Anyone using a dedicated PhysX Card?

[Thunder_Ruler0]

Just curious if people actually use a dedicated PhysX card like me. or just use a 2nd card for general reasons.

[Himommies]

I used to have a 670

[Thunder_Ruler0]

Just now, Himommies said:

I used to have a 670

as a dedicated card?

[Himommies]

I think so but that was a very long time ago

[Teddy07]

doesnt make sense. Just watch some youtube test videos.

 

 

[AdamH96]

I use one, doesn't does much for me though as a PhysX card.

[Daveeede]

Does it make any difference at all for you? I have a gtx 750 lying around that I am tempted to use for physx. Scared it'll do more harm than good.

[Daveeede]

Reason I ask is because I play a lot of borderlands which uses and gets rekt by physx.

[Himommies]

Just now, Daveeede said:

Does it make any difference at all for you? I have a gtx 750 lying around that I am tempted to use for physx. Scared it'll do more harm than good.

Well the lsit of games that support phys X are pretty low

[Cereal5]

5 minutes ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

Just curious if people actually use a dedicated PhysX card like me. 

I used my 970 as a PhysX card with my 1080 for a while but I found that it just made the 1080 a little too hot so I took it out. Didn't notice a frame difference anyways

[Thunder_Ruler0]

1 minute ago, Daveeede said:

Does it make any difference at all for you? I have a gtx 750 lying around that I am tempted to use for physx. Scared it'll do more harm than good.

it does for me. up to 20-30 frames. but it all depnds on what game you are playing, and if it uses physX

[Daveeede]

Just now, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

it does for me. up to 20-30 frames. but it all depnds on what game you are playing, and if it uses physX

Borderlands 2?

[Zyndo]

9 minutes ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

Just curious if people actually use a dedicated PhysX card like me. 

LTT just did a video on this a few weeks ago.

 

 

This is why most people don't bother with PhysX cards.

[Thunder_Ruler0]

1 minute ago, Daveeede said:

Borderlands 2?

Does it have the option? Also I was referring to Metro 2033 for me. I dont see a reason why you wouldnt pop in another GPU if you have space, and another one laying around doing nothing. You can use it for rendering (like me), more ports (also like me), and physX. Just for the cost of a few more watts depending on the card. 

[Daveeede]

1 minute ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

Does it have the option? Also I was referring to Metro 2033 for me. I dont see a reason why you wouldnt pop in another GPU if you have space, and another one laying around doing nothing. You can use it for rendering (like me), more ports (also like me), and physX. Just for the cost of a few more watts depending on the card. 

Yea it has the option. I don't think it will make much of a difference though. My GTX 1070 is rarely working above 50% load yet my frames drop below 60 all the time. I might try it one day if I have nothing better to do.

[Thunder_Ruler0]

39 minutes ago, Daveeede said:

Yea it has the option. I don't think it will make much of a difference though. My GTX 1070 is rarely working above 50% load yet my frames drop below 60 all the time. I might try it one day if I have nothing better to do.

Ah, I see. I think this is mostly due to the game, or some bottleneck inside your system. I have a similar issue with Gmod where my GPU is locked at %10 and I get anywhere around 40-80 FPS though I have no idea as to what may be causing this. There are people with 200-400 FPS with the the same configuration. So I don't know as to what may be causing this.

[System Error Message]

when i make my first game, it will not have physx, it will use openCL physics engine, so dont count on physx.

 

I've used dedicated physx in the past and in various odd ways and i can tell you that while it is nice it makes it unfair because you have to look at the various platforms out there. All 3 GPU brands (intel IGP, nvidia, AMD) all support openCL and many systems having IGP + dedicated means you can make use of the IGP for running some code.

 

You also have to look at other platforms. Consoles now all use AMD, dont think physx matters there. the PS3 even though it had nvidia GPU used its own cell CPUs to calculate physics and 3D and even the ps3 can run openCL. Tablets, phones, ultra portables, nvidia isnt the leader here, most of the market is filled with various implementations but what they all have in common is that many of them can run openCL as the powerVR GPU and even qualcomm's own snapdragons can run it but usually with games they will be bogged down with graphics work without any free resources for physics.

 

So what physx gives is very narrow to what a custom openCL based physics engine could support even if the performance may be lower.

 

I've tried having a card dedicated to physx before but i dont anymore. At first i used an eGPU with my laptop, the GTX 580 doing graphics while my laptop's onboard quadro doing physx and the performance was bad due to the PCIe x1 slot. Batman arkham asylum was a well optimised game that i would get above 40fps on a core2 laptop using the GTX 580 for physx. And than i had a GTX 285 in a desktop doing physx with AMD graphics using some sort of hack. Didnt play many physx games though but the GTX 285 did quite well in fluidmark with AMD doing the rendering.

 

Currently havok is much more widely used than physx as not only does havok take advantage of the SSE instruction sets but is also used on consoles too and isnt limited to hardware from on manufacturer. Less games use physx because not only is it restricted to nvidia cards but it will only let you use it if you also use nvidia for rendering. it is also still unoptimised on x86 so it doesnt make it makes it expensive to adopt as your console and PC game versions will be very different and expensive to create and maintain.

 

For running physx on the same GPU the GPU architecture needs to be compute focused (Fermi, pascal, not kepler) supporting better context swapping (stuff like good branching performance, etc) things that CPUs are good at. For running physx on dedicated GPU this does not matter. You should have a good amount of PCIe lanes ( SLI bridge is unfortunately not used for physx) and system ram bandwidth as with physx on dedicated GPU the GPU does not directly swap data from one GPU to another (all GPUs are capable of this but nvidia only allows this feature on their tesla line). This means that physx data has to be taken from the 2nd GPU, put into ram and transferred to the main GPU.

 

So many limitations with physx that it just doesnt take advantage of what there is available in hardware.

[Thunder_Ruler0]

7 hours ago, Daveeede said:

Yea it has the option. I don't think it will make much of a difference though. My GTX 1070 is rarely working above 50% load yet my frames drop below 60 all the time. I might try it one day if I have nothing better to do.

 

6 hours ago, System Error Message said:

when i make my first game, it will not have physx, it will use openCL physics engine, so dont count on physx.

 

I've used dedicated physx in the past and in various odd ways and i can tell you that while it is nice it makes it unfair because you have to look at the various platforms out there. All 3 GPU brands (intel IGP, nvidia, AMD) all support openCL and many systems having IGP + dedicated means you can make use of the IGP for running some code.

 

You also have to look at other platforms. Consoles now all use AMD, dont think physx matters there. the PS3 even though it had nvidia GPU used its own cell CPUs to calculate physics and 3D and even the ps3 can run openCL. Tablets, phones, ultra portables, nvidia isnt the leader here, most of the market is filled with various implementations but what they all have in common is that many of them can run openCL as the powerVR GPU and even qualcomm's own snapdragons can run it but usually with games they will be bogged down with graphics work without any free resources for physics.

 

So what physx gives is very narrow to what a custom openCL based physics engine could support even if the performance may be lower.

 

I've tried having a card dedicated to physx before but i dont anymore. At first i used an eGPU with my laptop, the GTX 580 doing graphics while my laptop's onboard quadro doing physx and the performance was bad due to the PCIe x1 slot. Batman arkham asylum was a well optimised game that i would get above 40fps on a core2 laptop using the GTX 580 for physx. And than i had a GTX 285 in a desktop doing physx with AMD graphics using some sort of hack. Didnt play many physx games though but the GTX 285 did quite well in fluidmark with AMD doing the rendering.

 

Currently havok is much more widely used than physx as not only does havok take advantage of the SSE instruction sets but is also used on consoles too and isnt limited to hardware from on manufacturer. Less games use physx because not only is it restricted to nvidia cards but it will only let you use it if you also use nvidia for rendering. it is also still unoptimised on x86 so it doesnt make it makes it expensive to adopt as your console and PC game versions will be very different and expensive to create and maintain.

 

For running physx on the same GPU the GPU architecture needs to be compute focused (Fermi, pascal, not kepler) supporting better context swapping (stuff like good branching performance, etc) things that CPUs are good at. For running physx on dedicated GPU this does not matter. You should have a good amount of PCIe lanes ( SLI bridge is unfortunately not used for physx) and system ram bandwidth as with physx on dedicated GPU the GPU does not directly swap data from one GPU to another (all GPUs are capable of this but nvidia only allows this feature on their tesla line). This means that physx data has to be taken from the 2nd GPU, put into ram and transferred to the main GPU.

 

So many limitations with physx that it just doesnt take advantage of what there is available in hardware.

I can say the same. Although PhysX is something that can easily be replaced with other languages and such. The whole point of the post was to see how many people actually use a dedicated card. And don't think that I am bashing down on you for not just giving a simple answer, you have plenty of points that i see why many people can agree with. The only reason I ask is because besides the advantage of using another GPU for extra ports, rendering power, etc. If you were on an older system running a 570 per say. If you played a game like metro 2033, and turned on the PhysX settings, it would (in some places) consume a whopping %20-30 of the GPU. Sure, its not necessary to play the game, and its mostly just for fancy affects, and other things. Simply having another GPU (supposedly Nvidia of course) you can pop it in an increase your FPS in certain games using your old GPU and giving it a new task. 

 

   So, I guess the point is that if you want those extra frames then you could always pop in another card for PhysX in games that support it. Though limited, and not many games use it now these days. Its still nice to have an option to dedicate some things to another GPU to help take some stress off the main GPU, unless your doing SLI of course. 

 

    And one last thing. I guess one of the main reasons as to why consoles use AMD instead of Nvidia, is more of the level of it generally being cheaper and sometimes better to Nvidia card equivalents. But, based on what I believe. I think Nvidia has more of the software down then AMD, but that could just my opinion. 

[Mick Naughty]

I tried it, doesn't do a thing for the games I play. 0% usage out of the other card all the time.

[pas008]

Been using one for years but mainly for more monitors

 

Run 3x144hz 1080p surround with 2 accessory displays above them from 3rd physix card

Pretty Much monitoring monitors 

Temps logs chat utilities articles while gaming on other 3

[Thunder_Ruler0]

12 hours ago, Mick Naughty said:

I tried it, doesn't do a thing for the games I play. 0% usage out of the other card all the time.

Well, not all games have PhysX. And if they did, you would need to enable it. 

[Mick Naughty]

11 minutes ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

Well, not all games have PhysX. And if they did, you would need to enable it. 

Thus why it was pointless. 

[Thunder_Ruler0]

1 minute ago, Mick Naughty said:

Thus why it was pointless. 

All a matter of opinion, and what you plan on using the second GPU for. I explained it on one of the comments above. 

[Mick Naughty]

6 minutes ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

All a matter of opinion, and what you plan on using the second GPU for. I explained it on one of the comments above. 

It isn't an opinion if I have a second card dedicated to physx and none of the games I play support it, it is in fact useles. 

[Thunder_Ruler0]

1 hour ago, Mick Naughty said:

It isn't an opinion if I have a second card dedicated to physx and none of the games I play support it, it is in fact useles. 

I'm saying the fact if having another card in your system is useless. Please read again.