Is it possible to use a 980 for dedicated PhyX?

StryderxX

StryderxX

[H]ard|Gawd
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I just got my hands on a 1080 but I was thinking about leaving 1 of my old 980s in my rig and dedicate it to PhyX. Is that possible? Right now I have both cards installed but only the 1080 is working. The 980 is showing up as a "Microsoft basic graphics adapter". Not sure how to get the Nvidia drivers for the 980 installed. Appreciate any help you guys can give. Thx
 
Possible? Sure. Overkill and posing no real world advantage in gaming, check.
 
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jmilcher said:
Possible? Sure. Overkill and posing no realm world advantage in gaming, check.
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I just want to see if there's any benefit to using the 980 for PhyX. If it doesn't help much I'll definitely sell it on this board. The issue is that I can't get it to work right now.
 
I kept a 670 for PhysX in my rig for about 10 minutes before I yanked it out and posted it for sale. I made a wise choice.
 
Only if you play Physx games. It is a bit overkill.

Also as it doesn't take away PCIe lanes from your 1080. Since it won't be used very often bottle necking your 1080 in any way likely doesn't make sense.

There is that nifty nVidia VR funhouse demo...

Personally I gifted the card I was using for Physx.
 
It makes no sense to fool with doing that. That is just going to be an expensive brick sitting in your case for the 99.9% of time you are not playing a game that even has hardware physx in the first place.
 
If you use multiple monitors and your other card doesn't have enough DP or HDMI ports to support your monitor layout, keep it.

There is also nothing stopping you from using nVidia card (GT 210 all the way to GTX 1080) as a PhysX card, however the benefits would be limited, at best, since not many games use PhysX, nor do they show much improvement in doing so (certainly nowhere near the playable/unplayable level).
 
chenw said:
If you use multiple monitors and your other card doesn't have enough DP or HDMI ports to support your monitor layout, keep it.

There is also nothing stopping you from using nVidia card (GT 210 all the way to GTX 1080) as a PhysX card, however the benefits would be limited, at best, since not many games use PhysX, nor do they show much improvement in doing so (certainly nowhere near the playable/unplayable level).
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Well anything slower than a 750 ti would actually give worse than performance than letting the 1080 doing both graphics and physx.
 
It would only make sense if you're in 2-way SLI and want to do extreme VR stuff that supports it. You're way better off selling that 980 and saving for a 2nd 1080.
 
The only time I've used a dedicated Physx card was when I ran a pair of 780's in SLI. Some games actually dipped in performance when in SLI mode, so I ran one of them as a Physx card. It barely ever made a difference. You'd be better off with the ~$300 you would get for your 980 (depending on the model) and putting it toward another 1080 or something else like RAM, SSD's, etc.
 
I wouldn't go higher than a 750 for dedicated PhysX. It's cheap enough not to care and it doesn't even require a power cable. Benefits are questionable though.
 
I suggest trying it as a 7 day curiousity. Get games like Borderlands 2 that really do have extra shine with physx, try it out, and then decide what to do with the card because 2 things

1) That 980 will probably only have 5% of it taxed a majority of the time

2) That 980 could totally be doing something else :)

If you really need phyx like most of the people above mention, I would just get a 750 or the new asus 950 that doesn't use pci-e corded power.
 
There's literally no reason to have a Physx card these days. Maybe 10 years ago. I would sell it or give it to a friend. I usually give my old hardware to my friends who rarely upgrade.
 
So just wanted to let you guys know that I heard you loud and clear and sold the 980 on this forum. All is right with the world again! :D
 
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