Would this be possible? I realize the drivers aren't out yet, but I'm curious what type of performace you would so if you could actually do this.

Honestly I think there would be too many issues for this to happen (I could very well be wrong so take my words with many many huge grains of salt)

The main problem I see is that I believe the physics that run on graphics card need the graphics running on it too but as I said I could be wrong.

If you could get the drivers, that would be pretty killer.

I don't believe there are any current games you'd see a difference in if you could get that solution to work.

"current" games havne't been written much with PhysX since the mass availability of the accelerator hasnt happened yet. I have an 8800 320 and just ordered a 4850--i think i'll give it a go with Vantage to see if thre is a difference.

its bad enough installing one manufacturers drivers after another never mind installing both at the same time, so i would say it cant be done

it won't work

I've successfully run a dual monitor setup with an Nvidia AGP card and an ATI PCI card, with both sets of drivers installed--so to say "it won't work" might be a little short sided.

nope, won't work however, why would you need the 8800? why not just a lower end ati for the physics?

There are a lot of other "alternate" situations--why not just get a physx accerlator card?

I already have the 8800 (and not that i would use it for a physx accerlator--takes way too much power), the question was posed as a "what if".

Maybe the next batch of games would benefit tremendously from physx accerlation and a 8800 woudl be teh perfect fit?

I agree, I don't think "it won't work" is the right answer. I don't really think there is or will be an easy out-of-the-box solution to this problem. I'm not really sure that Nvidia would create a driver to make one of their cards look solely like a physics card. At the same time, if you really understand how the drivers work, you may be able to gerry-rig something. Just make sure that the display drivers default to ATI and have the Nvidia physics acceleration drivers... or something

I believe you'd do it by having both cards installed (with drivers). I would setup my 4850 to be the "primary" display and the 8800 to be my "secondary" display.

The 8800 woudl of course use the yet-to-be-released physX drivers and everythign shoudl be kosher.

Everything I have read says that PhysX cards are a waste right now. Could change in the future of course. I looked at buying one till I did the research.

I doubt the dualing video cards would work right though. It is nice in theory. Probably not so good for games. If you wanted to write some custom code to do computations of some sort it might work well using the 8800 GPU.

ATI is working on adding its own physx engine as well, don't forget.

I have dual 9800GTX+ SLI in home gaming machine and a 4850 in my traveling Lanbox, so I don't have a bias.