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PhysX PPU cards.... gone?

Forum Graphic & Displays : Graphics Cards - PhysX PPU cards.... gone?

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szalkerous   02-19-2009 at 11:50:51 PM

I read a recent article benchmarking doing physics with the CPU, GPU, and PPU... and showing FPS performance. It seems that enabling PhysX on the GPU degrades the performance significantly, so I was going to grab an add-on PPU to offload it to for best performance. However, although I can see products on BFG and ASUS's site, I can't seem to find anywhere popular that sells them, leading me to wonder what happened to them? Are they being discontinued?

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szalkerous   02-20-2009 at 12:02:21 AM
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By the way, the great article doing the trio compare benchmarks is here:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] rformance/

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A Stoner   02-20-2009 at 12:09:38 AM
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Of course it affects your FPS, you are taking GPU horsepower and using it for PhysX processing and not Graphics. Maybe you can buy a second video card to offload it to as the graphics cards are more powerful and probably cheaper!

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szalkerous   02-20-2009 at 12:13:14 AM
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A Stoner wrote :

Of course it affects your FPS, you are taking GPU horsepower and using it for PhysX processing and not Graphics. Maybe you can buy a second video card to offload it to as the graphics cards are more powerful and probably cheaper!



I wish this were the case, but as far as I've been able to research, you can't direct physics to a dedicated GPU, only to a dedicated PPU.... and with the apparent removal of them from the market, I'm wondering what nVidia's plans are in this exact lane of thinking....

It almost seems that it's worth it to get one of the PPU boards left in stock somewhere before you can't anymore........

The only other option would be to buy an additional $300-400 graphics card for SLI, just to offset the huge hit in GPU performance. Not worth it if I can find a PPU board for $150.


Message edited by szalkerous on 02-20-2009 at 12:14:57 AM
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A Stoner   02-20-2009 at 12:14:51 AM
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Eh, maybe they are thinking SLI or whatever their version of multi GPUs is... I am sure there is a way to port it to the GPU though, just need to find the right hackerz.

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A Stoner   02-20-2009 at 12:16:00 AM
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PhysX On A Dedicated GPU

The final feature to be introduced in the Release 180 ForceWare drivers is the ability to assign a dedicated graphics card for PhysX acceleration. This is pretty cool since it allows you to reutilize an older graphics card which would normally be lying dormant.

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szalkerous   02-20-2009 at 12:18:00 AM
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A Stoner wrote :

PhysX On A Dedicated GPU

The final feature to be introduced in the Release 180 ForceWare drivers is the ability to assign a dedicated graphics card for PhysX acceleration. This is pretty cool since it allows you to reutilize an older graphics card which would normally be lying dormant.



Cool! Where did you find this? Could you link?

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A Stoner   02-20-2009 at 12:32:55 AM
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Well, if you look at the link you gave me with the number, you can see that they use two seperate cards. A GTX 260-216 and 9800 GTX+. So the GTX 260-216 does the graphics while the 9800 GTX+ does the physx.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page7.asp


link to what i posted earlier.

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle [...] 594&pgno=5

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A Stoner   02-20-2009 at 12:33:40 AM
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Which gives me a reason to put my 8800GTS 640 back in my box, if I just had a better power supply.

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B-Unit   02-20-2009 at 12:47:22 AM
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I run SLI 8800GT, when I enable SLI and PhysX at the same time, i take a 15-20 FPS hit in UTIII, however if I disable SLi, I see the fancy physics without the performance hit, leading me to belive that the nVidia drivers are smart enuf to automatically put PhysX on the second card.

I did this testing back when the first PhysX drivers came out, I haven't tested recently. When I get home tonight Ill run a couple tests to verify this.

------------------------------ http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3073/2578392638_2827857d10_o.png
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OnTarget   02-20-2009 at 01:54:27 AM
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I still sell standalone PhysX cards. I suggest you ask your friendly computer shop.

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eppinizer   02-20-2009 at 02:00:13 AM
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I think you will see less and less stand alone PPU's because nVidia recently bought Agea physX. nVidia doesn't want you to fill up your second expr16 slot with a PPU, they want you to SLI their GPU's .

Reply to eppinizer
4745454b   02-20-2009 at 02:02:33 AM
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Any Nvidia card with 256MBs of physical onboard ram can be used to run PhysX. (I think there is another requirement, I can't remember what it is...) You can do it with a cheap 8500GT or 9x00GT card. The problem that people will have is that not all motherboards have the two PCIe 16x slots that you'll need. For whatever reason, motherboard manufacturers still include those dumb PCIe 1x slots. You can use a 1x card in a 16x slot, but you can't use a 16x card in a 1x slot.

------------------------------ The voice of REASON
Do NOT feed the TROLLS!
Always a DEMON!
 Reply to 4745454b
MMclachlan   02-20-2009 at 11:00:59 AM
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If you have a 780/790i or X58 board you can run SLi with another card for physx also! Seems like that is the best setup too, better than 3way SLi:
http://www.geeks3d.com/?p=2710
I might throw an old 8600GT in with my SLi'd 8800GTs!


Message edited by MMclachlan on 02-20-2009 at 11:02:47 AM
Reply to MMclachlan
baddad   02-20-2009 at 05:03:35 PM
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I have three 8800GTX's in SLI with PhysX enabled and it actually help my FPS. Three way SLI didn't give me much of a boost in FPS, this leads me to believe that PhysX was their intent all along for three way SLI.

------------------------------ ASUS Striker II Extreme , C2D Q9450 OC 3.4, 8 Gig Memory, EVGA 8800GTX Triple SLI, Thermaltake 1000W PSU, Thermaltake Armor + Case, Acer 24" LCD, Water Cooled, 12 Foot DVI Cable, Vista 64 Bit SP2
 Reply to baddad
OnTarget   02-22-2009 at 03:36:00 PM
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Sli has been around longer than hardware phisics tech (PhysX) has existed.
Stand alone PhysX cards do NOT need PCIE16x slot. They are either PCI or PCIE1x depending on version so you can have SLI and hardware physics if you like. Infact thats exacly what I do.

Too many people who know nothing about the tech nor have every used it bag it so don't get sucked in. Do you own testing. Ask you local computer shop to demo etc.

Reply to OnTarget
MMclachlan   02-23-2009 at 04:04:31 PM
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@ ontarget, you can of course have Sli and dedicated PhysX if you use an ageia PhysX card, but since ageia were swallowed up by Nvidia they don't seem to make them anymore. I meant using another GFX card as a dedicated PhysX card in addition to 2 card Sli - which would need 3 x16 slots on one of the mentioned mobos. Unless of course you do a bit of slot-modding! I have seen someone on a forum who's cut the back out of a PCI-E x1 slot to hang a 7600GT in. They only wanted it to display 2D work on an additional monitor so didn't need the full bandwidth and it worked fine...

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