GTX 780 ti as main & 750 ti for PhysX?

Eggz · Mar 11, 2014

Dear interwebz!

To start, I'm stoked on getting the 780 ti! It was an upgrade from the 770, which was pretty good to begin with - served me well. However, one of my main problems was playing games with heavy PhysX (e.g. Borderlands 2). In case you're wondering, yes, I assigned the 770 to process PhysX in Nvidia control panel, not my processor.

My interest stems from knowing that dedicating a PhysX card makes a big difference, which I believe based on two reasons. First, turning off PhysX prevents frame drops I see when PhysX is on high, especially during the most intense scenes. Also, Kenneth Surgent's video on dedicated PhysX from YouTube confirmed this to be the case. He ran a test with a 680 doing 3D and a 650 dedicated to PhysX. Under Nvidia control panel, he ran a PhysX-driven bench once with the 680 handling both PhysX and 3D, and he ran it again with the 650 handling PhsyX while the 680 handed 3D. The difference in that bench was about 30 fps on average, which came from preventing the frame drops during PhysX explosions and such. In a game like Borderlands, the improvement would be more because the PhysX is much heavier than in the bench he ran.

That brings me to the question: What should I pair as a PhysX card with my 780 ti? I know it can handle PhysX, but there is no point to taking away from the 3D to process the PhysX if I can offload it. While PhysX is cool, the 3D environment is the main focus of a game, and keeping that smooth takes priority over eye candy like PhysX. I was thinking of the 750 ti, but I also don't want to make my 780 ti wait for the PhysX card to catch up, which can happen (as Linus's experiment has proven). The problem is that Linus's video is now two generations old. Thus, I ask this forum. What do you think?

-Eggz

Hello man · Mar 11, 2014

Eggz :

Hey interwebz!

To start, I'm stoked on getting the 780 ti! It was an upgrade from the 770, which was pretty good to begin with - served me well. However, one of my main problems was playing games with heavy PhysX (e.g. Borderlands 2). In case you're wondering, yes, I assigned the 770 to process PhysX in Nvidia control panel, not my processor.

My interest stems from knowing that dedicating a PhysX card makes a big difference, which I believe based on two reasons. First, turning off PhysX prevents frame drops I see when PhysX is on high, especially during the most intense scenes. Also, Kenneth Surgent's video on dedicated PhysX from YouTube confirmed this to be the case. He ran a test with a 680 doing 3D and a 650 dedicated to PhysX. Under Nvidia control panel, he ran a PhysX-driven bench once with the 680 handling both PhysX and 3D, and he ran it again with the 650 handling PhsyX while the 680 handed 3D. The difference in that bench was about 30 fps on average, which came from preventing the frame drops during PhysX explosions and such. In a game like Borderlands, the improvement would be more because the PhysX is much heavier than in the bench he ran.

That brings me to the question: What should I pair as a PhysX card with my 780 ti? I know it can handle PhysX, but there is no point to taking away from the 3D to process the PhysX if I can offload it. While PhysX is cool, the 3D environment is the main focus of a game, and keeping that smooth takes priority over eye candy like PhysX. I was thinking of the 750 ti, but I also don't want to make my 780 ti wait for the PhysX card to catch up, which can happen (as Linus's experiment has proven). The problem is that Linus's video is now two generations old. Thus, I ask this forum. What do you think?

Yours Truly

-Eggz

I interested to see as well. I want to find one for my (HAH) GTX 460, my lovely, rather dated card that cam somehow manage a teraflop of performance..... go figure.

17seconds · Mar 12, 2014

With the new Maxwell cards, it's a new era for dedicated PhysX. The GTX 750 or 750 Ti are the ultimate PhysX cards, particularly capable of pairing with a top-end GPU like the GTX 780 Ti (and much faster than a GTX 460). The keys to a good PhysX card are a high CUDA core count paired with a high clock speed.

The GTX 750 has 512 CUDA cores (the same as a GTX 580) and the highest clock rates of any stock video card on the market at 1020 MHz/1085 MHz Boost. Similarly, the GTX 750 Ti has 640 CUDA cores and that same base clock of 1020/1085 MHz.

Add in the amazing low power consumption, reduced heat, and noise of these cards and if you can afford one, they should be a perfect match.

There aren't many benchmarks on dedicated PhysX cards with recent hardware, but here's one to give you an idea:
http://1pcent.com/?p=169

Eggz · Mar 13, 2014

Thanks for the replies thusfar. I'm leaning towards it. Anyone else?

Eggz · Mar 28, 2014

So, to update people on the dedicated PhysX thing, I went for it.

I ended up getting the 750 ti for PhysX. It makes a substantial difference. I play mostly PhysX games, and they have been very noticeably better with the card dedicated to PhysX, especially compared to using the CPU. Here are the results of PhysX benchmarks I've done on my system with and without the card, and with and without optimized drivers:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0DnoLWfOUZxbGdsSFk5NmFIVW8&usp=sharing

The the link I posted with benchmark results has two folders in it, and one is "With Driver Problems." If you want to see the results of a functioning dedicated PhysX setup, you needed to click the link and open the folder called "After Fixing Driver Issues." Here is a direct link to the correct folder:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0DnoLWfOUZxbHVBQnh5N3ZRS2c&usp=sharing

To make it even easier, here are the screen shots showing the results of the 780 ti alone, as well as the results of the 780 ti with the 750 ti dedicated to PhysX, with proper drivers.

GTX 780 ti only (main & PhysX): 79.3 average and 104.6 max fps

GTX 780 ti (main) + 750 ti (PhysX): 122.1 average and 218.5 max fps

I know it's "just a benchmark," as some like to say, but dedicated PhysX makes very big difference. Game performance has also been noticeably smoother since I properly configured the 750 ti as a dedicated PhysX card (in PhysX games).

If you'd like to read about it, here is an article showing that, the more powerful a main graphics configuration is, the more it benefits from dedicated PhysX.

(Click image to link to article)

Hopefully that answers some questions about dedicated PhysX cards on modern hardware for people, since most out there right now on the topic has to do with older hardware. Dedicating a mid-range graphics card to PhysX with a high-end graphics card as the main processor provides a very tangible benefit.

Deuce65 · Mar 28, 2014

Eggz :

It's weird, I almost feel like I was looking at a completely different data than you were. I read the article of course. And it is 4 pages of talking about how great the 750ti is for physics, much better than its predecessors, etc. (of COURSE they do. hardware reviews always do this, has any major hardware review site ever said ,"you know what? this knew thing isn't worth it, stick with what you got"). So four pages about how much better at physics the 750ti is. Then we look at the results:
Borderlands 2 at 1080: 650ti gets 92fps, 750ti gets 92.4.
Borderlands 2 at 1440: 650ti gets 54.9, 750ti gets 55.3.
I'm not going to list them all, they were all like that. Virtually no gain at all for the 750ti, .5 to 1 fps.

The moral of the story I got was if you have no physics card get one; if you already have one, don't get the 750ti for it because you won't notice a difference. And naturally this doesn't even take into account the vast number of games that don't use physics at all.

Eggz · Mar 28, 2014

@Deuce65

You seemed to have read looking for a problem. Here is the summary chart with all results from the article (I edited my last post to include it):

At each stage, having a well-paired dedicated PhysX card makes a noticeable improvement. When you talk about 650 vs 750, you're missing the point. All I was saying was that having a dedicated PhysX card helps, and I cited an article showing that the 750 ti is a good one - that's it.

Also, look back at my personal benchmarks. They show a very significant difference. I noticed in-game improvement just by adding the 750 ti, and the article described that difference like this:

In many cases it will make the difference between a fluid playing experience and one that is unsatisfactory.

Will the 650 ti do as good a job? Probably, but that isn't what we're talking about here. The question was just PhysX card or not. Personally, the 750 ti is great because it's small and requires very little power, and you don't need power plugs (i.e. all off the PCI-e). Of course, if you don't play PhysX games, then there's no point. But that just means this discussion isn't for you. For people who play a lot of PhysX games, though, and have a high-end graphics card already, they will be happy with the 750 ti as a dedicated PhysX card. They'd also be happy with a 650 ti. But either way, they'd be happy with a well-paired dedicated PhysX card - that's the point.

Deuce65 · Mar 28, 2014

How does your conclusion differ from mine, "The moral of the story I got was if you have no physics card get one; if you already have one, don't get the 750ti for it because you won't notice a difference."

I did spend some time talking specifically about the 750ti but only in so far as the article linked talked about it. The article does in fact spend quite a bit of effort telling the reader that the 750ti is much much better than the 650ti for a physics card, and then posts numbers that do not back that up in any way. I did call the article out on that.

Eggz · Mar 28, 2014

Hey, sorry if my tone was off. I typed up my response fairly quickly. It did initially seem to me, though, that your post was calling into question the validity of dedicated PhysX. My apologies if you didn't mean to do that. I do see your point about the 650 and 750 being similar in terms of performance. In the end, though, I love how small the 750 is. Do you have a dedicated card?

Deuce65 · Mar 28, 2014

No worries. Rereading what I wrote, I can see where it gave that impression, I didn't word it very well! But yes if I were buying a new card for physics, I agree that the 750ti is a good choice with the size and power consumption, and in particular lack of a power cord (at least on most). I don't have a physics card on my main machine mainly because I rarely play any games that use physics. If I played games that did though I would consider one (I don't really play anything that pushes my system to begin with, most of what I play are older, not very demanding games).

Petabyte · Oct 28, 2015

Hey Eggz.....Back from the dead I know but wondering how the Dedicated Physics card is panning out. I've got the 780 and was thinking 750 Ti Physx

Eggz · Oct 29, 2015

Petabyte :

It's really pretty good in almost every applicable situation.

Since most things don't use PshysX, it's nice that the 750 ti idles at such a lower wattage and temperature (better than the newer 950), so pretty negligible to have it installed the computer while not in use. As for when it applies, the only time games are still slow is when there's a non-graphics bottleneck. This happens in some pre-DirectX 11 games with PhysX, which have a tendency of overloading one or two CPU cores without using others at all. That's mainly because DirectX 9 and older were written largely before 2008, and that was when single and dual core CPUs were still the norm and quad cores were just popping up in the server settings with Xeon, so it wasn't part of the gaming scene yet. Here's the Intel timeline covering that period if you're interested.

But even when there's a CPU bottleneck, PhysX games still run better using a well-paired dedicated PhysX card than without one.

As for the rest of the PhysX games where graphics is the first bottleneck, and not something else, the games have gone from choppy to smooth by adding a well-paired dedicated PhysX card. And smooth play's really the whole point, isn't it?

In the end, dedicated PhysX is really just about eliminating a specific type of graphics bottleneck, nothing else. If you use PhysX regularly, dedicated PhysX is definitely worth it. The testing shows that pairing two cards from the same generation is best when the main 3D card is a flagship card and the PhysX card is a midrange card - particularly a low power version.

I hope that answers your question. Good luck!

Hello man · Oct 29, 2015

Petabyte :

I did it with my 670 GC V2 and a GTX 460. Didn't really show any difference in various styles of benchmark between that and having the CPU do physx. Assuming you have the CPU to do it, you should be good. You can set that in the NVidia control panel. Having the GPU do it definitely lowered my results in some tests. I went from 3.2 tflops (faster than the 680) to even with it (3.1). That would mean that you loose 100+ gflops to physx.

17seconds · Oct 30, 2015

Hello man :

Are you sure your benchmark was using GPU accelerated PhysX? It just doesn't happen that the CPU would be faster at GPU PhysX. Sometimes setting the control panel to use the CPU disables advanced PhysX effects as well.

Eggz · Oct 30, 2015

Um, don't use the CPU for PhysX if there is any way to avoid it. Take my word or look it up to see the numbers for yourself. Either way, just don't do it unless you're only testing for fun and plan to switch back to the GPU.

17seconds · Nov 1, 2015

If you're using a 3DMark benchmark for testing PhysX, it only uses CPU acceleration.
http://community.futuremark.com/forum/showthread.php?121545-3DMark-Vantage-and-PhysX

Petabyte · Nov 1, 2015

ok thanks. Just wondering if spending the $150 on a dedicated Physx card would be good as opposed to another $500 for a new high end card. The 780 for me has been a great card so far keeping the settings high and if i could make that a little better for future titles then yay. I know only select titles are for it. There are some good games that use it. But.....my monitor is a 60 hz not 120hz so not sure other than keeping the minimum @ 60 Fps or above

Eggz · Nov 2, 2015

17seconds :

I pretty sure 3D Mark uses something other than PhysX for its physics simulations. AMD cards wouldn't be able to run it without tricky hacks otherwise. It's on a different API.

Petabyte :

If you're looking for raw performance, getting a second GPU for SLI would generally be more of an overall performance boost. But I think that's a false comparison.

The primary benefit of a dedicated PhysX card does is prevent performance drops, whereas SLI actually aims to increase performance.

Also, having a dedicated PhysX card helps even more in SLI. That would give you the SLI setup to render the 3D, and you'd have another card to do the PhysX. It helps because GPUs don't multitask very well at all, and multitasking is essentially what the card would have to do while running both 3D and PhysX.

In your case, though, I'd say it's better to get either the 750 ti or 950 as a dedicated PhysX card now and then upgrade the main 3D card later. The 780 has a good amount of power, but it's really limited by the 4GB of VRAM it has. Having two 780s on modern games will become a bit frustrating because you'll have a lot of processing power that will go unused in several situations. When you're out of VRAM, it becomes a bottleneck that prevents you from accessing additional processing power. If you're ever going to have extra of something - between VRAM and processing power - it's generally better to have extra VRAM. Unused VRAM doesn't slow anything down, but unused processing power will.

Having a new dedicated PhysX card now will prepare you for a new main GPU in the future. If I were you, I'd do that and just sit on the 780+PhysX card until the next top-of-the line GPU comes out. Then you'll really have something nice without a VRAM bottleneck. So if you want to upgrade to SLI later, you'll be in a better position (assuming the next card comes with enough VRAM to last you a while). That would also put you in a better position to get a higher resolution monitor later on if you wanted to do that. Good luck!

Hello man · Nov 6, 2015

17seconds :

THAT explains it. Never knew.

17seconds · Nov 7, 2015

Hello man :

And suddenly the facepalm avatar is so apropos. Seriously, I had to look it up myself and there really isn't a lot of info on the web about it. Really, for a universal benchmark it makes sense that they wouldn't use any brand-exclusive technology.

Petabyte · Nov 7, 2015

Alright. Appreciate the input guys. Thanks Eggz. Yeah the 780 has only 3 gigs VRAM even worse but i haven't run into any problems yet. I know modern games are starting to fill that up. 4 gig would be great.

I think I will wait until the next best thing. Maxwell is good and AMD has the Stacked HBM which I'm sure will go mainstream but nothing I'm overly excited about. Don't get me wrong I would accept a 980 ti or Fury X card if it were given to me

The 750 Ti was actually an Idea for an older system I was going to resurrect. If it didn't play out then I would plop it into my system.
Here's the details or thread I started about it

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2842937/thinking-resurrecting-aged-775-socket-semi-good-gaming.html

Hello man · Nov 7, 2015

Petabyte :

The face palm is almost always appropriate :lol: Anyways, I use a card with 2GB of VRAM and thats getting a little lacking for sure. I still like the card, and I was able to get a really expensive water block for it for free too. Makes me reluctant to switch, but my friend and I have been you tubing about Ark Survival Evolved and a 2 gig card with only 3.2 TFLOPS throughput is getting a little lacking.

GTX 780 ti as main & 750 ti for PhysX?

Distinguished

Honorable

Champion

Distinguished

Distinguished

Honorable

Distinguished

Honorable

Distinguished

Honorable

Reputable

Distinguished

Honorable

Champion

Distinguished

Champion

Reputable

Distinguished

Honorable

Champion

Reputable

Honorable

Share this page