Thoughts on this new 750 Ti for PhysX?

Liger88 said:
We still need PhysX cards now? lol
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The last three games i played all had PhysX

Batman
AC4
COD Ghosts.

Edit... I guess it's not really a big deal since the only other game i can find that's coming out that will support it is the Witcher 3
 
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The extra GPGPU power would be nice for PhysX. It's not that much more expensive than a 650 Ti is right now, uses less power, and puts out less heat. It might also be a nice addition to boost your hash rate for some casual mining as a bonus for those with a GTX 780+ as their primary card.
 
Planetside 2 had Physx support, and it caused the game to crash constantly, never got fixed, and eventually got patched back out of the game. I haven't heard anything about Physx since. But yeah, the 750 (Ti) does seem like it would be nice for Physx because of the high performance per watt and small footprint.
 
Honestly. Even with a single GTX 780 which I used for some time prior to going SLI 780, I don't think a dedicated physx card is needed. In Batman: AC and Batman: AO you can simply set physx to normal instead of the highest setting and it doesn't seem to impact the framerate in an appreciable manner. Same for borderlands 2. I could see an argument for dedicated physx a few years ago, and the 750ti is a super lightweight card in terms of power use. I suppose it could be used for that, but I really don't feel that it's worth it from a cost/benefit perspective.

Just IMO. I haven't played any recent physx games that didn't run well on the dedicated GPU itself. Of course you may not be able to use the highest physx setting, but 1 notch down will be fine. (at least in the Batman games) OR if you have SLI, you can use the highest setting.
 
This actually crossed my mind-- pair this with my Radeon card and use the 750 Ti as a PhysX card. It's been done before with other Nvidia cards, and with this I don't have to worry about providing it extra power from the PSU.
 
Haven't had any issues running physics off my gpu's including games like Metro, Borderlands, etc. Just get a second card and run sli and set physX to default.
 
xoleras said:
Honestly. Even with a single GTX 780 which I used for some time prior to going SLI 780, I don't think a dedicated physx card is needed. In Batman: AC and Batman: AO you can simply set physx to normal instead of the highest setting and it doesn't seem to impact the framerate in an appreciable manner. Same for borderlands 2. I could see an argument for dedicated physx a few years ago, and the 750ti is a super lightweight card in terms of power use. I suppose it could be used for that, but I really don't feel that it's worth it from a cost/benefit perspective.

Just IMO. I haven't played any recent physx games that didn't run well on the dedicated GPU itself. Of course you may not be able to use the highest physx setting, but 1 notch down will be fine. (at least in the Batman games) OR if you have SLI, you can use the highest setting.
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So to be clear, your argument is if you don't use the GPU physx and use CPU only physx that you don't need additional GPU power?
 
Physx really is a thing of the past. If you are into wasting money, I will send you my paypal address.
 
BallaTheFeared said:
So to be clear, your argument is if you don't use the GPU physx and use CPU only physx that you don't need additional GPU power?
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Uhm, as far as I know even if you have a single GTX 780 - it uses the GPU for physx. I used a GTX 780 single card for ages with physx enabled in basically everything, and had no problems. In Batman : AC - I used "normal" physx instead of the highest setting, though. I really don't think the CPU was used for physx.

Try it out if you believe i'm wrong. Enable "normal" physx in Batman: AC and it will perform just fine if you have a GTX 780. Using vsync and normal phsyx in Batman: AC, I never really dip below 60 fps. Where do you get the idea that a single GPU doesn't utilize the GPU for physx? I'm under the impression that the GPU is in fact used. If it weren't used, I could see physx performance going down the drain which definitely is not the case in Batman or Borderlands 2. But in any case try it out and see. Let me know if i'm wrong. Again - I used a single GTX 780 for ages with physx turned on for everything. And my performance was always 100% fine, but I couldn't use the highest physx in Batman. Which wasn't a big deal really.

Try it out and report back. I never had any issues with physx games even with a single 780, even though i've since gone up to SLI. If anything, I had to lower physx from the highest setting to the "normal" setting and that's about it. I'm mainly talking the Batman games and Borderlands 2. Never had issues even with a single card in terms of physx performance.
 
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I would be curious how well the new architecture handles PhysX, more than anything.

Gaming performance per-watt has pretty much doubled, but has physics processing scaled with it? Or has it been sacrificed?
 
I believe Origins has 3 Physx settings, off, normal and high. Not all effects are enabled on normal. High enables "Apex Turbulence" particle effects which are considerably more demanding. PhysX normal I believe is playable even on AMD cards, although I'm not sure if this might be because effects are not being run despite the setting enabled.

The thing with PhysX currently is the games that showcase it are not very demanding overall (eg. Batman or BL2), which means you have more performance room with a higher end card. This may change with something like the Witcher 3.

I believe Nvidia's own recommended settings (via GE) for all current PhysX games at 1080p are already maxed with a single GPU GTX 680/770 or higher.
 
I don't think Batman: AO or Batman: AC allow physx on AMD cards. I bought Batman: AC when I had 7970s and the option was greyed out for physx. (i've obviously moved to NV since then and much prefer nvidia these days)...Anyway, the only exception that I have ever seen to this was Borderlands 2, which apparently allows CPU physx on AMD cards. I'm not aware of any other GPU physx title like this, although I could be wrong. As far as I know....Batman and Physx is a no go on AMD cards. Unless you have a physx card specifically installed with driver hacks.

Now in 2012. Physx definitely did not work on the CPU in Batman: AC with AMD cards. Did that change recently?

Anyway - anyone wondering about it, just give it a shot in Batman: AC with a single GPU 770 or 780. I just tried the highest physx setting in Batman: AC with SLI disabled and it still ran at great framerates. *This* is why I think a dedicated physx card is a waste, but that's just me. Some others may find it of use. What games are you playing with physx, ballathefeared?
 
I haven't played Origins yet so can't confirm.

But from what I understand the Normal mode (environment interaction, snow, banners, etc.) can be done of CPU (not sure however if there is any quality difference between GPU mode). Performance difference actually isn't that high between CPU or GPU mode with a Nvidia card. The Apex Turbulence effects, which is the more demanding particle effects, with PhysX high require a Nvidia GPU. http://www.techspot.com/review/733-batman-arkham-origins-benchmarks/

But with current games there is a lot of performance room with the high end cards. Only Metro 2034 I think you will be recommended to turn down settings from max (at 1080p), but that is more to do with the SSAA setting and performance requirements then PhysX overhead.
 
Yeah, I see. Well, I've been playing Batman: AC for a bit with high physx and it ran just fine with SLI disabled. Borderlands 2 is also fine. I'm not sure what's going on behind the scenes, whether it's the CPU or GPU - but I feel like it would use the GPU? I'm not 100% sure though. I do know that the physx games I play are running okay even with a single card. *shrug*. This is why a GTX 780 overclocked though which obviously has performance and then some. This may not be as plausible on a lower end NV card such as say, a 760.

I played mainly the Batman games (AC/AO) and Borderlands 2.

Also, since you mentioned it, I really don't think CPU physx is usable on AMD cards except for BL2. That's the only exception i've ever seen. I'm fairly certain that the Batman games do not allow AMD cards to run physx unless they have an NV card in their system. Do correct me if this has changed recently, but i'm 99.9% sure this is the case. Borderlands 2 is the anomaly in this respect.
 
xoleras said:
I don't think Batman: AO or Batman: AC allow physx on AMD cards. I bought Batman: AC when I had 7970s and the option was greyed out for physx. (i've obviously moved to NV since then and much prefer nvidia these days)...Anyway, the only exception that I have ever seen to this was Borderlands 2, which apparently allows CPU physx on AMD cards. I'm not aware of any other GPU physx title like this, although I could be wrong. As far as I know....Batman and Physx is a no go on AMD cards. Unless you have a physx card specifically installed with driver hacks.

Now in 2012. Physx definitely did not work on the CPU in Batman: AC with AMD cards. Did that change recently?

Anyway - anyone wondering about it, just give it a shot in Batman: AC with a single GPU 770 or 780. I just tried the highest physx setting in Batman: AC with SLI disabled and it still ran at great framerates. *This* is why I think a dedicated physx card is a waste, but that's just me. Some others may find it of use. What games are you playing with physx, ballathefeared?
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There used to be a driver hack so you could use both AMD and nVidia in Hybrid Physx, that got fixed around the 4xx series nVidia cards.

http://physxinfo.com/wiki/Hybrid_PhysX

Looks like they kept up with it, then it got broken again, then it looks like it might be working again? Looks like someone got it to work with the new Mantle driver in Borderlands 2, with a 290x and a 650GTX.

http://www.ngohq.com/graphic-cards/...h-latest-physx-and-geforce-285-solved-68.html

I never bothered trying to do it, I have had 2 fucking nVidia cards and never bothered to even run it on them lol.
 
I was under the impression that hybrid phsyx used an actual nvidia GPU alongside of a main AMD GPU. Is that what you're referring to? Limitedaccess seemed to hint that AMD cards can use AMD physx. Which is not the case except for Borderlands 2 to my knowledge. Every physx game I ever tried on 7970s (before BL2) didn't allow any type of physx. Granted, I didn't do any driver trickery. AMD drivers alone were a pain in the ass enough, much less dealing with a hack on top of that for physx. So yeah fuck that shit, and i'm glad to be on the green side now as to not deal with AMD's software nonsense. Off topic, i'll stop there.

But I am curious as to anyone else running the Batman games and Borderlands 2 on a single NV GPU. For me they run great with physx on, no additional physx card required. Just my experience.
 
xoleras said:
I was under the impression that hybrid phsyx used an actual nvidia GPU alongside of a main AMD GPU. Is that what you're referring to? Limitedaccess seemed to hint that AMD cards can use AMD physx. Which is not the case except for Borderlands 2 to my knowledge. Every physx game I ever tried on 7970s (before BL2) didn't allow any type of physx. Granted, I didn't do any driver trickery. AMD drivers alone were a pain in the ass enough, much less dealing with a hack on top of that for physx. So yeah fuck that shit, and i'm glad to be on the green side now as to not deal with AMD's software nonsense. Off topic, i'll stop there.

But I am curious as to anyone else running the Batman games and Borderlands 2 on a single NV GPU. For me they run great with physx on, no additional physx card required. Just my experience.
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Essentially yes, just as you would with an nVidia card... The problem isn't hacking the AMD drivers, its the N side of things locking down the drivers from what it sounds like. I only skimmed it briefly but it looks like the guy behind Hybrid Physx finally gave up on it.
 
The games aren't running PhysX on the AMD GPU itself but it is just CPU physX instead. You can do this with a Nvidia card as well if you want.

Metro 2034 also lets you run CPU PhysX, however it was way to slow to be playable (at least with a OCed 7950, but it's a CPU bottleneck issue even with a 2500k. I think fps was into the teens just in the starting room with nothing going on).

BL2 was around playable with PhysX for me even with a single 560ti 1gb from what I remember at 1080p (although it may not have been the highest settings). The only game I can recall giving me performance issues with PhysX on with my 560ti was Alice: The Madness Returns. Arkham City ran fine as well with some lower settings (I believe tessellation, but I heard it had a stuttering issue even with higher end cards).

It seems with PhysX it is the heavy particle and destruction effects (possibly hair? it hasn't been implemented in a game yet however as far as I know) actually require and benefit significantly from GPU acceleration, and even then are the more performance demanding. The environment interaction effects, like cloth banners, are capable of being run through CPU PhysX and are much less performance demanding.
 
EODetroit said:
Planetside 2 had Physx support, and it caused the game to crash constantly, never got fixed, and eventually got patched back out of the game. I haven't heard anything about Physx since. But yeah, the 750 (Ti) does seem like it would be nice for Physx because of the high performance per watt and small footprint.
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I asked Higby (their project lead) when he did an AMA on that, and he definitely said PhysX support was coming back - they wanted it as a feature, it's just up to their devs and nVidia to sort out the problems.
 
Dedicated PhysX cards were a thing in the GTX 260 days when PhysX could take up a significant percentage of GPU power, so you would use the 8800GT you upgraded from for a free PhysX boost. These days, your primary card is five times more powerful (ten if you SLI) and PhysX has minimal effect on performance, so there's just no point.
 
evilsofa said:
Dedicated PhysX cards were a thing in the GTX 260 days when PhysX could take up a significant percentage of GPU power, so you would use the 8800GT you upgraded from for a free PhysX boost. These days, your primary card is five times more powerful (ten if you SLI) and PhysX has minimal effect on performance, so there's just no point.
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That pretty much sums up how I feel. There hasn't been a physx game that i've played in the past 2 years that really brought performance down to an appreciable degree, despite not having a dedicated physx card. Now i've always bought halo GPUs. GTX 680, GTX 780, etc - the story may be different with a low end card such as a 760. I don't know. But the physx games I play, are generally great even on single GPU NV halo cards.

Actually, let me adjust the above statement. There has been one exception. Metro 2033 had very poorly coded physx and I just never really used it. Adding insult to injury, it's hard to even spot the physx effects in Metro 2033 unless i'm just crazy. I cannot see the difference with physx enabled in Metro 2033. So I always turned it off in that game - although, I haven't played it in a very long while (very old game). Aside from that though, I've been testing physx on high (In the Batman games) with a single GTX 780 and my framerates are great. BL2, great. I'll re-evaluate this if an upcoming physx game changes this dynamic, but I haven't felt a compelling reason to opt for a dedicated physx card. I'm a big fan of the Witcher series, if Witcher 3 changes that, i'll adjust accordingly. However I feel it will be fine without dedicated physx if the last 2 Batman games and BL2 are any indication. A halo NV GPU can push physx enabled games just fine, generally speaking, without a dedicated card.

If there's a game that I haven't played which is an exception, someone please mention it. Maybe there's a game i'm missing or not aware of that is more demanding physx wise, but I don't believe so.
 
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I'm curious to see how this card does in something like FluidMark. One thing I remember being very important to PhysX was CUDA performance, and if this card is running less cores, despite some optimizations, it could end up being worse overall as a dedicated PhysX card over a 650Ti. I remember some benchmarks that compaired a 640 to a 650 and a 650Ti from this forum that showed massive gains going from one to the next, but minimal gains when exceeding the 650Ti and going to a 680.

I personally use a 650Ti with my setup, and it does help in some games, but nvidia has broken their PhysX performance something fierce with their recent drivers, causing massive stuttering and lag in Warframe, AC4, Hawken, and Batman AO. In some cases, even a dedicated card isn't giving the gains it should, or in the case of Hawken pre-Steam and Batman AO, overloading the GPU due to the programmers not capping particle counts.
 
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