Decided to test out dedicated GPU PhysX.

[Recon-UK]

So i could have left my old 580 to eat dust... or actually try it as a dedicated PhysX GPU...
So i tested Batman Arkham Origins and was massively surprised by the result... look below.. everything completely turned up with max AA.

GTX 670 single, no dedicated PPU.

And GTX 670+580... absolutely gigantic FPS increase LOL almost 2x :O

Does anyone here have any idea on much the 580 GPU is used only for PhysX acceleration? only reason i ask is that the 580 is not very efficient and am thinking about long term.

 

[Ferrum Master]

I am using 750Ti for such rare things. I just played Alice Madness Returns few days ago... well... it worked better than CPU only for sure.

Metro was the other one where I used the card. It does up minimum FPS using dedicated card, while my primary maxes out doing the frames. Metro is very demanding(poorly optimized).

But those are rare exceptions.

 

[ZoneDymo]

well first of all 50 vs 70 is not almost 2x but the differences are remarkable.
I can only imagine either the physics in Batman are ridiculous...sorta like the Witcher 3 with tessellation or the GTX670 is not that good at them.
Or perhaps both.

But ermm, dont you set it up so that that GTX580 is only used for PhysX?
I mean you cannot sli the two so it must only be filling that function.

Could try some other demanding games and see if the GTX580 matters at all there (my money is on no) and how much of a joke PhysX is, I personally dont see how its worth having it running in your system.
A handful of games use it and only for minor graphical quirks so yeah, not worth it.

I am using 750Ti for such rare things. I just played Alice Madness Returns few days ago... well... it worked better than CPU only for sure.

Metro was the other one where I used the card. It does up minimum FPS using dedicated card, while my primary maxes out doing the frames. Metro is very demanding(poorly optimized).

But those are rare exceptions.

CPU only? would in your case the GTX980Ti not simply do the the PhysX?

 

[Recon-UK]

I am using 750Ti for such rare things. I just played Alice Madness Returns few days ago... well... it worked better than CPU only for sure.

Metro was the other one where I used the card. It does up minimum FPS using dedicated card, while my primary maxes out doing the frames. Metro is very demanding(poorly optimized).

But those are rare exceptions.

I would really like to keep using it as i have a number of games i could enjoy all over again making use of the maximum PhysX setting, Borderlands 2 for instance... even better that it's an awesome game too

well first of all 50 vs 70 is not almost 2x but the differences are remarkable.
I can only imagine either the physics in Batman are ridiculous...sorta like the Witcher 3 with tessellation or the GTX670 is not that good at them.
Or perhaps both.

But ermm, dont you set it up so that that GTX580 is only used for PhysX?
I mean you cannot sli the two so it must only be filling that function.

Could try some other demanding games and see if the GTX580 matters at all there (my money is on no) and how much of a joke PhysX is, I personally dont see how its worth having it running in your system.
A handful of games use it and only for minor graphical quirks so yeah, not worth it.

I was looking at minimums, that's what matters to me

Thanks for the input.

 

[jboydgolfer]

@Recon-UK
nice results. it'll cost a chunk in electricity to run that sucker 24/7 tho....but still fun to try it out.
i remember back when "dedicated" physx, or Ageia was first surfacing on the web, iirc, I had a 210, or an 8800 that i used , and sure enough, i got some bumps in perf, but the fans were too loud, and i decided it was just easier to disable it , makes the games that DO implement it look great , huh?

do you still have to use cracked drivers, etc when using AMD , and Nvidia? im guessing so, but its been several years

 

[rtwjunkie]

I am using 750Ti for such rare things. I just played Alice Madness Returns few days ago... well... it worked better than CPU only for sure.

Metro was the other one where I used the card. It does up minimum FPS using dedicated card, while my primary maxes out doing the frames. Metro is very demanding(poorly optimized).

But those are rare exceptions.

So the 750Ti is a very good low power choice for Phys-X?

 

[Recon-UK]

Decided to remove it after i stressed out the 670 with the 580 under heavy load lol... 86c on the 670 and 50c on the 580, my board can't run the 580 in the botom slot as it has a triple slot cooler which means it hit's the DVD drives (Raven RV02-BW build) So the only way to run it was sandwiched.... hence the high temps, i'm kinda gutted though that was a sick increase.

 

[Toothless]

I used a 660 as the main and a 650 as physx, got a good 20% boost in games that supported it.

 

[PHaS3]

I last tried this with my old 680 and a 570 for PhysX. The 570 actually made the scores worse. It was Batman something, cant remember which lol.

 

[Ferrum Master]

So the 750Ti is a very good low power choice for Phys-X?

I just aimed for most powerful card without need the 6pin connector, took the small MSI one... and did a mod a bit... made it single slot, saw, few more holes... and a cooler from Geforce 6600 fits on... I needed a spare card for testing out anyway... so why the heck not? If the main card is really on 100% busy doing frames, offloading physx tasks make sense. The Metro benchmarks showed most bizzare stuff... doing physx on main card causes massive FPS spikes. Dedicated card - min FPS went up from 12 to 18. So there is improvement even using my 980Ti.

 

[rtwjunkie]

@Ferrum Master thanks! Not having tested it, I guess I always felt that for those games using it, that a higher end card could handle it easily enough.

I guess I will look for one while I can still find them cheaply.

 

[the54thvoid]

Is Physx even relevant anymore?

It's used in less games than DX12.....

...and I am an Nvidia owner so not trolling, just surprised it's not dead yet.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Is Physx even relevant anymore?

It's used in less games than DX12.....

...and I am an Nvidia owner so not trolling, just surprised it's not dead yet.

Not alot, but enough that a cheap card can make it better: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_hardware-accelerated_PhysX_support

EDIT: I know I would like to try out Mirror's edge again with a dedicated card, because I had to turn off Phys-X with the single GPU doing glass shattering. It became like a slide show!

DOUBLE EDIT: I see they left The Witcher 3 off the list.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Witcher 3 uses only CPU physx. Albeit using igni was calculated on GPU, but after few patches they took it out.

I played mirrors edge using dedicated card too. No problems, didn't do benchmarks but I could trigger 10% usage on the 750Ti. Try using DSR too.

Physx still present in few places. Dedicated card is not a must, but if you have one, just experiment yourself.

 

[GhostRyder]

So i could have left my old 580 to eat dust... or actually try it as a dedicated PhysX GPU...
So i tested Batman Arkham Origins and was massively surprised by the result... look below.. everything completely turned up with max AA.

GTX 670 single, no dedicated PPU.

And GTX 670+580... absolutely gigantic FPS increase LOL almost 2x :O

Does anyone here have any idea on much the 580 GPU is used only for PhysX acceleration? only reason i ask is that the 580 is not very efficient and am thinking about long term.

I did a similar thing awhile back and when the cards could not do both very easily is when you get a big performance increase. I actually for the longest time did the hacked (Well special driver that was modified) PhysX when I switched from my GTX 580's to dual HD 6990's using my GTX 460SE as the PhysX card in that setup which gave great FPS jumps with PhysX enabled in games that heavily used it (Heck it even helped with the dual GTX 580's).

Problem is newer cards are starting to have less and less trouble running PhysX because of their power and games are starting to use it less and less (Or even not at all). When you mix the two together it starts showing to be an unnecessary thing. Batman and Metro are actually one of the last few games that really heavily utilizes it that I can think of (There are other like Borderlands and Fallout 4 but they use it to a lesser extent) which is why its becoming less of a thing.

If you really want to do it, your best bet is just getting a new video card as that will make an even bigger difference. Otherwise if you just want a PhysX card that's small and light on power, get a 750ti low profile.

 

[xixou]

 

[EarthDog]

One has to wonder if that massive increase in power consumption is worth teh few PhysX effects that are put up on the screen. If it was me, I would sell them both and grab a 1070/1080 and let a single card do the job.

Thanks for the additional testing!

 

[Ferrum Master]

One has to wonder if that massive increase in power consumption is worth teh few PhysX effects that are put up on the screen. If it was me, I would sell them both and grab a 1070/1080 and let a single card do the job.

Thanks for the additional testing!

Did you actually see the test, that he uses 1070 as a main card?

 

[EarthDog]

I was responding to the first post... Didn't he use a 670 and a 580?

As far as the video (I just watched) ...nice improvements with a decent card!! Is it really worth it? If you play a lot of PhysX titles, I suppose it is. Average FPS on a single 1070 was plenty playable over 60 FPS... most don't have a 2560x1440 and/or 120Hz monitor. Also, until things change, you can't SLI the 1060, correct?

I see the first batman, then the broken one... and some B title... ? I would like to see that on other, more popular games that use PhysX! Very well done!

 

[Ferrum Master]

I was responding to the first post... Didn't he use a 670 and a 580?

As far as the video (I just watched) ...nice improvements with a decent card!! Is it really worth it? If you play a lot of PhysX titles

I use a 750Ti with my 980Ti actually.

There are funny observations. It is smoother, but I believe just because the main card isn't bothered with random data, thus it works for the main task without interrupts accepting different data task. Metro showed that the best, the minimum FPS rises a lot, at least for my setup.

Funny thing in the video... why the Pascal card uses a bit more vram?

But, yeah... physx is a plague actually, it all should be CPU controlled, like we really lack free cores...

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

I gave up at win 8.1, I did bash an sli and hybrid setup for metro and the Batman games but it wasn't worth the power usage or expediture given the lack of gpu physx and also the fact nvidia has incrementally greatly improved cuda and physx ,but have dropped support for old cards each time they update the version number.
Definitely worth doing while you are playing physx games though.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

Back when I still played Armored Warfare, I noticed a significant jump in my second Titan X during physics heavy scenes and my roommates 980Ti would have a lower framerate than me at the exact same settings. There's a few rare instances it works..