4870 CF + 8800 for physx, possible?

[erikb3]

My setup:
MSI K9A2 Platinum V2
AMD Phenom X4 9950 @ 2,6 GHz
2x ATI HD4870 1GB
4 GB DDR2 800 MHz CL 4-4-4-12
64-bit Windows Vista

I have two unused PCI express slots and my question is if I can use one (or both?!?!) of the 8800 GTS 320 MB that's just laying around for PhysX acceleration.

I'd like to be able to play Mirrors Edge with PhysX effects turned on.

 

[trance4850]

If you want to crossfire these cards than i wish you luck

 

[erikb3]

Well, thank you.

I'm already crossfiring the 4870s. What I'm asking is if I can use an 8800 for PhysX, while using my 4870s to render graphics.

 

[jassao]

nope you can't, you have 2 options crossfire or SLi, there's no way to connect an ATI with a Nvidia card and also there's no software to support such thing.

 

[erikb3]

I'm not sure that you understand what I want to do. I want to use the 8800 GTS 320 MB card as I would use an Ageia PhysX Card.

You can read about how the Ageia card improves frame rates for Mirrors Edge on a 4870 here.

My question is if I can do the same with an 8800 GTS 320MB or if there is no way you can mix nvidia and ati cards in the same computer.

 

[lejay]

Apparently people find the concept very hard to understand. He is not trying to 'crossfire' an ATI card with one from nvidia.

But the answer is still no. Windows is unable to handle two gfx drivers and as things stand PhysX is integrated into nvidias gfx driver. It would be cool to have a PhysX(actually, CUDA) only driver, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

[jassao]

My bad I must have misread your post, I thought you were trying to connect the 3 gpu's together. But I was right about the software lol . You would have a mess if you install nvidia's and ati's drivers on the same OS.

 

[Euphoria_MK]

Yes you can do it. Try and google for an answer. I have it bookmarked at home on my laptop....
There was a fourm posting on a guy doing the same, but he actually used a physx card for testing purposes. There was a step by step instruction set on how to go about installing the drivers only for the physx option, so you can get the PPU benefits without using the GPU of the card.
He was also referring to the older set of Physx drivers, because Nvidia has disabled this option in their newer driver set.
Since tehy have exclusive rights to the physx engine they are aggressively marketing this feature and they know that this will be their edge over ATI's cards. So far only couple of games support this feature but they are planing to do a big demo about Physx on the next Expo.

 

[Euphoria_MK]

Here is the link with the benchmarks done on mirrors edge:

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...eia-card-Alternative-to-Nvidia-Physx/Reviews/

and this is a good place to get some help and share experiences about doing so:

http://forums.guru3d.com/forumdisplay.php?f=22

 

[jassao]

Can HE do it? no

can someone else do it using JUST nvidia cards, special drivers, and knowledge? yes

as I said before "thou shalt not mix ati and nvida"...

 

[orangegator]

Vista can only run one graphics driver at a time. You cannot use an ATI and Nvidia card in the same machine. So, the answer to your question is no, it will not work (you need the Nvidia drivers installed for physx). However, with Windows XP and with Windows 7, you can run 2 graphics drivers at the same time. So, with these it should work.