Physx on a dedicated Card

Edg3

Ok guys, i need a hand, I heard its possible to run 2 cards in my pc, one for graphics and then have a second selected for physx. Now i've a Nvidia GTX 470 as my main card and recently got my hands on a 8800GT 512meg card and i was wondering, how would i go about using them both, one for graphics and the other for physx. I have an SLI board so thats not a problem, im just not sure what i need to do to set it up as a dedicated physx card.

any help0 would be much appreciated.

Deano12345

Edg3 wrote: »

Ok guys, i need a hand, I heard its possible to run 2 cards in my pc, one for graphics and then have a second selected for physx. Now i've a Nvidia GTX 470 as my main card and recently got my hands on a 8800GT 512meg card and i was wondering, how would i go about using them both, one for graphics and the other for physx. I have an SLI board so thats not a problem, im just not sure what i need to do to set it up as a dedicated physx card.

any help0 would be much appreciated.

You have to turn it on in the Nvidia control panel, not sure of the exact details but its in there (damn my lack of NV experience).

Id actually hold off on using an 8800 as a PhysX card, often times, the 4xx and 5xx series will have so much GPU power that they just end up waiting on the 8800 to feed the PhysX processes to it, which drops your FPS. I'll look into it though and let you know if I find anything

Edg3

well i have no problems running anything on my system at the minute, i'd just love to see if it'd run better or not is all

thanks for the info. i just havent done anything with computers like this in about a year and a half, can still knock one together but i lost track of hardware stuff like this a long time ago.

Deano12345

Edg3 wrote: »

well i have no problems running anything on my system at the minute, i'd just love to see if it'd run better or not is all

thanks for the info. i just havent done anything with computers like this in about a year and a half, can still knock one together but i lost track of hardware stuff like this a long time ago.

Sure enable it and see if you notice an increase in FPS in a PhysX title, if not, no harm done !

lmimmfn

Just as a side note, you dont need an SLI mobo to have a seperate physx card as its just a computational device.

You just set it in the nvidia control panel, depends on the Nvidia driver youre using as they changed it about 6 months ago. With recent drivers, In Manage 3D settings and the Global Settings tab theres a "CUDA - GPUs", set this to your 8800GT.

You should see that youre system is more balanced for Physx games. I doesnt matter what card you have thats faster than an 8800GT simply because theres not much Physx performance gain, so an 8800GT or GTS( 512Mb version ) is the best balance on price/performance for a Physx card. Also if you have a dedicated physx card it prevents slowdown, this is very obvious in Metro2033.

I have an 8800GT for Physx also, but im using it with a 6970. Its basically more of a gimmick tbh, but i like it for the sake of it as the 8800GTs are very cheap second hand.

Edg3

thanks for that info mate, Im getting new fans next week so i'll probably do it all at once, since my case is a bit of a mess, and then i'll let you know how it went!

Solitaire

How much pressure does PhysX put on the PPU card anyway? Is the 8800GT running flat out or is it only running at 30 or 50% load?

lmimmfn

it depends on the game, some only use 40% of the 8800GT, others use 100%, pretty much dependent on how much physx work is onscrean at the time, e.g. the Metro benchmark barely uses it, but in game its around 60%. Cant remember for Batman AA, and i think Mafia 2 is around 80% most of the time.

Thats pretty much why i think its pointless getting anything better than an 8800GT for physx as even that card rarely maxes out.

Edg3

to be honest i doubt i'll even use it and just sell the card. my GTX 470 seems to be able to handle just about anything maxed out! would be a waste of power and a card if i were to use it!