Tbonius has some misinformation.
1) PhysX is NVidia's physics calculation software.
2) With a single GPU for everything it uses some of its calculation time to do the physics (PhysX) calculations.
3) To use a dedicated GPU for PhysX you can change this in the NVidia Control Panel.
4) FPS?
If the GPU card is fast enough the FPS will increase (unless it's already capped with VSYNC i.e. 60FPS for 60Hz monitor, or if the CPU is the bottleneck). This is because the main card doesn't have to do PhysX calculations so can spend more processing on everything else it does.
However, if the card is too slow the main GPU has to WAIT for it to finish thus the dedicated GPU is the bottleneck and can actually drop performance.
5) As said above, only a few games use PhysX (so other games aren't affected).
6) BATMAN games can be significantly affected by this, however with a GTX1070 already there may be no point.
7) Go ahead and experiement:
a) GAME without PhysX card (repeatable area or benchmark like in Batman Arkham series)
b) GAME with PhysX card in the same area
Summary:
- can help, but must test per game
- enable in NVidia Control Panel
- FPS increase may not warrant the extra card noise (especially if FPS goal is already achieved)
Update:
The FPS increase depends on how much physics is going on. It may help MORE than you might think as the physics is often a sudden thing like a SMOKE GRENADE so the average isn't the best score to go by. Unfortunately the "LOW FPS" score can be affected by other things so benchmarks may not indicate how much it helps. Real gameplay can indicate how often a PhysX effect causes stuttering.
If the PhysX was normally about 30% of the calculation time then if the dedicated card was fast enough you can free up the main card so that 30% is used to increase FPS.
So expect roughly between 0% and 30% gain from what I've seen based on the hardware. Again, PhysX is often some eye candy that suddenly drops FPS causing stutter. This may help with that.
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