discussion Video Card Questions

[trayton]

I have some video card choices and just curious what should be used where lol.

I have the following (also I've never setup another card just for physx do people notice a huge difference when you do that?)

I have and am unsure what to put in my machine as my "TOP CARD"

PNY 770 4GB OC (i think but it might be oc2?)
Sapphire 4GB 290
Gigabyte 770 2GB
EVGA 660
ASUS 570
560Ti 448 Core

Thanks in advance guys I'm thinking either the 290 or the PNY (currently in my machine) are my top choices but which one is best?

Then the 2nd best to my kids machine and 3rd best to wifes the other cards do I just sell or should I put in and try to do as a dedicated physx?

Thanks.

 

[ShinraCorp]

Well it depends on what you're doing and what's your resolution, if it's for ultra gaming and everything you're better off with the 290.

As for the PhysX question, not a huge difference at all. Modern NVIDIA GPU integrates the PhysX without sacrificing the performance. It's a complete waste of a card if you decided to put a 2nd one in it.

2nd best in the list is the 770, which one though I have no clue.

3rd best is (besides the 2nd 770) is the 660, just a little bit more performance compare to the 570.

 

[MARSTG]

Modern NVIDIA GPU integrates the PhysX without sacrificing the performance.

That is absolutely false : a performance penalty will be incurred by the card doing 2 things at once : rendering 3D and processing Physx. You should setup the most powerful card to be the display card and to do the rendering, while assigning a less powerful card to do the physx calculations. I would assign the GTX570ti448 to do that job, should be plenty enough. This is the option that you are looking for : the CUDA option in the nVidia Control Panel, you just check the card that want to do the Physx calculations.

 

[ShinraCorp]

That is absolutely false : a performance penalty will be incurred by the card doing 2 things at once : rendering 3D and processing Physx. You should setup the most powerful card to be the display card and to do the rendering, while assigning a less powerful card to do the physx calculations. I would assign the GTX570ti448 to do that job, should be plenty enough. This is the option that you are looking for : the CUDA option in the nVidia Control Panel, you just check the card that want to do the Physx calculations.

Strange because I didn't have any performance impact with or without PhysX on my card, then again PhysX is a rare sight these days.

 

[Dragonstongue]

the shaders and stuff are not always busy I have many friends who have multi-gpu Nvidia setups and have tired many ways of doing different things, As long as you have a powerful card, it is near useless to worry about using another card to offload PhysX, if you have a medium to low end then using another card to offload said PhysX I can see. Depends on how powerful the card is, how much it is being used in the game in question etc, only way you will know, test it.

 

[MARSTG]

PhysX is a rare sight these days.

Aaa, no. Here is a list of games with Physx PhysX | GeForce
I see recent titles there like Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, Borderlands, Batman : Arkham Origins just to name a few. I didn't say that engaging PhysX will bring the system to its knees, is just that to the question on hand, I would relegate the physx calculations to a secondary card and leave the primary one do the 3D heavy lifting and all the image processing.

 

[Bond007]

From what I have read the benefits of running a dedicated physx card is not worth the power consumption if your main GPU is powerful enough to handle it. I have read multiple, but this video actually pretty much sums up what I have read.

Dedicated PhysX Card Experiment - How Powerful Does it Have to Be? Linus Tech Tips - YouTube

 

[trayton]

Thanks for all the input might shortly have a 2nd Sapphire 290 (8GB ram in Crossfire sounds fun)

With amd though say you want to play with physx can you still use a nvidia card as well?

 

[Shadowarez]

Not unless that lucid logic chip wich lets you mix match never really saw it in working rig the drivers must be haywire in Highend.

 

[Ashihtaka]

Since you've got them, I'd say sli the 2 770's for max performance.