Currently I have 2x 580 in SLi on an Asus P8P67 Pro board, very impressed with it all so far. But I have a 3rd PCI-E slot and I'm wondering if it is worth taking out my Asus Xonar DS sound card from it's PCI slot and putting in an old XFX 9600GT graphics card in the 3rd PCI-E slot and set it to PHYSX. Is it even possible? Would it be worthwhile? The Asus P8P67 has built-in sound but god knows what it is, I haven't seen any explanation of what it is or if it is any good.
It depends what games you play, if your FPS is very good already, turning on PhysX on one of the 580's shouldn't harm your frame rates. If turning on PhysX on one of the 580's would bring it below 25fps, use the 9600. Give it a try on the games, and see what happens. What's more important to you, PhysX effects, or great sound quality in games?
I game on a 30" at 2560x1600. With the 2 cards in SLi I enjoy most games at full everything. But when only using one of them then I do notice a considerable dip which is why I'm wondering about the 3rd slot.
As an example Metro2033 uses PhysX. I can set the 580's to SLi and see good FPS on the benchmark (although even 2x580's crumble a bit with Metro at 2560), or I can set one of the cards to PhysX and see lower FPS and a nice wavey curtain ... The choice is do I keep the Xonar DS or would I see a bigger benefit using on-board sound and making use of that 3rd slot? added: does anyone on here who is serious about gaming, use on-board sound?
Probably most people use onboard sound as unless your a serous audio file using proper compresion + if your using a decent set of speakers or not When I was using headset I just used onboard wasn't any major concern. Now got into music a bit more so use a proper sound card Got 2 580s myself and considered getting a 3rd and booting the sound card into touch but ain't done that yet Most gamers using there pcs for just gaming don't need a dedicated sound card as most gamers don't even look at the audio settings
