Hi, Peeps I am planning on building a new gaming rig at the end of the month, as my aged Q6600 Asus Striker Extreme system is getting a bit long in the tooth. My new system will be using a Intel Core i5 3570K Ivy Bridge CPU in an MSI Z77 G45 Gaming mobo which is SLI ready. I will be installing one EVGA Nvidia GTX 660Ti superclocked initially, but I may add a second one later when I can get capital authorisation from my significant other. In the intermin will it be worth installing one of my Nvidia GTX 550ti's and dedicate it to physics in the Nvidia control panel? TIA -=ByteMan=-
I think it does have a beneficial effect if you play any of these games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_hardware-accelerated_PhysX_support Louis
I've never tried dedicating a GPU for fizzics but I am wondering if there is much of an advantage. Let's take Borderlands 2 for example... do the fizzics FX scale if you have dedicated physx? Probably not... so what percentage of a single GPU would go to physx? http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/386826-33-dedicated-physx Also there's issue of PCIe bandwidth right? If you've got a 550Ti for physx.... How will that impact the PCIe bandwidth? Will the bandwidth drop to dual x8? If the answer is yes then your physx GPU will have killed any advantage it may have had.
Re: Even if I use two cards, with an Ivy Bridge CPU installed, PCIe 3.0 will be enabled which will still provide each GPU with 8 Gbps of bandwidth as PCIe 3.0 provides 1 Gbps of bandwith per PCIe lane. So i dont think the PCie bandwidth would be maxed out by using two GPUs. -=ByteMan=-
I don't know enough about the PCIe bandwidth sharing... I know PCIe 3 on supported GPU's can bring some increased bandwidth due to more efficient data protocol but I don't know how that will translate with 1 x GPU in 3.0 and the other in 2.0 I guess a physx GPU won't need much bandwidth. You must test with the 2nd gpu physx enabled versus disabled...
Re: I guess i will just have to suck it and see on some physix enabled games, If it doesn't provide any benefits, i guess I will be selling both my Nvidia GTX 550ti's Cheers peeps -=ByteMan=-
Remember the days when PhysX was an obscure, over-priced card? I nearly bought one in it's final days but I wasn't sure it was worth it even at £50. Remember that FPS physics demo with all the barrels you could throw around with your super energy fist? http://techgage.com/article/ageia_in_2007_-_is_this_the_year_of_the_ppu/ http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1027781/nvidia-sli-physics-is-a-fat-pipe-dream
I would say it is a waste of time to bother with dedicated physx. Even on single 560ti there was only 2 games I tested with physx that had a slight negative impact to FPS with physx enabled which was Mafia II and Metro. Ha, the CellFactor demo... I remember thinking that was pretty impressive when it came out.
I couldn't remember the name... Yes, Cellfactor. They tried to make it into a proper game and failed dint they?
