Physics effects slowing down my games.

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Eran English Guy

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I am trying to play Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason, a game from 2009. My PC is fairly fast I believe and yet the physics effects in this game (I have everything turned to max) slow it down to an unplayable level. I'm not one to buy into hype about buying the newest or latest of anything. My Smart phone is 3 years old and I'm quite happy with it for now. I've managed to run all my other games so far on my rig at maxed out setting without any problems however with this game (and slightly with Mirrors Edge) the game slows down. I've done some reading and it turns out it's the physics effect that's causing this. I'd like to know which if any of these components is the main offender here that's slowing down my game?

Grahpics Card: AMD 7870 with 2GB of video memory.
MotherBoard: Asus M5A97 R2.0
CPU: Phenom II 2X 565
RAM: 4GB DDR3 1333mhz
OS Drive: Crucial 64GB SSD (M4-CT064M4SSD2)
Game Drive: Western Digital 500GB SATA 7200 RPM drive.
PSU: 600W ANTEC
OS: Windows 7.

Please advise.
 
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Typolo

Typolo

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The games would be more than just playable on max settings, but an aftermarket cooler is strongly advised.
Your next bottleneck would probably be the7870, but it should handle your mentioned games and more demanding games as well :)
 
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Eran English Guy

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Is there anywhere I'd notice an increase in peformance in games if I had say 8GB of 2100mhz ram instead of 4GB of 1333mhz ram?

My graphics card recommends a 600 watt PSU and that's exactly what I have, but I fear with a more powerful CPU I might be harming my rig. Will the 600 Watt still do?
 
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Typolo

Typolo

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Judging by the age of your rig, im guessing the psu's capacitors have aged and can no longer supply 600watts reliably. Go ahead and get a 650watt psu like corsair's HX650 (their are cheaper options, that's just what I can vouch for personally as a great power supply)

The faster more abundant Ram would definitely improve gaming performance. An easy way to find out which ram will be fastest, take the cas latency and divide it by the frequency. The RAM with the smallest value should be fastest example: 7/1600=.004375 < 9/1866=.004823 so the cl 7 @1600 would be faster
 
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Supernova1138

Supernova1138

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Your problem is that Cryostasis and Mirror's Edge use GPU accelerated PhysX and you have an AMD card. GPU accelerated PhysX is a proprietary feature only available on Nvidia cards. If you don't have an Nvidia card, the CPU tries to do the PhysX calculations, but it will be much slower because Nvidia went and crippled the CPU's ability to do the GPU accelerated PhysX calculations, because they want to sell more graphics cards.

Your options are as follows:
1. Turn off GPU accelerated PhysX and just live without the extra eye candy.
2. Replace your GPU with an Nvidia card if you want those extra effects that badly.
3. If your motherboard has a second PCI-E x16 slot, and your PSU can handle it, you can get a lower end Nvidia card and put in your second PCI-E slot and have it run PhysX while your AMD card serves as the main renderer. Nvidia doesn't want you to do this however, and actually locks out this option, so you have to use a hacked PhysX driver and do some tinkering to accomplish this.
 
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Typolo

Typolo

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very good advice, but op is simply asking for a simple component switch, not losing the eye candy. I'm guessing he doesnt want to dive into driver modding. The best option is probably supernova's option 2 for games with physx.

In all other games the 8350 and ram would help you more than replacing the 7870. However physx would still cripple the cpu, it would be better than now, but not as good as if physx were disabled
 
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Eran English Guy

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So you're telling me that if Physx supported by AMD both Mirror's edge and and Cryostasis would have run perfectly? I can tell you that Crysis Warhead ran like a dream with ALL settings maxed out and that game looked way more intense than both Mirror's edge and Cryostastis.
Well that settles it then, I'm going to boycott Nvidia the way I did Creative when they started doing dirty deeds some 8 years ago.

So even the person with the most powerful CPU and AMD card won't be able to run those games perfectly with Physx on.

I'm wondering, are there any games that REQUIRE AMD cards?
 
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Supernova1138

Supernova1138

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AMD doesn't really have many proprietary technologies that they like to push. The closest thing might be TressFX, which so far has only been used in the recent Tomb Raider game, and Nvidia cards can actually run TressFX without taking a massive performance hit.

As for your performance issues in Cryostasis and Mirror's Edge, just turn off Advanced PhysX or whatever they call it, and those games will run smoothly on your system. You can also find a list here of all the games that use GPU accelerated PhysX, and thus will have issues with running all their PhysX effects on AMD cards.
 
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Typolo

Typolo

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No, there are games and programs optimized for AMD, just as some are optimized for Nvidia. However, amd doesnt put software into those games to hurt consumers with Nvidia cards.

And yes, it would run fine if it supported on amd gpus.
 
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Eran English Guy

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So if I had a 7990 card, the fastest Intel Processor that money can buy not to mention 32GB of the fastest ram, I'd still suffer slowdowns on games supporting physx to the point that I notice it if I have all the settings turned up?

I don't want to turn off physx, I bought this card so I could get max my games out. That's the point of having a fast graphics card is it not? Is there no way to make it work on an AMD card with some extra software or are all games supporting phsyx going to be semi unplayable?
 
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Supernova1138

Supernova1138

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If you had the fastest Intel CPU, you might have enough brute force to make PhysX playable on an AMD card for some of the PhysX enabled games, mostly ones that don't use the effects too heavily eg. Mirror's Edge, Borderlands 2. You would still run into slowdowns that would be noticeable, but you would be able to stay above 30FPS in those cases. However, with games that use the effects more heavily, eg. the Batman titles, the Metro series, you would just have to turn it off if you don't have an Nvidia card.

Unfortunately there is no software fix, the closest thing to getting PhysX to fully work with an AMD card is the one option I stated above, which is buy a lower end Nvidia card and stick it in a second PCI-E slot and have it run PhysX with your AMD card as your primary renderer. Problem is that trick is somewhat hard to setup, and doesn't work with the newest games, as Nvidia made some changes to their PhysX driver to try to stop people from circumventing their AMD PhysX lockout.
 
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Typolo

Typolo

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Its not if physx is supported, but if it is turned on.
The effect would be very noticeable, but i guess that a few of the intel monsters could handle it at playable framerates.

As mentioned earlier, you could buy a low end nvidia card and use modded drivers to have them work together. Or you could use severely modded drivers that would allow the amd card to process physx (i have heard of one person do it). However neither of these options are very good and pose stability risks.
 
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Eran English Guy

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So at the end of the day, the only solution if you want to be a graphics whore as well as a hardcore gamer is to buy Nvidia. They've locked the market down and rendered AMD obsolete. Physics are becoming more and more relevant in gaming as part of the actual mechanics. Some puzzles in games where you're meant to interact with the environment. Shouldn't there be some monopoly law preventing Nvidia from doing this sort of thing?
 
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Supernova1138

Supernova1138

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Right now, PhysX is nothing more than eye candy, it doesn't actually effect gameplay in any way. If developers did make PhysX effect gameplay, they would shut out a large chunk of the PC market, and in the previous console generation, also shut out the consoles as well. Supposedly a backroom deal was made to allow the consoles to run GPU accelerated PhysX even with AMD hardware simply because if that didn't happen, PhysX would remain how it is now, a technology that didn't really gain widespread adoption, and only gets supported by a handful of games each year, most of which only got PhysX because Nvidia paid the developer to add it to their game.

Bottom line is that physics calculations that actually effect gameplay are done by the game engine itself using hardware agnostic standards, and I don't really see that changing as that would create a bigger headache for developers in having to code their engine to have different physics implementations for different sets of hardware.
 
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Typolo

Typolo

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If you really believe there is a monopoly go ahead and sue.
I can tell you you will fail though. It is their intellectual property. Plus they make it available to peoples CPUS (how generous! ....NOT!). However, AMD is not obsolete because they provide a great gaming experience through their powerful cards.

While physics are an important component to games, physx is not. All it does is cause the gpu to make a more precise calculation in certain situations rather than having a pre-coded event happen. With all the advances in programming over the years, these pre-coded events are typically unbelievably realistic. Physx is in no way shape or form necessary. It just makes some in game events appear smoother.
 
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Eran English Guy

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The particle effects are entirely gone in Crysostasis if you turn off physx. The glass and sparks in Mirrors edge look boring as hell without it. I think it's a real bitch that they should make it so unfriendly for AMD cards.
 
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Typolo

Typolo

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Thats just the way things are. I say weigh the options supernova and I presented and enjoy your gaming experience!
:)
 
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Eran English Guy

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So was ghosts slow because it was badly optimised for the PC?

If I upgrade for more ram mid next year, would you say that I'll be fine getting 8GB if I want it to last for several years?

 
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epicoverclock

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i think that 8 gb should last you a long time in terms of gaming as the current gen consoles only have 8gb ram
 
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