Upgrade to 5850/70 or add a GTS 250 for physx

[bobzilla2009]

indeed, opencl or just plain old dx11 compute will handle physics in the future, or platforms derived from them. We will see fantastic physics in the upcoming years, since that is where games are lacking atm, but all that PhysX served to do is provide a meager appetizer for what's to come. If nvidia weren't so stuck up about physX and made an decent for amd cards to run it and well (we all know that if they did they would sabotage ati card performance) then it would have survived. As it is, it is fairly useless apart from adding poxy flags into environments in terms of gaming.

To be honest, Aegia never really did anything with physX because only their cards could run it. Not many companies will add things for console ports to pc, so even fewer will add anything for less than a 30% slice of the pc gaming community (remember, only 8 series and above have physX), so such a solution was doomed from the start. OpenCL and directcompute have a much larger chance of succeeding, since windows 7 is hugely popular compared to xp (xp was hated upon release) and the full dx11 capable cards will drop in price sharply soon, and the hd5670 is bound to only cost around £50-70 anyway.

For this generation at least, AMD has gained a lot more support of developers due to on time dx11 equipment that fully supports all features on hardware. AMD also are the ones that worked with ms on dx11, they were shot in the foot by doing this with dx10 due to nvidia's bitching that caused a massive dx10 changes, including the loss of tessellation. They are pretty much the company in the know as far as the developers are concerned, games i would have associated being a twimtbp releases have turned AMD (bfbc2 & avp for example). Even if nvidia come out with a faster card, they have a pretty steep mountain to climb, especially since AMD will have a lot more room to drop prices due to the much smaller die. Also, AMD have dx11 mainstream parts, therefore dx11 devs will likely tell nvidia to go whistle in terms of optimizing games for nvidia cards, since they will have a minimal share in the dx11 card market until some midrange cards appear.

 

[ShRoOmAlIsTiC]

I dont think its dead and I really enjoy my PhysX. I have a similar setup, 5850 + gtx260. I know the gtx 260 is over kill but I modded the bios to be low power at idle and overclocked when it does physx. its actually a pretty sweet setup. Games are still be released that use it and until they start doing games with opencl PhysX is the only way to go.

 

[bobzilla2009]

Indeed it is the only way to go, but are a few extra flags and smoke effects in a very sparse selection of games really worth the money for a card that will ultimately have no other real use, when such things will be spread across all cards soon anyway? obviously if you already had the card ect. it's a great idea, but i think for an ati user to go out of their way to buy a card just for physX is a bit too much money for what little benefit there is.

If every game supported the extra little touches physX offered, i would snap up an old 8800GT or 9600GT as a physX card, but the rarity of game support just makes it a big no for me. Apart from ME and batman: AA, a couple of UT3 maps and a trashy game that came out a year or two ago that got around 5-6/10 everywhere, what games actually use gpu physX? Even dx10 had more supported games than that! ^^

 

[ShRoOmAlIsTiC]

the way I see it, when opencl does become a standard, my physx card will become a physics card. either way its still gonna so the same thing.

Physx works for borderlands and dragon age. those are 2 of the newer ones I can think of.

 

[air_ii]

Don't know about Borderlands, but PhysX in Dragon Age can be easily handled by the CPU.

 

[bobzilla2009]

the way I see it, when opencl does become a standard, my physx card will become a physics card. either way its still gonna so the same thing.

Physx works for borderlands and dragon age. those are 2 of the newer ones I can think of.

borderlands is handled by cpu as well. It's fine that you'll be able to use your second card as a physics card, but i don't see why people should buy a mid range card NOW rather than wait until opencl is adopted. Since it may be that ATi cards have a huge upper hand when running opencl (since they've worked more with them) for example. Unlike gpu's where you always have to jump up at some point, since something new is always coming, this area is far more unstable.

Borderlands and dragon age go to show that developers just don't want gpu specific physX because of nvidia only restrictions. It's a huge nail in the coffin of physX unless it becomes just like havoc ect. and then what's the point of it?

 

[Mussels]

Don't know about Borderlands, but PhysX in Dragon Age can be easily handled by the CPU.

i dont believe either of those games supports hardware PhysX, actually. i think they're locked to software (i'm not 100% on this)

 

[bobzilla2009]

in borderlands HW can be enabled by faffing around in the .ini's but the gains are minimal since the physics in the game is fairly basic.

 

[Bo_Fox]

in borderlands HW can be enabled by faffing around in the .ini's but the gains are minimal since the physics in the game is fairly basic.

You could do the same thing with Mass Effect, and yet see absolutely no difference. I enabled it in the .ini file, and the performance, IQ, etc.. were 100% identical.

I think Nvidia just likes to add all of the Xbox-ported games under the supported list of PHysX capable games (since the Xbox already has some sort of software PhysX support). At least if the game engines are capable of supporting PhysX, then NV touts it.

Die, PhysX, die!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Mussels]

I think Nvidia just likes to add all of the Xbox-ported games under the supported list of PHysX capable games (since the Xbox already has some sort of software PhysX support). At least if the game engines are capable of supporting PhysX, then NV touts it.

That makes a lot of sense, since the Xbox360 doesnt use Nvidia graphics (hence, no hardware support)


If a console game uses a software version, someone ports it to PC and then Nv can be all "oooh look at this latest game title, that uses Nvidia PhysX*, so go buy an nvidia card!"


*This title doesnt actually use hardware PhysX, so dont bother with an Nvidia card.

 

[wolf]

I'd sit tight with the 4890 for the time being, 5850's and indeed better and possibly cheaper cards will exist around mid next year.

Congrats on the Samsung LED LCD telly, I have the 40" UN40B6000 model and it's an absolutely stunning monitor to look at for TV or a HDMI in from your PC, and the 4890 should do well powering most games on it for the time being.

my 2 cents without joining the everlastingly silly physx debate.

 

[bobzilla2009]

But the debate is fun! we have cookies!

 

[Bo_Fox]

That makes a lot of sense, since the Xbox360 doesnt use Nvidia graphics (hence, no hardware support)


If a console game uses a software version, someone ports it to PC and then Nv can be all "oooh look at this latest game title, that uses Nvidia PhysX*, so go buy an nvidia card!"


*This title doesnt actually use hardware PhysX, so dont bother with an Nvidia card.

Ahh, yes! Nvidia just needs to remove the super-long list of Xbox360 games that are PhysX-enabled. It's embarrassing for NV since the Xbox360 uses ATI chip!!

I'd sit tight with the 4890 for the time being, 5850's and indeed better and possibly cheaper cards will exist around mid next year.

Congrats on the Samsung LED LCD telly, I have the 40" UN40B6000 model and it's an absolutely stunning monitor to look at for TV or a HDMI in from your PC, and the 4890 should do well powering most games on it for the time being.

my 2 cents without joining the everlastingly silly physx debate.

Same here, I'd wait, but at least until the Fermi! It will push everything down in prices with some good competition!