Help me choose dedicated physics card

R

RombieFitch

New Member
I am on my next project once again and need advise as to which card should i buy to be only dedicated to physics. Here is my build:

Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield (Stock speed for now)
Corsair H70 cpu cooler
ASUS Rampage III Formula Motherboard
CORSAIR DOMINATOR GT 6GB DDR3 2000 CMT6GX3M3A2000C8
Antec Lanboy Blue Case
1x Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1 128GB
2x Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 3.5
2x EVGA SuperClocked GeForce GTX 570
KINGWIN LZG-1000 GOLD 1000W
ASUS VE278Q Black 27" Monitor

So which card should i get and do you think it would interfer with power?
 
Get a better quality PSU, like this excellent unit. As for a dedicated PhysX card, it doesn't require much bandwidth so you should be fine for PCIe lanes, I'd go for a GTS250 or GT240
 
fastdude said:
Get a better quality PSU, like this excellent unit.
Click to expand...

Why spent the money for another power supply. The KINGWIN LZG-1000 GOLD is not that bad of a supply. Superflower setup. Would not probably suggest it from the begining. But no reason to go out and buy another one if he already owns it.
 
Last edited:
what is your budget?
since you have two 570 is sli, will having another card for phsx really make that much of a difference?
 
A gts450 is almost perfect for a PhysX card-

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125342

only requires one 6 pin connector and runs very cool. Should be able to crank it to atleast 900 core clock for 1800 shaders (the higher the shader clock the better for PhysX). The only thing that could be better is if it was a single slot card, but eh oh well.

Don't bother with cards like gt240 or 8800gt etc, the gts450 whips them for PhysX and is not that much more $
 
innercx said:
what is your budget?
since you have two 570 is sli, will having another card for phsx really make that much of a difference?
Click to expand...

Good call...adding another card to that SLI setup will do almost nothing for performance. It could actually decrease performance.
 
You're not ''adding'' a card to that setup....you are setting up a secondary card to handle all PhysX operations, it's completely seperate from the SLI setup then.
 
I would be very very suprised if that extra physx card will do anything for performance whatsoever. Complete overkill.
 
Of the games that have physx enabled, you get little return,

You are better off selling your current CPU, upgrading to a 970 or 980X, overclock, and you will get much more for the money. Remember, it is not strictly a PPU (physics processing unit), but close. The CPU does this job by far the best. Using Readyboost, instead of RAM would be a similar analogy - it makes a difference when you have little RAM, but if you have plenty (in this case CPU power), you diminish performance by enabling it.

Get a better CPU, btw your CPU is freaking awesome, but the upgrade has a bigger cache of 12Mb and a smaller architecture of 32nm which means less heat. It should also be compatible with your board, but check.

If you can afford it without a problem, well go for it either way!
 
Last edited:
To the OP, did you ever end up going with the dedicated physX card?

I'm building a rig with SLI'd EVGA 570s as well and was considering a dedicated physX card
 
http://www.geforce.com/#/Hardware/Technologies/PhysX/faq

Will running PhysX on a GPU slow down gaming performance?

Running physics on the GPU is typically significantly faster than running physics on the CPU, so overall game performance is improved and frame rates can be much faster. However, adding physics can also impact performance in much the same way that anti-aliasing impacts performance. Gamers always enable AA modes if they can because AA makes the game look better. Gamers will similarly enable physics on their GPUs so long as frame rates remain playable. With AA enabled, running physics on a GPU will generally be much faster than running physics on a CPU when AA is enabled. PhysX running on a dedicated GPU allows offloading the PhysX processing from the GPU used for standard graphics rendering, resulting in an optimal usage of processing capabilities in a system.

Intel and AMD say it’s better to run physics on the CPU. What is NVIDIA’s position?

PhysX runs faster and will deliver more realism by running on the GPU. Running PhysX on a mid-to-high-end GeForce GPU will enable 10-20 times more effects and visual fidelity than physics running on a high-end CPU. Portions of PhysX processing actually run on both the CPU and GPU, leveraging the best of both architectures to deliver the best experience to the user. More importantly, PhysX can scale with the GPU hardware inside your PC. Intel and AMD solutions, which utilize the Havok API, are fixed function only and cannot scale.
Click to expand...
 
There's very few games that use PhysX. So first off, are you even going to play a game that requires it?

If you are, I would consider getting a gts450, it's the perfect PhysX card. If not, just forget it as SLI'd 570's will play any game at any resolution with pretty much any settings. Hell, even a single 570 can pretty much do that so even if the second GPU in the SLI configuration is handling the PhysX you'll still have plenty of GPU power because PhysX does not demand a whole lot of GPU usage from a 570.
 
Yes of course, but the point here is if two 570's are in SLI. If you really need 570 SLI to get good frame rates (2560x1600 resolution with high settings) than you may actually need a dedicated PhysX card to offload some of the duties of the one GPU IF you play games that even use PhysX.
 
87dtna said:
Yes of course, but the point here is if two 570's are in SLI. If you really need 570 SLI to get good frame rates (2560x1600 resolution with high settings) than you may actually need a dedicated PhysX card to offload some of the duties of the one GPU IF you play games that even use PhysX.
Click to expand...

the reason i ask, is because if you run SLI, the default physX duties are handled by the CPU, not the GPUs...
 
Yeah default, but you can set it to one of the GPU's even when in SLI....I think so anyway, fairly sure thats accurate though. Been awhile since I've SLI'd. PhysX will always be handled by only 1 of the GPU's though.
 
87dtna said:
Yeah default, but you can set it to one of the GPU's even when in SLI....I think so anyway, fairly sure thats accurate though. Been awhile since I've SLI'd. PhysX will always be handled by only 1 of the GPU's though.
Click to expand...

yes, i understand that physX will always only be handled by one GPU or the CPU... just trying to decide if it makes sense to go with a dedicated non-SLI GPU for physX.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top