Right ho, I've a rather tastey system with a lovely watercooled 4870 in it. All games run fine. But I'd like the Physx enhancements. Now would the stand alone physx card do it, or would my system be fine sticking in say a 9600 to act as a standalone physx card, and would my pc have a heart attack mixing nVidia and ATI? Advise on this would be much appreciated.
My thoughts exactly. But even if they did, I wouldn't bother with it. They were overpriced because they had no competitors, but since nVidia bought Ageia and implemented Physx on their own GPUs (which, AFAIK, are much better at doing so - the same goes for Havok on ATI cards) they've become redundant.
Well I know where I can get the physx cards for around €50, so it's not that much. The main thing I want to know is can I keep my ATI card and have an nVidia run the physx without Vista going "HYYYYYYRUK" and falling over. I can't find any information on the nVidia boards at all, or their FAQ, and google isn't showing me much.
Hmmm, Vista won't like ATI and nVidia drivers on the same system, so I think you're out of luck there as it won't work. I'm sure I read somewhere that it's possible on XP (or with modified drivers on Vista), but I think even then it was with reduced functionality so you may not get all the Physx jazz. TBH, I wouldn't bother with it at all until more games started using it as opposed to the occasion one now and then.
I'm one of the poor people that actually owned a PhysX card, and their so difficult to get going in a nVidia based system! The actual hardware driver is in a video driver package about 6 months old, then you have to update the software part using the most recent video driver. It's just so much hassle so I said goodbye to mine. Unless you live playing mirror's edge I wouldn't want that headache again.
I built a PC for one of my girlfriend's family members, and I put in a PhysX card a this request, alongside an 8800 GTX 768mb, also at his request. The wasted money when they bought PhysX and put it in the drivers was a pain :| Anyway, as has been said, you will not easily/at all get an ATI card and an Nvidia card working under Vista, although they do under 7 apparently. I've seen a couple of people talking about using an older Nv 9x00 card as a dedicated physics card, but I didn't think it was possible, and given how much the times have moved on with CPU power and gfx card, I thought it redundant. I reckon if you want it (and you must have one of the handful of games that use it to want it) then you may as well buy the PhysX card and hope the drivers keep up with 7 and games etc
I've had no issues whatsoever? running 8800GT in SLI with a P100 on Vista64, you install the nvidia drivers then disable GPU Physx and enable it on the Ageia card, all works fine in both Mirrors edge and Batman. As to what level of performance you'll get from it this review gives you an example here My concern with the Physx card would be that it would be supported going forward so unless you get it real cheap versus say a nvidia GPU I might not bother.
The 8800's onwards support the PhysX fancyness (not sure about lower 8x00's, but my 8800 does it), if you could pick one up that would be a pretty cheap way for PhysX.
Dunno I've never had SLI let alone tri/quad. Too expensive, no point, for me anyway. If this is the case, I'm not sure how it would work with an ATI card and an Nvidia card.
So overall advice so far is......"May or may not work, no one is sure" regarding nVidia card+ ATI/ Physx card +ATI. Bugger.
Well my overall advice is that the PhysX will work with an ATI card, but that I doubt an Nvidia and ATI together would work in the way you're talking
Search on google for "dedicated Physx card" and you'll find a lot of posts that say it is possible to combine an ATI card for the graphics and an Nvidia card for the Physx. Apparently the Vista issue is down to Vista wanting both cards plugged into a monitor (XP doesn't care). This is the sort of thing CPC should have been all over before now since it could be a way of using an older card you're upgrading from - an article trying it out and benchmarking it would be really useful - even if it concludes not to bother.
I was thinking about doing this over christmas with the new ati x2 card comming out (if the ati card does crysis and warhead 60+fps at 1080p maxed).. a 260 would be overkill for just physx though- it's not really a big deal anyway that would be a semi-killer folding rig if you care to run that stuff
Well I got an official answer after contacting ATI and nVidia, both said the same. Use a standalone physx card. So I've ordered one as they are dirt cheap.
