Graphics PhysX/SLi stupid question

Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster

Bit of a stupid noob question, I recently upgraded my ageing 4850 to a Gigabyte OC GTX 460, so far it's pretty good I'm pleasantly surprised. I was previously allergic to Nvidia cards due to the absolute disappointment that was the FX 5600, it was a terrible experience compared to the 9800Pro I was upgrading from and was and I swore off their hardware since.

I recently decided to give Nvidia another chance as the 460 seemed to be a genuinely well performing card for the price and the scalability seemed good should I chose to put a second card in SLI as a cheap/effective upgrade path.

The other day I was fitting it and realised that my motherboard (Gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5) only supports XF and not SLI so I cannot take that intended route in a few months. But I played a couple of games with Physx acceleration enabled for the first time, and whilst not blown away it was a decent enough experience, so I am now considering getting a cheapish secondary card for dedicated Physx and leaving my 460 to do the graphics processing. I see in the Nvidia control panel you can chose which card is doing the physx processing so my question is if I get a card for physx will it be compatible with my motherboard with it only supporting XF? Do I need to SLI the cards or will it just work if I Put a card into my spare PCI – E slot?

Thanks Bit-Tech

 

hello Budy

I can tell you you can safely get another card for physx if you want since you dont SLI for this matter.

Just be sure you have windows 7 (windows vista doent support multiple display adapters) and enjoy.

 

Nice one, that’s more straight forward than I expected then.

I guess my only remaining question is a 430 powerful enough to run max physx processing or would I be better off getting a different card?

 

For crossfire or sli to work do the cards have to be identical? If I have an ati 5450 and a 6870 can I run them together or do I have to throw the old one away? (noob)

 

For crossfire, there's some leeway, but you're generally restricted to similar cards eg a 5850+5870 would be fine (though the 5870 is reduced to 5850 performance), but it won't work across generations, or in a different sub-series (eg, 58x0/57x0). For SLI they need to be the same.
There'd probably not be much point in running a 5450 and a 6870 together even if you could, as the 6870 is so much more powerful. Having the two graphics cards could be handy for multiple monitors for light work, but past that there's not much point.

 

bit of a hijack, but are there any particular cards that are good for physx? My main card is a gainward GTX 460 GLH, and i have a spare PCI-e slot, but not sure what to put in it?

 

Old 8800 cards are very popular for that role.

 

I'm using an Ati 5870 with an old Nvidia 9800GT as the PhysX dedicated card, works great for any game that has it. Custom drivers naturally.

 

ive got an nvidia 9600GT 512mb Gainward Bliss Golden Sample kicking about. Will that be any good?

Or perhaps its worth trying to grab a 2nd hand GTX 275?

 

9600 will be perfect, especially considering that you already have it.

The 275 would be wasted.

 

GTX275 is way, way overpowered for that sort of thing. 9600GT will hit the spot.

 

Sweet, il give that a go then

Are there any other mobo requirements apart from having another PCI-e slot?

 

stick it in like a sausage and give it a go.. who cares your pulling another 150 watts idle for physx

 

Source? 150W for a 9600GT at idle sounds like utter troll speak.

 

hmm. I thought the 150w was more like peak than idle, though Extreme seem to think it's less...

 

oh I'm sorry 120.. my bad

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1293/page_19_power_consumption_tests/index19.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-9600-gt,1780-18.html

a quick google would have done it for ya.. that's my issue with physx.. there's no reason for it and why would you want to have a power consuming brick in your rig for something so worthless

remember they are old 65nm dies

 

Why you gotts to be anal

 

I was mainly doing it just to have a go, to and play around with it!. See what Physx was like for myself. I dont even need to buy the card......

Thats worth a go right? -

 

yeah it's worth it to a lot of people cause see it all the time.. I wish nvidia would sell a dedicated physx card that would shut itself off when not in use- that would sell big

yeah don't listen to me b.. I've been anti physx since the day it came out back when aegia created it.. the cell factor demo played physx on the cpu just fine- it's just gotten to be this big gimmick since nvidia took it over..

I like what they did in mafia 2 with it though.. not like that couldn't have been done on the cpu with havoc but whatever =]

 

150 is a 25% increase from 120, nothing to shake a stick at.

Having an accurate assesment of power draw is useful for someone making a serious decision about whether to get a dedicated card or not! Afterall, the OP has already stated an interest in PhysX, it might already be too late to convert him to the superior non-proprietary physics master race