and let them share PhysX duties.

If you dedicate one to video rendering and the other to physics, you'll probably see the video rendering board at 100% load and the physics board at less than 10% load, meaning that you'd be missing out on the power of 90% of one of the boards which could be used to support the video rendering.

PhysX simply does not require that much muscle.

personally I plan on using an old GTX460 768Mb I have kicking around for Physx and I don't expect it to be anywhere near close to fully loaded from physx. I mean, people seem to be getting satisfactory PhysX performance out of GT430's, so a GTX680 is serious overkill and if dedicated to physics whill probably spend its entire life either at, or near idle.

Don't take my word for it though. it's very easy to change the configuration back and forth. (shut down, pull SLI bridge, power back up, change driver setting). Should take 3 minutes. Just bench both and see which is faster :p
 
Zarathustra[H];1038602730 said:
I would run them in SLI, and let them share PhysX duties.

If you dedicate one to video rendering and the other to physics, you'll probably see the video rendering board at 100% load and the physics board at less than 10% load, meaning that you'd be missing out on the power of 90% of one of the boards which could be used to support the video rendering.

PhysX simply does not require that much muscle.

personally I plan on using an old GTX460 768Mb I have kicking around for Physx and I don't expect it to be anywhere near close to fully loaded from physx. I mean, people seem to be getting satisfactory PhysX performance out of GT430's, so a GTX680 is serious overkill and if dedicated to physics whill probably spend its entire life either at, or near idle.

Don't take my word for it though. it's very easy to change the configuration back and forth. (shut down, pull SLI bridge, power back up, change driver setting). Should take 3 minutes. Just bench both and see which is faster :p

Yeah, if I had two GTX680s I would use them in sli and not physx. No question about that. That said in Physx games GTX680 really seem to take a bigger hit than fermi.

I plan on using a GTX460 as well but I'm not going to leave the card in all of the time since it'll leave my GTX680 at pci-e 2.0 8x speeds which does seem to hold it back more than you might think.
 
I have a 680.

I picked up a gtx430 for physx.

It works well. The 430 hits about 50% usage in Batman and about 20% in cryostasis. Cyrostasis jumps between 30 and 60 fps. Batman is capped at 60 cause developers suck.
 
You can unlock the framerate in Batman by just going to the settings folder in the game installation and changing the max fps to 120 (just search on google what folder and command it is exactly, I cant remember, but its easy.)

Also are you sure the 430 isnt holding the 680 back?
Often low powered PhysX cards are unnecassry and actually bottleneck your main card.
 
You can unlock the framerate in Batman by just going to the settings folder in the game installation and changing the max fps to 120 (just search on google what folder and command it is exactly, I cant remember, but its easy.)

Also are you sure the 430 isnt holding the 680 back?
Often low powered PhysX cards are unnecassry and actually bottleneck your main card.

The 4xx series seem to all handle physx very well. There's another thread that benchmarked the gtx 460 vs the gt 430 in physx (using a 6970 as the main card) and the difference in framerate was in the single digits, like maybe 2 or 3 fps.

I think you're definitely correct with the previous generation of nvidia cards, but for some reason the low end 4xx series do pretty well.

I'm debating buying a $50 gt 430.
 
I've always been told that two generations below your main gpu is where u wanna be at the lowest for a physx card.
 
Great discussion here. Before I got my 680GTX, i had two 570s in SLI/PhysX mode. I just put in an order for two 670s after selling the 680. I always wondered if I would get better performance if i got a dedicated Physics card and use the other two for SLI. I still have an 8800GTX... any thoughts? Would this decrease or increase? I guess i can throw it in and find out, but I noticed that the drivers for the newer 6XX cards do not apply to the older 8800... maybe too old to use. I sure do like the sound of the $50.00 option though with the 430.
 
Great discussion here. Before I got my 680GTX, i had two 570s in SLI/PhysX mode. I just put in an order for two 670s after selling the 680. I always wondered if I would get better performance if i got a dedicated Physics card and use the other two for SLI. I still have an 8800GTX... any thoughts? Would this decrease or increase? I guess i can throw it in and find out, but I noticed that the drivers for the newer 6XX cards do not apply to the older 8800... maybe too old to use. I sure do like the sound of the $50.00 option though with the 430.
I think you best option would be to just run them in SLI, and just switch one to Physx before firing up Batman or whatever other game that supports hardware Physx.
 
IMHO, if you're wanting a dedicated physx card, find a midrange Fermi card to use. IIRC they were a lot stronger when it came to CUDA/Compute workloads. That, and somewhere (can't remember for the life of me where the hell I saw the review) it was shown that physx utilizes so little of a GPU's overall power, using a high end card for dedicated physics processing is more or less pointless. I wanna say they pit an 550ti against a second 580, with something like 4 fps difference between the two. 680 pushing pixels and a 550/560 pushing physx would probably net you the best bang for buck.
 
Do sli with two 680s. A 680 for dedicated phsyx would be OVERKILL and total waste. If anything use a GTX 260 or GTS 250 for dedicated physx.
 
I use a 216sp gtx 260 for physx with 2 680's... granted, 90% of my games are non-physx titles, the ones that do use physx, like Batman: AC actually does benefit from using the dedicated phsyx card. Running Batman: AC's built-in benchmark tool, I saw higher min framerate and about 10 fps more average frames. For me I opted to have cool physx effects + a dedicated physx because with the settings including AA and AF maxed out @ 2560 x 1440, the difference between 60 and 70 fps with a higher minimum framerate drop is crucial.
 
IMHO, if you're wanting a dedicated physx card, find a midrange Fermi card to use. IIRC they were a lot stronger when it came to CUDA/Compute workloads. That, and somewhere (can't remember for the life of me where the hell I saw the review) it was shown that physx utilizes so little of a GPU's overall power, using a high end card for dedicated physics processing is more or less pointless. I wanna say they pit an 550ti against a second 580, with something like 4 fps difference between the two. 680 pushing pixels and a 550/560 pushing physx would probably net you the best bang for buck.

Really depends on the game. Some games use heavy PhysX, and therefore would benefit from having a stronger PhysX GPU. In certain scenarios, a slow PhysX card can slow the entire system down; usually, that's with a GT 240 in a PhysX heavy game with maxed out PhysX settings. That said, something along the lines of a GTS 550 should be the max you're looking for in a PhysX card.
 
Interesting concept. Perhaps I'll dig out some old card I have.
Thanks for the info guys!
 
Does anyone have a dedicated GPU for physX and see any sort of gain by having a dedicated card for it while allowing the 2 other cards be straight SLI?
 
I've always been told that two generations below your main gpu is where u wanna be at the lowest for a physx card.

I have a GTX680 and my old card is a GTX280. Do you feel that this card would be a help or a bottleneck to the GTX680 in a game that supported physx?
 
Physx? Maybe, just run the game and see if performance is higher with SLI or with one card using Physx.

But...'dedicated' Physx? More like dedicated to doing jack shit 99% of the time, since less than 1% of games in existence that you'd ever want to play use hardware Physx.
 
I have a GTX680 and my old card is a GTX280. Do you feel that this card would be a help or a bottleneck to the GTX680 in a game that supported physx?

dedicating a power hungry card as a physx card does not sound like a good idea to me.
 
+1 SLI, I'd rather utilize the full power of both cards. If I plan to do physx, I'd rather sell it and buy a 430/460, then I'd have spare cash for some titties ;)
 
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