Dedicated PhysX card? Questions

[Cocoabytes]

For my new build I'm looking at either a GTX 670 or 7970. Price for performance I really like the 7970, but I also really like physX especially on Borderlands 2. Is there anyway to use a dedicated PhysX card with the 7970? Any suggestions would be welcomed either way. Thanks

[Mentalguy]

yes, it is possible. Its called hybrid physx. its a PITA though.

[hiyayhi]

It is possible if you want a GIGANTIC hassle for your pc to work every time a driver is released.

[striker1553]

It's actually not that hard to set up. But, does it affect driver performance? Yes. Is it hard sometimes, I'd say no. Either it works or it doesn't. I did it for a while and it worked well. But, I quit because it wasn't worth the extra noise. If you want PhysX, buy an Nvidia card. You can set up a dedicated physx card on the nvidia control panel. Get a 9800gt, or gtx295 or so, and set it up.

[Cocoabytes]

Thanks. Maybe I'll just stick with the 7970. If I decide to go with an nvidia chip maybe a 660ti with dedicated physx, or just a 670. I don't like messy driver issues.

[ShiverMePenguins]

Thanks. Maybe I'll just stick with the 7970. If I decide to go with an nvidia chip maybe a 660ti with dedicated physx' date=' or just a 670. I don't like messy driver issues.[/quote']

if you're looking to shell out money for a 660ti AND a 7970 it would just be better if you got a good 680 and run with physx that way.

you can also enable physx in the ini's of your game files.

[GamerDude]

Thanks. Maybe I'll just stick with the 7970. If I decide to go with an nvidia chip maybe a 660ti with dedicated physx' date=' or just a 670. I don't like messy driver issues.[/quote']

if you're looking to shell out money for a 660ti AND a 7970 it would just be better if you got a good 680 and run with physx that way.

you can also enable physx in the ini's of your game files.

I don't think OP meant both, it's either the HD7970, or the NV GTX660 Ti......which is weaker than the HD7970, but comes with PhysX if that's important. I've never really bothered with PhysX although I have an SLi'ed GTX670 system which is more than capable of it. With or without GPU accelerated PhysX, it makes no difference to me.......it's not like S3D or EyeFinity surround gaming where you'd really see a difference.

I did mess with hybrid PhysX a while back, with a HD3870 X2 + 9600GT IIRC (but moved on to a GTX560 Ti + GTX460 768MB for dedicated PhysX), the hybrid PhysX rig took some effort to get PhysX to run right, though I've always felt performance was not up to my expectation. Perhaps it was the HD3870 X2 which was showing its age by then. Go either HD7970 and forget PhysX, or the GTX660 Ti (at the very least) if PhysX means that much to you.

[tacticalpanic]

I'd just buy the 670 if you like physX. outside of benchmarks i doubt you'd even nottice the diffrence between a 670 and 7970 and in pretty much all games both cards are going to excel in.

[Cocoabytes]

Thanks. Maybe I'll just stick with the 7970. If I decide to go with an nvidia chip maybe a 660ti with dedicated physx' date=' or just a 670. I don't like messy driver issues.[/quote']

if you're looking to shell out money for a 660ti AND a 7970 it would just be better if you got a good 680 and run with physx that way.

you can also enable physx in the ini's of your game files.

Nope just meant one or the other. The idea was a 7970 or a 670, but a dedicated psyX + 66ti also crossed my mind. Honestly, I don't like making things overly complicated with multiple cards. The first time I ran SLI was with two NV 6800 GT's quite a while back, and that had lots of problems with proper scaling etc. While a dedicated physX card isn't the same as running SLI or crossfire, I imagine it problem has some sort of issue. The 680 also crossed my mind, but this llate in the card cycle I'd rather not shell out that much. Still have a while to think on it, have been pushing this back a couple times but I wanted to see if haswell would be worth it (I don't think so).

[Maverik5124]

The 7970 is the better card. So that is what I would get. Physx is pretty sweet but after all it's really just eye candy.

I have tried hybrid physx with my hd6790 and my 9800gt but even though I used the working older drivers and the mod I could not get it to work :/ Then when I removed the 9800gt I would not get a video signal anymore but my pc was booting up fine. Thanks to the windows restore points I did not have to reinstall my os :D

[TechFan@ic]

The future of PhysX is on the CPU. That's clear now with Nvidia supporting PhysX on consoles which are all packing AMD hardware.

I personally value performance over PhysX and my personal rationale is that performance affects every single game, PhysX only affects a game or two a year, is it worth it to sacrifice that performance for a game or two every year ? I'd say no, but that's just my personal opinion.

Now this might actually be surprising and shocking to a lot of people, but ! PhysX on Borderlands 2 actually runs just as fast or faster on a CPU + 7970 compared to a 680.

Which solidifies my position that the future of PhysX is on the CPU even more.

http://www.techspot.com/review/577-borderlands-2-performance/page5.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/577-borderlands-2-performance/page5.html

[Cocoabytes]

The future of PhysX is on the CPU. That's clear now with Nvidia supporting PhysX on consoles which are all packing AMD hardware. I personally value performance over PhysX and my personal rationale is that performance affects every single game' date=' PhysX only affects a game or two a year, is it worth it to sacrifice that performance for a game or two every year ? I'd say no, but that's just my personal opinion. Now this might actually be surprising and shocking to a lot of people, but ! PhysX on Borderlands 2 actually runs just as fast or faster on a CPU + 7970 compared to a 680. Which solidifies my position that the future of PhysX is on the CPU even more. [img']http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/577/bench/PhysX.png http://www.techspot.com/review/577-borderlands-2-performance/page5.html http://www.techspot.com/review/577-borderlands-2-performance/page5.html

Wow thanks, really good info! For sure then I will just go for the 7970. Makes me wonder how haswell will compare, but honestly it looks like a 3770K OC'd will be just fine.

[mvitkun]

The future of PhysX is on the CPU. That's clear now with Nvidia supporting PhysX on consoles which are all packing AMD hardware.

I personally value performance over PhysX and my personal rationale is that performance affects every single game, PhysX only affects a game or two a year, is it worth it to sacrifice that performance for a game or two every year ? I'd say no, but that's just my personal opinion.

Now this might actually be surprising and shocking to a lot of people, but ! PhysX on Borderlands 2 actually runs just as fast or faster on a CPU + 7970 compared to a 680.

Which solidifies my position that the future of PhysX is on the CPU even more.

http://www.techspot.com/review/577-borderlands-2-performance/page5.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/577-borderlands-2-performance/page5.html

only in weak PhysX titles does the difference become so little,and even so had they used a normal processor,like a 3770K or a 3570K,I bet thered have been a much larger difference.

ones that use a lot of PhysX run much smoother on Nvidia cards than on cpu.

I'd say something like alice: madness returns would run much worse when PhysX is offloaded to the cpu on a 3770K

[striker1553]

The Hybrid PhysX has been updated at this thread. Check post number 1 : be sure to read most of it, but basically you need to have the latest Nvidia driver installed AFTER the AMD driver for your main card. Also, be sure to install the latest PhysX. If it doesn't work, a quick uninstall of the drivers and reverting to a known version of PhysX will most-likely fix the problem.

From NGOHQ: NOT MY STEPS, USE AT OWN RISK

To Summarize the Steps:

1. Run PreHybrd.exe once forever to install legacy files (old-game support)

2. Install newest Drivers(they include PhysX) Warning:If you just ran PreHybrd and it says "newer or same already installed" then you will need to find the extracted PhysX.msi and "repair"

3. Any time you do #2 run Hybridiz.exe(or crash PC!) by right-clicking on it and choosing the menu-option "Run As Administrator" Just Clicking on it won't work, even if it says it did --WinStarter/Home doesn't notify anyway.Return here for its twice a year updates downloaded at the very bottom.

4. Delete the Game's NxCooking*/cuda*/Physx* .DLL files EXCEPT PhysXExtensions.dll (and except PhysXCore.dll in FluidMark1.3.1) If you want BatmanArkhamCity/AliceMadnessReturns/Mars/3DmarkVantage/CUDAtranscoders(may need ext.desktop)/nVidemos you will need their extra file(s), see below/footnotes.

5. Anytime you upgrade nVidia drivers you need to run Hybridiz again. If ForceWare-Installer says PhysX result is "Installed": it was upgraded, so then you must rerun the Batman2 or AliceMar "PhysiCor" if you play those games.

Overly Verbose Explanations:

1. First! Download below and Run PreHybrd.exe to prepare your system. It installs PhysXv2.729 and cleans up and replaces old files. It will clear legacy files so within the GeForce driver the PhysX.msi(folder) will install the latest. (If you run it again later accidentally you will have to install PhysX.msi and run Hybridiz.exe again!) This step was added since PhysXv9.12.0807 stopped containing most DLLs for under v2.7.3 support. You should never need to run it again, and it will never be updated beyond this original 2.7.2.9 version number.

You can then use Fluidmark to check if PhysX is working. You should see both cards running in sync as if sli'd/crossfired. And the dedicated PhysX card should take over and make it happen. If you have trouble with fluidmark, remember the steps listed above. also, if it still doesn't work in Fluidmark, downgrade a version or two, delete quoted physx files from above and try again. No shame in double-checking. I had to a few times with my old rig (Radeon 6950 and 9800gt) just to be sure it worked. When it did, i followed the steps to enable graphics accelerated physx in Borderlands 2 and it worked quite well!

[TechFan@ic]

The future of PhysX is on the CPU. That's clear now with Nvidia supporting PhysX on consoles which are all packing AMD hardware.

I personally value performance over PhysX and my personal rationale is that performance affects every single game, PhysX only affects a game or two a year, is it worth it to sacrifice that performance for a game or two every year ? I'd say no, but that's just my personal opinion.

Now this might actually be surprising and shocking to a lot of people, but ! PhysX on Borderlands 2 actually runs just as fast or faster on a CPU + 7970 compared to a 680.

Which solidifies my position that the future of PhysX is on the CPU even more.

http://www.techspot.com/review/577-borderlands-2-performance/page5.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/577-borderlands-2-performance/page5.html

He mentioned Borderlands 2 specifically, and that's why I posted this.

[GamerDude]

PhysX is rather meh in my opinion, it adds some enhanced visuals/effects but it's something I can easily do without. That chart/link by Techfan@tic is an eye opener, I didn't know a CPU can handle PhysX that well. That's why, when I play my fave UT3 on my SLi'ed rig, I don't bother to enable Hardware PhysX since it adds so little to the game.