Dedicated Physx card

[k0passus]

Hi all,

 

I have a question for anyone to answer. Given that most current games have integrated Physx into their engines, how much of a performance improvement do you think can one get nowadays by adding a dedicated Physx GPU to their system?

I know Linus has made a video about this around a year ago

)

 

However now that Kepler is out, can it take advantage of using Fermi as a dedicated Physx driver? Take my case for example. I am currently using a card that is not the top of the line, yet is not the worst in the stack either (GTX 660 - non TI). I get playable framerates on most games I play, however I do notice that on most games that have Physx, when it is turned on my GPU seems to suffer in performance quite a bit. I have a GTX 550 TI available that's just collecting dust, and I am wonder whether or not it would be worth using it as a dedicated Physx card? I think that my case is rather interesting, since it's not a GTX 670 or any other card equal or better I predict I may actually get about a 10-15% increase in performance on most Physx heavy games. My other question to this is will this affect games that have their own physics engine (i.e. non-Physx engines, such as that used in Frostbite 2.0 or Cryengine 3)? Can anyone weigh in on this? Please give an explanation to your reasoning, it hardly helps just saying 'yes it will' or 'no it won't.' 

 

Thanks for reading and replying!!  ;)

 

PS: I guess to clarify what I mean when I say "Physx heavy games;" I mean Hawken, PS2, Borderlands 2, Metro 2033, Batman AC, etc.

[MzCatieB]

its better to just get a higher end card, the way PhysX works is by doing the calculations on about 10% of the CUDA cores then the remaining 90% of the cores are used for the graphics.

the CPU doesn't ever do anything for the PhysX (the calculations are far to complicated for it)

the best way to think about the PhysX performance is the more CUDA cores the card has the better it will perform overall

[rodrigorodrigues]

Which PhysX ready games do you play? I think the dedicated PhysX card wouldn't add that much performance, if it does at all. (Linus' video shows it didin't on Mafia, for exemple.) You're better off selling them both and getting a higher end card, if you can.

[dgtL]

I ran physx for 3 years with a 470 and a 250 and never really saw much of a difference. but i was thinking of adding the 470 to my 680 setup. when i do ill report back my findings.