2nd card still needed with 480 for Physx ?

[turdhat]

I got double in fluidmark with the 480 going from a 280 and 8800gt for dedicated physx however batman is slower with Physx and I did get the new dll for Batman and the 480. I am going to put the 8800gt back in when I get home and rebench with all physx based benches I can find let you guys know.

[CaptNKILL]

Originally Posted by turdhat

I got double in fluidmark with the 480 going from a 280 and 8800gt for dedicated physx however batman is slower with Physx and I did get the new dll for Batman and the 480. I am going to put the 8800gt back in when I get home and rebench with all physx based benches I can find let you guys know.

I'm very interested in seeing how Physx games perform with a 480 vs a 480+8800GT.

If you can, run Cryostasis or the Cryostasis demo.

[brunner]

Physx is always faster if you put it on a seperate card. Even with Quad-SLI, it's better to have a 5th card for Physx. For some reason, there's a huge performance impact when Physx isn't offloaded to a GPU that is just dedicated to it.

[CaptNKILL]

So what's the verdict turdhat?

I'm actually considering buying a GT240 on the cheap if I can, as a step toward upgrading my graphics. I can use it with Physx with whatever GPU I get and I'll be able to play the less intensive games right now.

[Viral]

I would assume that a dedicated physx card would help in any situation where a game isn't CPU limited.

[Bah!]

Originally Posted by brunner

Physx is always faster if you put it on a seperate card. Even with Quad-SLI, it's better to have a 5th card for Physx. For some reason, there's a huge performance impact when Physx isn't offloaded to a GPU that is just dedicated to it.

I saw a benchmark on Guru3d that showed virtually no difference between 480's in SLI and the same with a 280 for Physx:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3540436

And here is a single 480 with and without a 240 for Physics:

http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/7123...g-results.html

Finally a 470 with a 240:

http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/7116...ml#post9058698


I'd say a dedicated Physix card isn't needed with the 400 series, unless you just happen to have one laying around. I certainly wouldn't buy a card just for Physx.

[brunner]

I think the guy screwed up. Look at how much higher my results are with just one 5870 plus a 9800 GT for Physx. That run was taken at 1920x1200 w/max settings:

[CaptNKILL]

Originally Posted by brunner

I think the guy screwed up. Look at how much higher my results are with just one 5870 plus a 9800 GT for Physx. That run was taken at 1920x1200 w/max settings:

Hmm... yeah that's strange. Maybe he was running at 2560x1600 or was using more AA?

[brunner]

Or maybe the 240 is quite a bit slower for Physx than 9800GT? What's a 240 anyway? I'm not up to date with NV's lower end offerings.

Still, in my experiences GPU speed matters little when talking about dedicated Physx cards. All that matters is that you have one that is solely used for Physx.

That's why I'm surprised that a 480 + 240 can only manage:

[brunner]

Originally Posted by CaptNKILL

Hmm... yeah that's strange. Maybe he was running at 2560x1600 or was using more AA?

You can't select AA in that benchmark. It's possible he's running it at a higher res but I doubt the 480 will drop that much going up to the next higher resolution.

[Bah!]

Originally Posted by brunner

Or maybe the 240 is quite a bit slower for Physx than 9800GT? What's a 240 anyway? I'm not up to date with NV's lower end offerings.

Still, in my experiences GPU speed matters little when talking about dedicated Physx cards. All that matters is that you have one that is solely used for Physx.

That's why I'm surprised that a 480 + 240 can only manage:

Apparently a 240 is quite a bit slower than an 8800 GT, so that would make it quite a bit slower than the 9800gt as well.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-240,2475.html

[CaptNKILL]

The only thing that should matter for Physx is the shader clock and the number of SPs.

The 9800GT has 112 shaders clocked at around 1.5Ghz, the GT240 has 96 shaders clocked at around 1.34Ghz. They shouldn't be that far off since the 240 is also a much newer design.