What sort of card is useful for dedicated PhysX?

[Sycraft]

In particular, I have a GTX 570 and a GTX 680 available for use as a dedicated PhysX card (a 980 gets to be the main GPU). My question is if there's be any reason to use the 680 instead of the 570, as which ever I don't use will be used for a media PC.

 

[BroHamBone]

Less power consumption. If you are not worried, use the 570 and sell the 680

Or

If you are not even playing games using physx, sell both

 

[DejaWiz]

Sell both and get a 2nd 980.

 

[Armenius]

I don't think that the amount of power used and heat generated especially by a Fermi card would outweigh the benefits you would see in the few games that support PhysX. I have observed that the dedicated card will basically turn itself off when not in use if you specifically assign it to PhysX in the drivers, though.

Still, I would use the 570 for PhysX and stick the 680 in your media PC. Nothing about PhysX is so demanding that it would ever need the full power of a 570 anyway, let alone a 680. Before the GTX 750 the GTX 650 was probably the most popular card to add for PhysX.

 

[picket23]

Sell both and get a 2nd 980.

Exactly what I thought after reading the OP haha

 

[Lord_Exodia]

Honestly any sub $100 nvidia card should do fine for PhysX. e.g. GTX 740 Superclocked Here is one with free Amazon Prime shipping http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...-rank&keywords=geforce&ie=UTF8&qid=1412278080

A card dedicated to just PhysX shouldn't be that powerful but at the same time shouldn't hold your setup back. I see a lot of people going way overboard and getting a card that is almost as fast as their primary card. I wish there was an article that compared all of this since this question comes up quite a bit on forums. It'd be nice to have some good data to back things up.

 

[Armenius]

Honestly any sub $100 nvidia card should do fine for PhysX. e.g. GTX 740 Superclocked Here is one with free Amazon Prime shipping http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...-rank&keywords=geforce&ie=UTF8&qid=1412278080

A card dedicated to just PhysX shouldn't be that powerful but at the same time shouldn't hold your setup back. I see a lot of people going way overboard and getting a card that is almost as fast as their primary card. I wish there was an article that compared all of this since this question comes up quite a bit on forums. It'd be nice to have some good data to back things up.

There is a lot of misinformation out there that a slower card for PhysX being paired with a faster card will seriously hurt the potential performance of your main display card. I think the difference is negligible at best, and you would still notice a net gain in performance in PhysX games.