Graphics How do I set up PhysX?

Okay well i'm on the market and i'm shopping for a gpu and i want to try physx the thing is my board has 3 slots to put the gpus in.

Do i have to fill all 3?
Where do i put them gpus if not?
How do i set it up?

 

Do i have to fill all 3?

nope

Where do i put them gpus if not?

your main graphics card should be on the pci-e x16 for the physx it doesn't really matter which pci-e slot you use.

How do i set it up?

All you do is stick the card you're using for physx in a pci-e slot + connect it to your psu. Install the nvidia physx drivers http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx-9.10.0224-driver.html.

Then go into the nvdia controll panel > set physx configuration and make sure it's using your 2nd graphics card for physx

 

you don't have to connect them using a bridge?

 

Nope, that's only for SLI.

 

Okay thanks alot man and could a 8800 gtx be used for physx with a 260 ssc??

 

A 8800GT would be fine.

Infact you don't need a dedicated physx card at all, you can run it of a single card though it will be more of a frame rate hit than having a dedicated physx card.

 

sweet because my dad just took hit 2 out of his old system and got a 5870 so i might just use those for now instead of my sli 7800 gtx or just wait to get my 260 ssc in

 

just got to find the 1 or 2 games that have physx now lol

 

That's easy...
Mirrors Edge
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Batman Arkham Asylum
Cryostasis
Metro 2033
Unreal Tournament 3

then there's all of these Clicky

 

I have a 9800gx2 and do have a 8800 lying around - is it worth dropping in

 

i would say yes but thats only me

 

You wont lose anything by doing it, So I would say yes

 

Do you even still get dedicated Physx cards anymore?

 

Nope, people use normal, older Nvidia cards instead.

 

It's frustrating to see how much clout PhysX has amongst users considering it adds bugger all to games and is only used in a tiny amount of the market, and even then to a small extent. Wavey fabric in Mirror's edge? More floating bricks in Batman? These add nothing to the game.

Mirrors Edge - One play through and you're done. Wavey fabric. Woo.
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 - Laughable PhysX. More bricks flying out of walls . Rubbish
Batman Arkham Asylum - More bricks, although they did at least look cool
Cryostasis - Rubbish game
Metro 2033 - Rubbish game
Unreal Tournament 3 - PhysX only used in dedicated PhysX levels.

With Havok and other proprietary CPU based physics engines, not to mention more CPU cores for physics, PhysX only fragments the industry. As devs have to code for their users and not just the ones with Nvidia GPUS, PhysX is going nowhere.

 

+1 Baz. physx is rubbish supports a small set of games which are mostly rubbish and hinders actually moving forward in the game physics industry